In the default setting, traffic is always reported to accounting when a data connection (in the form of a firewall session) ends, for example after a timeout within the firewall or when a TCP connection is closed. In the case of long-running connections, this can lead to a considerable delay before data traffic actually appears in the accounting status tables. To handle this problem, accounting has an "intermittent reporting" function, which enters partial recordings at fixed intervals in the accounting. How often this happens is configured via the intermittent reporting interval. By default this is set to 0; i.e. the feature is disabled. If a value between 1 and 30 is entered there, this setting defines the interval in seconds at which intermediate data-connection reports are received by accounting.
The intermediate reports increase the system load depending on the number of active data connections. The intermediate reports of the data connections are carried out independently of each other (i.e. not all at once) in order to avoid peak loads.
Intermittent reporting can be switched on at any time while accounting is running. The first intermittent report then contains the complete data traffic of the individual data flows measured up to the time when enabled.
