Accounting metrics

Analyse network sessions and data usage.

Accounting metrics describe network sessions after a device has authenticated successfully. Where authentication records tell you whether a device got onto the network, accounting records tell you what happened during the time it stayed there.

Question answered: How long was the device connected, and how much data did it use?

What the records show

• Session start and end times.
• Session duration.
• Uplink and downlink data usage.
• Serving network context, where available.

Uplink and downlink are reported separately, which matters for IoT estates where the traffic profile is usually asymmetric and a change in that balance is often the first sign that something on the device has changed.

Common uses

• Per-SIM and per-fleet usage tracking: Usage can be rolled up however your estate is organised, by device type, by customer, by region, without depending on how an operator chooses to group it.
• Internal billing and cost reconciliation: Session-level records give you a basis for allocating cost internally and for checking it against what you are invoiced.
• Detecting abnormal session duration or usage patterns: Sessions that run far longer than expected, or consume far more than their peers, stand out once you have the full population to compare against.
• Verifying roaming and network behaviour: Serving network context, where available, shows which network a session actually ran on rather than which one you expected.

Interpretation

Accounting data confirms what happened during a network session. Pair it with authentication data to understand how the session started and with traffic flow data to understand where communication occurred.