Notes for Team 5

(From September 25 meeting with Prof. Keshav)

The first challenge for this team is to come up with a pricing policy: flat, distance-sensitive, ...
The second challenge is billing: authentication; tracking source of call, destination of call, length of call.
Then you need stable storage to keep your data.
Provide the signalling function a stub for it to call with the information you need for billing.
Output: nothing fancy, just print out the call records. Formatting is not the point of this exercise.
Where to start: with the basic stuff (record processing). Then consider in more depth how to price internet calls.
Pricing should include some incentive to make people use resources wisely.
Null interface: no billing, but does compile.

Do we have to worry about user authentication? Yes, to some extent.
What are user names? Use email address form (x@a.b.c.) because SIP protocol will be used in this project, and that is the basic name in SIP.
What is a stub? It is a function call with whatever parameters you have decided on, then when called will put data into a packet, and send it to the billing system.
Where do we get a secure database? JDBC is easy to use; you can access the ACCESS database from NT machines.
Should billing provide hooks for other people to use? Yes, good idea.