Setup Charing for UE

In this demo, we will practice:

Set Slice-level and Flow-level Offline charging in webconsole.
Set Slice-level and Flow-level Offline charging in webconsole.
Test with UERANSIM

Notice:
The charging function was released in free5GC v3.4.1.

0. Preface

free5GC provides Converge Charging, which includes Online and Offline.
Support Slice-level and Flow-level Charging.
Offline
- After network resource usage, charging information is transmitted from the network to the Billing Domain (BD).
Online
- Before network resource usage, the network sends an authentication request to the Online Charging System (OCS) and gets quota.

1. Create Subscriber

The basic setting for subscribers will be ignored in this article; you can refer to this if you needed.
The default would create two slices, 01010203 and 01112233.

01010203
- We could change the charging Method from Offline to Online if you needed.
- We keep using Offline for now.
- By default, there would be one flow rule to 1.1.1.1/32.
- Remember to use the same Charing Method as slice-level charing.
- For now, we will keep it Offline.
01112233
- We use Online Charging for this slice.
- Create flow rules.
  - Remember to use the same charging method as Slice-level.
Click Create.

2. Check Charging Data in Webconsole

Click UE CHARGING in webconsole sidebar
We would see the Charging Data we set in Step 1.
- Expand
- Fold

3. Test with UERANSIM

Refer to this to set up your environment.

Provide free5gc-ue.yaml I use for your reference.

# IMSI number of the UE. IMSI = [MCC|MNC|MSISDN] (In total 15 digits)
supi: 'imsi-208930000000001'
# Mobile Country Code value of HPLMN
mcc: '208'
# Mobile Network Code value of HPLMN (2 or 3 digits)
mnc: '93'
# SUCI Protection Scheme : 0 for Null-scheme, 1 for Profile A and 2 for Profile B
protectionScheme: 0
# Home Network Public Key for protecting with SUCI Profile A
homeNetworkPublicKey: '5a8d38864820197c3394b92613b20b91633cbd897119273bf8e4a6f4eec0a650'
# Home Network Public Key ID for protecting with SUCI Profile A
homeNetworkPublicKeyId: 1
# Routing Indicator
routingIndicator: '0000'

# Permanent subscription key
key: '8baf473f2f8fd09487cccbd7097c6862'
# Operator code (OP or OPC) of the UE
op: '8e27b6af0e692e750f32667a3b14605d'
# This value specifies the OP type and it can be either 'OP' or 'OPC'
opType: 'OPC'
# Authentication Management Field (AMF) value
amf: '8000'
# IMEI number of the device. It is used if no SUPI is provided
imei: '356938035643803'
# IMEISV number of the device. It is used if no SUPI and IMEI is provided
imeiSv: '4370816125816151'

# List of gNB IP addresses for Radio Link Simulation
gnbSearchList:
  - 127.0.0.1

# UAC Access Identities Configuration
uacAic:
  mps: false
  mcs: false

# UAC Access Control Class
uacAcc:
  normalClass: 0
  class11: false
  class12: false
  class13: false
  class14: false
  class15: false

# Initial PDU sessions to be established
sessions:
  - type: 'IPv4'
    apn: 'internet'
    slice:
      sst: 0x01
      sd: 0x010203
  - type: 'IPv4'
    apn: 'internet'
    slice:
      sst: 0x01
      sd: 0x112233

# Configured NSSAI for this UE by HPLMN
configured-nssai:
  - sst: 0x01
    sd: 0x010203
  - sst: 0x01
    sd: 0x112233

# Default Configured NSSAI for this UE
default-nssai:
  - sst: 1
    sd: 1

# Supported integrity algorithms by this UE
integrity:
  IA1: true
  IA2: true
  IA3: true

# Supported encryption algorithms by this UE
ciphering:
  EA0: true
  EA1: true
  EA2: true
  EA3: true

# Integrity protection maximum data rate for user plane
integrityMaxRate:
  uplink: 'full'
  downlink: 'full'

If you set it up successfully, you will see the UERANSIM create two tunnels, uesimtun0, and uesimtun1.
The following is a Demo GIF for Charing
Result
You can try it out for the Charing Functionality now!

Setup Charing for UE

0. Preface

1. Create Subscriber

01010203

01112233

2. Check Charging Data in Webconsole

3. Test with UERANSIM

Appendix