X.25 DATA NETWORKING

Series 8000

X.25 BILLING STATION
(Software)

Typical Series 8000 X.25 Billing Station installation

The X.25 Billing Station is a Windows NT PC-based system that is used to collect X.25 billing records from a Case Series 8000 X.25 network and use them as the basis for producing accounting reports (bills) for the calls made (see figure on left).

The system does not perform any user accounting processes such as recording payments made or maintaining customer balance. These functions must be achieved by a higher order accounting system.

The PC requires an Eicon X.25 card, a disk or tape backup drive, and a printer. There are no special requirements for the backup drive or the printer.

The following information is shown

• Configure 'Customer'
• Configure 'Site'
• Configure 'Group'
• Configure 'Address'
• Report on customers
• Report on sites
• Report on groups
• Report on addresses
• Report on hierarchy

Additional information

Database sizes

A panel displays the sizes of the main databases in terms of the number of records that each one contains. The sizes of the customer, site, group and address databases are updated instantly.

Current billing period

This feature displays the start and end dates of the current billing period. The system automatically recalculates the billing period and generate any automatic bills as it comes to the end of each one.

Disk usage

A panel displays the current state (in terms of fullness) of the disk on which the software was installed. It displays a bar and percentage figure indicating the fullness of the disk.

Current date and time

There is a panel which displays the current system date and time.

Archive

The X.25 Billing Station allows you to archive records from the main billing database to another database ready to be backed up and removed from the system. Once the records have been put in the new database, they are removed from the main billing database.

De-archive

This feature allows you to de-archive records which have previously been archived. The records are taken from the archive database and written back into the main billing database. They are not removed from the archive database.

Backup/configuration

The X.25 Billing Station allows you to backup configuration database files to maintain an offline backup store.

Restore/configuration

This feature allows you to restore previously backed up configuration database.

Export/configuration data

The X.25 Billing Station allows you to export the configuration databases into a comma-delimited form so that it can be imported into another application.

Configure menu

This feature allows you to add, edit or delete a record using the following fields:

Billing period

The X.25 Billing Station allows you to define the type of billing period to be used by the system, the options are:

• Calendar month starting on a particular day, defines which day of the month the period starts
• Fixed length periods staring on a specified date, determines how many days the fixed lengths are

Peak rate

This feature allows you to define the times that the system uses to determine whether a call should be billed at peak rate or not:

• From the time of day of the start of the peak rate band
• To the time of day of the end of the peak rate band
• Off peak – the multiplier to be applied to the peak rates to calculate the off peak rates

Report menu

Reports provide a way of viewing all the information for the basic entities (customers, sites, groups and addresses) and the inter-relationships between them. The X.25 Billing Station allows you to manipulate the report, the options are:

• Shrink and restore a report page
• View a multi-page report
• Print a report
• Store and retrieve a report
• Close report

Bill menu

This feature allows you to manipulate the bills including itemising or summarising. They are broken down into the following:

• Date of call
• Time of call
• User associated with call
• Address to be charged
• Partner address of call
• Indicator of whether the call was a reverse charge call
• The duration of the call
• The number of packets transmitted and received
• The number of bytes transmitted and received
• The number of segments transmitted and received
• An indicator of whether the call was made during peak rate
• The cost of the call

Configuration

The X.25 Billing Station runs on a PC. The recommended configuration is as follows:

• Pentium 200MHz or higher
• 32Mb RAM
• 17" screen
• 2Gb disk or larger (size required depends on network traffic and billing requirements)

View data sheet for Series 8000 Billing Station

For more information on the 8000 series, please contact Marketing