ISP billing - data collection, correlation, and billing

Fri Jul 14 18:40:47 UTC 2017

I went back a few years in the archives and found a few odd references, but
not much discussion. I'm curious what some other approaches are to
usage-based billing, both the practice of generating/correlating data and
the billing itself.

We bill based on use/95th percentile and our system is rudimentary on its
best day. We use SNMP and interface descriptions to generate data and
correlate it with customers. This works for the most part, but leaves a lot
to be desired. 

Ours is one method, and I've seen others who use NetFlow data in a similar
fashion, with the assumption that the NetFlow data is correlated either via
IP address or source interface. 

Most of the systems I've seen are full-fledged CRM, billing, and OSS, which
is a little overkill for us at the moment. I think we would have issues
trying to integrate such a multi-headed beast into our organization at this
time.

What methods do you use to collect and correlate data?

What systems, if any, do you use?

I'm a little in the dark as the billing/OSS side of things is outside of my
normal scope and would appreciate any recommendations.

Thanks!