An accounting service for heterogeneous distributed environments

The integration of accounting functions and an account server into the distributed academic computing network operating system (DACNOS), which is an NOS built on top of a heterogeneous collection of networked computers, is described. The accounting is supported by NOS-kernel mechanisms that can be tailored to the needs of the heterogeneous servers. Accounting data is collected and stored by an account server in the NOS that manages the balances and the resource consumption data of clients. Depending on privileges, accounting data is accessible to clients, servers, and an account server administrator who may use this information for various resource and request management purposes