The Internet Accounting Working Group has the goal of producing standards for the generation of accounting data within the Internet that can be used to support a wide range of management and cost allocation policies. The introduction of a common set of tools and interpretations should ease the implementation of organizational policies for Internet components and make them more equitable in a multi-vendor environment. In the following accounting model, this Working Group is primarily concerned with defining standards for the Meter function and recommending protocols for the Collector function. Individual accounting applications (billing applications) and organizational policies will not be addressed, although examples should be provided. Meter $<$--$>$ Collector $<$--$>$ Application $<$--$>$ Policy First, examine a wide range of existing and hypothetical policies to understand what set of information is required to satisfy usage reporting requirements. Next, evaluate existing mechanisms to generate this information and define the specifications of each accounting parameter to be generated. Determine the requirements for local storage and how parameters may be aggregated. Recommend a data collection protocol and internal formats for processing by accounting applications. This will result in an Internet-Draft suitable for experimental verification and implementation. In parallel with the definition of the draft standard, develop a suite of test scenarios to verify the model. Identify candidates for prototyping and implementation. \newpage