CGRateS Usage

Loading CGRateS Tariff Plans

Before proceeding to this step, you should have CGRateS installed and started with custom configuration, depending on the tutorial you have followed.

For our tutorial we load again prepared data out of shared folder, containing following rules:

  • Create the necessary timings (always, asap, peak, offpeak).
  • Configure 3 destinations (1002, 1003 and 10 used as catch all rule).
  • As rating we configure the following:
  • Rate id: RT_10CNT with connect fee of 20cents, 10cents per minute for the first 60s in 60s increments followed by 5cents per minute in 1s increments.
  • Rate id: RT_20CNT with connect fee of 40cents, 20cents per minute for the first 60s in 60s increments, followed by 10 cents per minute charged in 1s increments.
  • Rate id: RT_40CNT with connect fee of 80cents, 40cents per minute for the first 60s in 60s increments, follwed by 20cents per minute charged in 10s increments.
  • Rate id: RT_1CNT having no connect fee and a rate of 1 cent per minute, chargeable in 1 minute increments.
  • Rate id: RT_1CNT_PER_SEC having no connect fee and a rate of 1 cent per second, chargeable in 1 second increments.
  • Accounting part will have following configured:
  • Create 3 accounts: 1001, 1002, 1003.
  • 1001, 1002 will receive 10units of *monetary balance.
cgr-loader -verbose -path=/usr/share/cgrates/tariffplans/tutorial

To verify that all actions successfully performed, we use following cgr-console commands:

  • Make sure all our balances were topped-up:
cgr-console 'accounts Tenant="cgrates.org" AccountIds=["1001"]'
cgr-console 'accounts Tenant="cgrates.org" AccountIds=["1002"]'
  • Query call costs so we can see our calls will have expected costs (final cost will result as sum of ConnectFee and Cost fields):
cgr-console 'cost Category="call" Tenant="cgrates.org" Subject="1001" Destination="1002" AnswerTime="2014-08-04T13:00:00Z" Usage="20s"'
cgr-console 'cost Category="call" Tenant="cgrates.org" Subject="1001" Destination="1002" AnswerTime="2014-08-04T13:00:00Z" Usage="1m25s"'
cgr-console 'cost Category="call" Tenant="cgrates.org" Subject="1001" Destination="1003" AnswerTime="2014-08-04T13:00:00Z" Usage="20s"'

Test calls

1001 -> 1002

Since the user 1001 is marked as prepaid inside the telecom switch, calling between 1001 and 1002 should generate pre-auth and prepaid debits which can be checked with get_account command integrated within cgr-console tool. Charging will be done based on time of day as described in the tariff plan definition above.

Note: An important particularity to note here is the ability of CGRateS SessionManager to refund units booked in advance (eg: if debit occurs every 10s and rate increments are set to 1s, the SessionManager will be smart enough to refund pre-booked credits for calls stopped in the middle of debit interval).

Check that 1001 balance is properly deducted, during the call, and moreover considering that general balance has priority over the shared one debits for this call should take place at first out of general balance.

cgr-console 'accounts Tenant="cgrates.org" AccountIds=["1001"]'

1002 -> 1001

The user 1002 is marked as postpaid inside the telecom switch hence his calls will be debited at the end of the call instead of during a call and his balance will be able to go on negative without influencing his new calls (no pre-auth).

To check that we had debits we use again console command, this time not during the call but at the end of it:

cgr-console 'accounts Tenant="cgrates.org" AccountIds=["1002"]'

1001 -> 1003

The user 1001 call user 1003 and after 12 seconds the call will be disconnected.

CDR Exporting

Once the CDRs are mediated, they are available to be exported. One can use available RPC APIs for that or directly call exports from console:

cgr-console 'cdrs_export CdrFormat="csv" ExportPath="/tmp"'

Fraud detection

Since we have configured some action triggers (more than 20 units of balance topped-up or less than 2 and more than 5 units spent on FS_USERS we should be notified over syslog when things like unexpected events happen (eg: fraud with more than 20 units topped-up). Most important is the monitor for 100 units topped-up which will also trigger an account disable together with killing it’s calls if prepaid debits are used.

To verify this mechanism simply add some random units into one account’s balance:

cgr-console 'balance_set Tenant="cgrates.org" Account="1003" Direction="*out" Value=23'
tail -f /var/log/syslog -n 20

cgr-console 'balance_set Tenant="cgrates.org" Account="1001" Direction="*out" Value=101'
tail -f /var/log/syslog -n 20

On the CDRs side we will be able to integrate CdrStats monitors as part of our Fraud Detection system (eg: the increase of average cost for 1001 and 1002 accounts will signal us abnormalities, hence we will be notified via syslog).