On-line: PCC-Policy and Charging Control

Who should attend:

The PCC - Policy and Charging Control training course is developed for telecom professionals working with project and product management, marketing and sales, business development, system engineering, testing and verification, operations engineering.

Prerequisites:

General knowledge about the architecture, terminology and modes of operation of the GSM/UMTS/EPS access and core networks is highly recommended. Basic knowledge of the Internet Protocol (IP) family is useful.

Contents:

The PCC - Policy and Charging Control course offers a comprehensive – yet easily understandable – description of the purpose, principles, architecture for Policy and Charging Control as specified by 3GPP. The course focuses on PCC used with UMTS and EPS (with GTP-based core network). Relevant functional entities, protocols and interfaces are described, and signalling flows are used to illustrate the PCC mechanisms.

Background – GSM and UMTS

• GSM and UMTS network architectures and mode of operation

• HSPA and Mobile Broadband

• QoS handling and charging in legacy 3GPP networks

• Bearers and QoS

Evolved Packet System Overview

• LTE and SAE

• EPS architecture and nodes, mode of operation

• IMS and other service platforms

Policy and Charging Control Architecture

• IP Connectivity access networks (IP-CANs)

• PCC high level principles

• PCC nodes/functions (PCRF, SPR, AF and PCEF)

• Protocols used for PCC

• PCC interfaces

The Policy and Charging Rules Function - PCRF

• What is a PCC rule?

• Contents of PCC rules – QoS and Charging parameters

• Dynamic and predefined PCC Rules

• Generation of PCC rules

SPR, AF and PCEF

• The Subscriber Profile Repository (SPR)

• The Application Function (AF)

• The Policy and Charging Enforcement Function (PCEF)

• Interactions between PCRF and SPR, AF and PCEF – relevant signalling flows

• The Gx, Rx and Sp interfaces

• Bearer binding

The Diameter protocol

• The Diameter platform

• Commands, applications and Attribute Value Pairs

• Diameter extensions used by 3GPP

• Diameter routing principles

Policy Control

• QoS handling and authorization

• QoS parameter mapping

• User plane handling in the PCEF

• Gating, filtering of user data

• Event reporting

• Relevant signalling flows

Charging Control

• Online and Offline Charging systems

• Interworking with OCS and OFCS

• The Gz and Gy interfaces

• Event reporting to the Charging Systems

• Flow Based Charging

• Relation to legacy charging models

• Relevant signalling flows

Roaming Scenarios and the S9 interface

• Roaming scenarios with local breakout or home routed access

• Home PCRF and Visited PCRF

• Interaction on the S9 interface

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