[Freeswitch-users] N-tier hierarchy real time billing using FS and NibbleBill

[gaelmartin]

Hi, I need to develop a project with FreeSwitch that can bill calls in
realtime not just for the end user but for all its parent account at
different rate too and if one of them run out of credit the call
stops.
The NibbleBill module only allow to rate 2 account and 2 rates at the
same time if we bill the A and B leg, this would be fine but I
sometime need to bill 3 or more tier but realistically this is
unlikely to go beyond 5 tiers.

I tried a proof of concept by looping the call to FreeSwitch and
NibbleBill each loop using it's own account and rate until there's no
parent account for a user and then go out to the PSTN gateways, I
cannot use the loopback system because it would remove all the middle
calls once the 2 ends are connected together, so I use a sofia bridge
to the local IP, (I just used a different sofia interface than the one
the end user normally register into and this looping interface is not
public)

This is working fine and does exactly what I want, so far I've tested
it with 5 tiers and as soon as one tier run out of credit it will
disconnect the entire chain of call and adjust each account the
correct amount. I have not tested with multiple end user calls at the
same time but I expect it would work the same way.

My only concern is performance and any potential issue doing some many
loopback in terms of quality or timing. Looping calls in telephony
system are normally reserved only as a last chance attempt to sort a
problem. So I was wondering if someone had done something similar
(i.e. looping calls through the same FreeSwitch instance) with no
issues, and if there were anything to watch for or any tweaks to the
sofia interface to make sure this will not cause an issue when scaling
this system. I'm fairly new to FreeSwitch so I dont know by heart all
the different options yet.

Thanks.

PS: I'm happy to share my proof of concept if anyone's interested
doing the same.

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