Jim_in_VA (banned) join:2004-07-11 Cobbs Creek, VA |
billing by usageIf you decide you are going to usage base pricing, how are you going to provide a online meter for the customer to check ...daily |
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Rhaas Premium Member join:2005-12-19 Bernie, MO |
Rhaas
Premium Member
2011-Jan-2 7:04 pm
Although I am not currently using UBB, I already have the framework in place. I may change it do a daily bar graph at some point.
Using PPPoE it's simple to do so. You just query the accounting table for the time frames you are interested in.
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Is Last Month the prior month or current month to date? |
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Rhaas Premium Member join:2005-12-19 Bernie, MO |
Rhaas
Premium Member
2011-Jan-2 7:17 pm
Prior month. IIRC. I'd have to look at my calulations to be sure. |
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Jim_in_VA (banned) join:2004-07-11 Cobbs Creek, VA |
to Rhaas
so your customers can log into their account and see that graph for their usage ... is that what you are considering? How would a WISP implement that same solution .. what is the program? |
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to LLigetfa
said by LLigetfa:Is Last Month the prior month or current month to date? I was wondering the same thing... Given the other two (previous day and last 7 days) I would have assumed that it was a rolling 30 day value. If that's the case, I'd change the text to "last 30 days" to keep consistency. If it is the previous billing cycle, I would change it to "previous month" |
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Rhaas Premium Member join:2005-12-19 Bernie, MO |
Rhaas
Premium Member
2011-Jan-2 7:35 pm
I still have verbose logging enabled, it's the prior month, not 30 days: 01/02/2011 17:53:29 - <ip> - <user> Start: 2011-01-01 00:00:00 End: 2011-01-01 23:59:59
01/02/2011 17:53:29 - <ip> - <user> Start: 2010-12-26 00:00:00 End: 2011-01-01 23:59:59
01/02/2011 17:53:29 - <ip> - <user> Start: 2010-12-01 00:00:00 End: 2010-12-31 23:59:59
I guess I may need to rename the output, perhaps it's confusing? It's the front end I wrote for my customers to use. Yes they can log in and Add/Change/Delete E-mail accounts, view bandwidth usage and create a hotspot account. It's written in PHP, using Freeradius for AAA, Postfix for E-Mail. Both are configured to use a MySQL backend. |
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to Jim_in_VA
Two ways 1) Data goes thru a central point This is what happens for me. Data goes through my main kerio winroute box which outputs an xml file every 5 mins. A php web page running on the same box searches the username by the ip address and then displays a bar that fills up. A microtik router or radius system must surely have the ability to do this. Im pretty sure php can talk to radius. 2) SNMP from client radio You can monitor the wan interface of the clients radio and then display it in your portal. I forget the name of the software but a bunch of people here use it to monitor and graph network links. That will probably do it if you can output to a server to share it via an http website. Either way, you need to provide something that gets updated at least every 24 hours Here is my portal page attached I used to have plans, then decided I would rather sell more bandwidth so I created tiers so people could go over their chosen plan and have a slightly cheaper per gb up until the next tier. At the end of the month, they recieve an invoice for whatever tier they reached plus any extra gigabyte data blocks. In the USA you would probably have a cheaper per gb rate like 50c per gb, and a higher base tier like 50gb or 100gb depending upon your market. |
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Jim_in_VA (banned) join:2004-07-11 Cobbs Creek, VA |
to Rhaas
do you clearly have in your TOS ...excluding the usual illegal terms .. a limit (cap) of download ... 50 GB, 100GB, 250GB ...whatever, how is your customer to know the limit unless they have a monitor, provided by you. |
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Rhaas Premium Member join:2005-12-19 Bernie, MO |
Rhaas
Premium Member
2011-Jan-2 7:48 pm
I don't right now. I mention it on the webpage: » www.bpsnetworks.com/node/13 but to be honest I've never really pushed it. RayTaylor: I really like how your page looks! I can't design web pages to save my life I'd like my pages to be 'fun' instead of all business :/ |
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I would be happy to make something up for you. I usually go looking for free design templates online and then recreate them using the included images in frontpage, with references to other php files to process the info and return the text or content.
edit: was just looking at your website - you dont show the excess per gb costs. It says for the 768k wireless plan a 10gb monthly transfer, but doesnt show excess cost. |
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to raytaylor
said by raytaylor:Two ways 1) Data goes thru a central point This is what happens for me. Data goes through my main kerio winroute box which outputs an xml file every 5 mins. A php web page running on the same box searches the username by the ip address and then displays a bar that fills up. A microtik router or radius system must surely have the ability to do this. Im pretty sure php can talk to radius.
2) SNMP from client radio You can monitor the wan interface of the clients radio and then display it in your portal. I forget the name of the software but a bunch of people here use it to monitor and graph network links. That will probably do it if you can output to a server to share it via an http website.
Either way, you need to provide something that gets updated at least every 24 hours
Here is my portal page attached
I used to have plans, then decided I would rather sell more bandwidth so I created tiers so people could go over their chosen plan and have a slightly cheaper per gb up until the next tier. At the end of the month, they recieve an invoice for whatever tier they reached plus any extra gigabyte data blocks.
In the USA you would probably have a cheaper per gb rate like 50c per gb, and a higher base tier like 50gb or 100gb depending upon your market. SNMP on radio plus cacti would work. See a site of ours attached over the last month. If you wanted something silly easy to put in place, but not the neatest or user friendly thing around, you could make a cacti account for each user, setup privilages so they only see their graph upon login. Obvously they would see what i posted, which isnt very "pretty" but does have the needed information. |
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Rhaas Premium Member join:2005-12-19 Bernie, MO |
to raytaylor
I have never billed any one in the past as we are not currently billing for usage.. I've only ever used it to fire a customer who consistently downloaded 200gb+ a month even after sending him a certified letter that he had one more chance to knock it off or his account would be cancelled.
Right now I am just trying to get the frame work in place. I still have ~500 DSL customers on legacy equipment that doesn't support PPPoE that will have to be changed before I can put anything in place. |
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Jim_in_VA (banned) join:2004-07-11 Cobbs Creek, VA |
there you have it ... 200GB is your cap... then clearly say so in your TOS. Why beat around the bush? |
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Rhaas Premium Member join:2005-12-19 Bernie, MO |
Rhaas
Premium Member
2011-Jan-2 8:59 pm
said by Jim_in_VA:there you have it ... 200GB is your cap... then clearly say so in your TOS. Why beat around the bush? My cap on wireless customers is 10-25Gb (depending on tier), as it clearly states on my website. There is no beating around the bush. The only thing not outlined is the consequences for going over - although in my AUP, I outline abuse of bandwidth as a consideration for termination. I'm just not a prick about enforcing it. These were developed while we were using 802.11b equipment exclusively - hence the low amounts. Once (if) we move to a cap/overage each tier will be revisted and a cost assessed for overage charges. As I stated before, I have just been working on the frame work to make everything possible. |
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Jim_in_VA (banned) join:2004-07-11 Cobbs Creek, VA 1 edit |
not meaning to be critical here Rhaas, butI have visited your website and it is certainly NOT clear of the cap. Can you point me to where is it is so stated? |
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Right on the product page, » www.bpsnetworks.com/node/13 for example, look under the "features" list. It says right there. "10Gb monthly transfer" for the 768k wireless. |
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Rhaas Premium Member join:2005-12-19 Bernie, MO 1 edit |
to Jim_in_VA
» www.bpsnetworks.com/node/13 - 10Gb » www.bpsnetworks.com/node/49 - 15Gb » www.bpsnetworks.com/node/14 - 20Gb » www.bpsnetworks.com/node/87 - 25Gb I think adding the word 'allowance' or something similar after 'monthly transfer' would make it more clear. However, those limits have been posted since day 1. Edit: If we do go the way of UBB, the limits and charges will be included in the paper work we have the customers sign. |
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to Jim_in_VA
said by Jim_in_VA:If you decide you are going to usage base pricing, how are you going to provide a online meter for the customer to check ...daily Having done usage based pricing for most of the last 9 years, I can say it was a good option up until the last year. Billing for excess use over a fixed quota has ALWAYS caused considerable anxiety in our member/customer base, and NEVER has been useful. The primary reason is that kids run the bill up, which parents do not see for 30 days or so. Nobody in the family has a definitive idea who used the data for what inside the family 5 weeks ago for a number of reasons. First, is that there is VERY little feedback as a web user what the byte transfer amount is for a particular choice ... specifically when accessing audio/video content that may be encoded at various rates, and have different actual sizes depending on available bandwidth, that varies by time of day as providers are lightly or heavily loaded. Second, things like Microsoft updates and AV updates can run up a huge data transfer over the month when there are a half dozen computers inside the home ... several desk tops and several portables. Especially when those updates fail, and download repeatedly several times ... or for several weeks every night. Other things like outgoing mail retries with a large attachment can burn a few GB easily, until the remote mailbox becomes empty enough to accept the whole document. And then there are the viral servers that kids (and parents) bring home, that turn the customer into a porn server site. Helping the customer find that, and deal with a several hundred dollar bill for the bandwidth is never nice ... and happens frequently ... sometimes a dozen or more a month. This month we are abandoning metered billing, and replacing it with metered shaping with exactly the same quota's we have used for the metered billing system. Heavy use now turns into slow use, based on the members "fair share" use. Exceed "fair share" and it gets slow quickly ... parents can look at their kids computers and pin point why quickly when they install network loggers with source reporting on each computer in the home. Our solution is just some perl scripts that use 6 minute iptables samples, and set the burst (ceiling) value for an htb shaper rule which are rewritten every 6 minutes. Members (customers) purchase bandwidth in shares, that are 75kbps in size and can be accessed up to a defined maximum burst rate depending on their usage profile. The feedback so far, is that members look forward to not having to constantly be bandwidth police out of fear of a $200-400 over quota bill that can easily happen when someone installs/starts a bit-torrent server in the household. So, our policy change is a reflection that we are not like the gas or electric company where if the customers uses it ... they get charged for it. We are becoming more like a pay-as-you-go prepaid calling card or cell phone ... except that when the minutes all run out ... they still have a service that is about 2-3 times faster than dialup. I suggest seriously discussing metered billing vs metered shaping with your customers ... a fixed price billing that gets slower is FAR more popular than having to worry about that $400 bill when the kids start a P2P server running. John |
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TomS_Git-r-done MVM join:2002-07-19 London, UK 2 edits |
to Jim_in_VA
said by Jim_in_VA: do you clearly have in your TOS ...excluding the usual illegal terms .. a limit (cap) of download ... 50 GB, 100GB, 250GB ...whatever, how is your customer to know the limit unless they have a monitor, provided by you. "Usage meters", as we call them in Aus, are extremely common. Youre a 1 bit ISP if you dont have one. :P Typically they are hooked into the ISP backend via a public, clamped down API. The user supplies the username and password of their service, and through the API the usage meter is able to retrieve details of the plan associated with that username, such as: •the cap (we tend to refer to it as a quota) •"shaping" speed (i.e. what speed the service is slowed to once the quota is exceeded), and whether or not you are shaped •how much has been downloaded and of that how much has been rolled back (for unmetered usage) •some may display upload statistics but many dont because we dont tend to count uploads here so its somewhat irrelevant, but it does depend on your plan •historical data usage information •and other details like your IP address, cost of the plan, etc, etc may be available Theres no standard, as you can imagine, so the method for achieving this, and then the information available varies from ISP to ISP. Usage meters arent necessarily released by the ISP, they tend to be developed by users (as strange as that may sound), and are thus usually available for just about every OS imaginable. Its quite an interesting little ecosystem. As for the counting of data per user, there are two "not so hacky" ways really: 1. PPPoE or PPTP VPN over a closed IP network - I prefer PPPoE, but I used to work for someone who did the later. Sessions are terminated on a box which authenticate users via RADIUS. The box terminating the session forwards periodic accounting records to the RADIUS server which stores that information in a database, which can be analysed by a script to produce usage information for the user. 2. Netflow or some other form of in-line data monitoring tool/service - have not personally used the later, but the former is viable up to a certain point (once you start doing gigabits/sec the amount of data you collect starts to become hard to handle). Data is analysed on the fly and certain points are recorded and stored, such as the source/dest IP and ports and length of the data, which can be referenced to a database containing information about users and what IPs they are assigned. Usage can then be collated on a per-user basis. Using this method you can also implement the "unmetered usage" that I talk of above. Certain services, websites, etc you might be generous enough to allow users to use or visit for "free". The usage will still be counted per se, but using this information you can work out how much of it, and subtract from their counted usage, thus "rolling it back". A somewhat hacky method: 3. If your APs record per-association statistics, you can use this information to associate usage with a particular service. Ive considered this approach for some of our stuff, but its a bit trickier IMO. |
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to Totally_Lost
said by Totally_Lost:there is VERY little feedback as a web user what the byte transfer amount is for a particular choice I find that to be a big challenge too. Even us as ISP's quite often can't tell a customer exactly how much bandwidth different activities will use because it is so variable. |
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John Galt6Forward, March Premium Member join:2004-09-30 Happy Camp |
to Jim_in_VA
I use Networx locally: » www.softperfect.com/prod ··· networx/Lots of good features...free being a major one. I have no restrictions on use, so no worries for me. I've been known to suck down the whole 20MB 24/7 for a month at a time (video monitoring) with no issues. Of course, I live in an area with a decent build-out and no users (think vacation community). Someone HAS to exercise the system! I'd suggest making it available to your subscribers so they can get an idea of how much data they are using. If you are considering moving to UBB, then this would ease the transition. People need to know how "bad" their habits are before you try and break them. I'd be interested in seeing how it correlates with other methods... |
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WHT join:2010-03-26 Rosston, TX |
WHT
Member
2011-Jan-5 3:37 am
Sort of looks like NetEqualizer on a PC. I meant the: SoftPerfect Bandwidth Manager Bandwidth limiter and traffic shaper for Windows |
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TomS_Git-r-done MVM join:2002-07-19 London, UK |
to Jim_in_VA
You can implement traffic shaping using Linux and TC too - no OS license, no software license fees, and a large support community, and its all free. |
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to Jim_in_VA
I have this on the back on my mail drop flyers
5000 megabytes is the basic 5gb tier (for my plans) equals:
- 75 megabytes is an hour surfing trademe - our local ebay (60+ hrs) - 150mb is an hour of surfing most other websites that are graphic interactive (33hrs) - 15mb is a 3 minute crazy cat video on youtube (15 hrs) - 3mb is an email with pictures attached. (1500+ emails) - 10mb is a song downloaded off itunes for the kids ipod (500 songs) - 1500mb is a movie that the kids download (3 movies)
You can see how music and videos will use up the bandwidth faster than basic surfing, and you are free to use your data as you wish. If you do go over, you can double what you get above for an extra $15, or $4 per extra 1000mb You can also check your usage at any time by going to the Rural Kiwi customer website. This makes your monthly invoice easy to manage.
Anything that comes into your computer or goes out to the internet gets counted against your monthly usage.
================ The above makes it pretty clear what types of content use different amounts of bandwidth, and they understand it quite clearly. |
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WHT join:2010-03-26 Rosston, TX |
WHT
Member
2011-Jan-5 1:06 pm
said by raytaylor:5000 megabytes is the basic 5gb tier (for my plans) equals:
- 75 megabytes is an hour surfing trademe - our local ebay (60+ hrs) - 150mb is an hour of surfing most other websites that are graphic interactive (33hrs) - 15mb is a 3 minute crazy cat video on youtube (15 hrs) - 3mb is an email with pictures attached. (1500+ emails) - 10mb is a song downloaded off itunes for the kids ipod (500 songs) - 1500mb is a movie that the kids download (3 movies) That looks like an "or" matrix. At first glance, an cluser (clusless user) may think its an "and" matrix, and they can do all of that, or 30 GB In reality, 5 GB will get you 500 iTunes *or* 3 movies, etc. That's not much, but it does discourage excessive use. Over the past year, 80% of my users used less than 10 GB per month, the other 20% used less then 30GB. But that may, err..will change with Netflix, Google TV, etc. I'm not an entertainment company. That's what satellite TV is for. |
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John Galt6Forward, March Premium Member join:2004-09-30 Happy Camp |
said by WHT:I'm not an entertainment company. That's what satellite TV is for. Slightly OT, but since you mentioned it... I made a comment here 4-5 years ago that satellite TV installation is a very natural side-business for WISPs. The installations are virtually identical. If your guys can install a CPE, they can install a dish. |
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WHT join:2010-03-26 Rosston, TX |
WHT
Member
2011-Jan-5 3:44 pm
Indeed...I have even started reconsidering that. |
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