Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!snorkelwacker!usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!ames!eos!shelby!newcastle.ac.uk!Denis.Russell From: Denis.Russell@newcastle.ac.uk Newsgroups: comp.protocols.kerberos Subject: Network-wide accounting. Message-ID: Date: 29 May 90 15:47:20 GMT Sender: daemon@shelby.Stanford.EDU Organization: The Internet Lines: 34 I don't know whether this is the right mailing list for this query. If not, then apologies, and please direct me to a more suitable list. The Kerberos system supplies one of the necessities for seamless distributed processing - authentication, and the concept of a single distributed-system-wide identity. One of the other concepts that I've always thought of as a natural extension of this is that of network accounting. That is, the allocation of resources to individuals or "accounts" and the proper accounting for the "spending" or possible transfer of these resources. Some might even correspond to real money, while others might be line-printer pages, say, or even entities or tokens generated by value-added services. All this needs to be done at the institutional level, above the level of individual machines. My understanding is that Project Athena does not have any such accounting concept - though I'm open to immediate correction on this. However, many Computing Centres are moving strongly towards cost recovery in various forms, and I believe that strong generalized network accounting services (quite independent of individual "hosts" or "machines") are inevitable. I'm just hoping that someone has devised such a creature so we don't have to make one ourselves. Denis Russell Denis Russell JANET: Denis.Russell@uk.ac.newcastle Computing Laboratory ARPA: Denis.Russell@newcastle.ac.uk The University Claremont Road Tel: (+44) 91 222 8243 Newcastle upon Tyne Fax: (+44) 91 222 8232 NE1 7RU Telex: 53 65 4 UNINEW G ENGLAND