whoever
join:2006-03-13
Avon, CO
| Canopy Prizm question
If I have *NON* Canopy backhauls, Canopy Advantage APs and Canopy Advantage and Canopy Regular SMs, do I lose anything in the way of network management over several tower locations if I use Prism to manage the network with those NON-canopy backhauls in place? Or to phrase it the other way, does Prism do any special network management if the backhauls are also Canopy units?
Do I gain anything using Prism that justifys that huge license fee or would I be better off using PowerNOC to do all the billing, management, QoS and Radius? I'm not sure I see what the benefit of Prism is at this time except maybe the upgrade functions for the APs? Can someone that has been through this thought process help me out and tell me why they decided to do what they did. I know a lot of you use Microtek, and I really am kinda leaning to PowerNoc because of the billing functions.
My concern is that down the road I'll hate myself because Prism will do something that I need to make the Canopy units work with updates, etc. and here I am sitting with an investment in PowerNOC, Microtik, etc, that can't handle the changes released by Moto. |
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IntraLink
Premium,MVM
join:2002-08-14
Utah Valley
| Prizm doesn't care if your backhauls are not Canopy.
You can still manage the rest of your Canopy network the same.
Prizm gives you many Canopy specific functions that other software won't have.
1. Floating licensing (the ability to buy a license and remotely assign it to a device via software at any time).
2. The deapest Canopy management tool in one location.
3. The expandability via their standards based API's.
4. Soon will include CNUT, the central updater tool.
Really you don't need Prizm to run a small Canopy network.
But my guess is you will want it more and more as your Canopy footprint grows.
We got it on the $2000 promotion with the 10 license pack.
It will just keep going up in price I assume even though they have promotional pricing going still.
With the API layer you at least have a possibility of integrating it with Mikrotik (which we use too) and your CRM and/or billing software. |
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aeronet
join:2002-04-05
San Juan, PR
| Intralink:
We are going to buy the Prizm for our network. And would like to hear about your API integration with Mikrotik and your billing software (which is?). We currently are using optigold, but we are looking into changing it as well.
Are yo available as an consultant?
Gino |
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AnonDOG
@kaballero.com
| reply to whoever
When you get to about 200 subs it becomes increasingly difficult to manage your Canopy network without Prism. When you research what Prism does
»motorola.canopywireless.com/products/prizm/
you realize that you should have bought it in the first place.
We just dropped for Prism 2.0 with licenses for 20 APs. When the boss told me that I told him, "Get eleven more licenses."
 |
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whoever
join:2006-03-13
Avon, CO | reply to whoever
AnonDod then how are you doing billing? Integrating it into Prizm somehow? Using a radius billing solution? |
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AnonDOG
@kaballero.com
| reply to whoever
I have repeatedly responded to this last... Not sure what is happening at DSLR.
We use this for accounting and RADIUS for authentication:
»www.mcga.com.au/platypus.php
We use PPPoE for all clients that do not lease a static IP address.
»www.freeantennas.com/PPPoE-Server-HOWTO.html |
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AnonDOG
@kaballero.com
| reply to whoever
I should mention also that section 6.0 of the linked PPPoE HOWTO contains a link to the scripts and modifications I've made to support per user traffic shaping.
There are a number of useful mods defined in the scripts you will find in that tar file. (HINT: Vendors... free code) and I don't care who uses those scripts in their products. They are most certainly "hacks" in the truest sense of the phrase. Which for me is "Take what you have and find the shortest path to what you want."
The gifted (and here Steve comes immediately to mind) will take what I have done here and clean it up so that others can use it **AND** follow the logic in the code.
 |
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IntraLink
Premium,MVM
join:2002-08-14
Utah Valley
| reply to aeronet
Gino, we just got Prizm 2.0 and haven't integrated anything yet.
So while we know about the benifits and have bought into it, we have little practicle knowledge. Given the product is so knew, I'm sure there are few if any that have taken advantage of the API.
We definately WILL be doing some programming with it, but I don't know our time frame.
We use Mikrotik for most routing and AAA features and Platypus for billing. |
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