Reasons I cannot change to a fee (charging $$$) hotspot:

[dijnebbh]

1) there is no QoS setting on worldspot capping the amount of bandwidth for the hotspot.

It is unrealistic to design a HotSpot system to believe a given hotspot has an unlimited amount of WAN bandwidth. 'The internet' as a concept may have a practically unlimited amount of bandwidth, however how many of us have or want the expense?

What is experienced presently is under-utilized backhauls, as the bandwidth allotment per client is restricted by the maximum number of clients on at the time of peak usage. We crudely do the math by observation of how much bandwidth can be allocated to each client.

For example, if during friday at 7pm there are 20 clients on, but the rest of the week only 5-10, then the additional bandwidth sits idle most of the time. Where some of us have costly backhaul expenses, it is even more expedient an option be made available so free clients can be dynamically kicked off as paying clients log in.

Adding a bandwidth (qos) cap at the worldspot level provides a number of services: free clients can check email or surf, paying clients can run more bandwidth intensive applications, and the main backhaul is subsidized by the hotspot; with the hotspot at least 'paying for itself'. Paying and even free clients are always satisfied, because they always have access to the advertised bandwidth.

For those of us around metropolitan areas where bandwidth costs are inexpensive, we can afford the extra upgrade to VDSL or FIOS, and get a price-point which provides the clients with convenience while providing enough inflow of revenue for covering at least the back-haul cost. If quality goes down because of contention issues, or prices are too high to ensure there is wasted bandwidth except at peak times, clients simply migrate to their own solutions (their own DSL/Cable circuit).

This is a technical problem requiring a technical solution.
If a 2) comes to me it'll be posted.

[dijnebbh]

2) is a concept of an implied fitness. The ticket clearly states: a) the bandwidth, and b) the amount of time it is good for.

As long as the hotspot is without cost (no charge, non-commercial), to clients, then there is no implied fitness. Hopefully it is designed to be reliable, as we internally use the same wireless signal and free service for the internal laptops. Also, reliable free service leads to confident paying clients.

As soon as it costs even one cent for service, there is construed trust arrangement, and the bandwidth must be available for the duration of the lifetime of the ticket, otherwise the hotspot operator, the trustee, is in breach of trust.

[WorldSpot]

Hi

I think that it is wrong to think that an ISP with 100 clients at 1Mbit/s will lease a 100Mbit/s backbone.
Overselling is a very common practice for several reasons.
All this is a matter of probability of bandwidth usage.
You might be an internet power user, a heavy bandwidth user. But most people will only surf on the web, read their email, watch some videos from time to time.
The average bandwidth for an average internet user is quite small. (but it tends to grow with online videos).
I would also add one thing, the hotspot mobile user will probably have a lower average bandwidth than a fixed home user.

When you subscribe to an ISP, it is very probable that there is no bandwidth guaranteed on the contract. This is because of how internet is built. Even if you have a 100mbit/s line with the best ISP in the world, it is very probable that you won't get so much bandwidth on all the servers in the world. It is impossible to guarantee any bandwidth to the internet, because the ISP doesn't own all the internet lines in the world.

Now that you choose an oversell factor (about 10 to 20), you might have to scale your backbone according to the number of tickets you sell.

About quality of service (QoS). Some very few professional ISP sell such services. Linux does implement several packet scheduling algorithms which can be quite complex to setup. It is also possible to configure chillispot to manage QoS scripts according the access profile the user has bought (prioritize paid users over free users.) Such packet scheduling algorithms can be quite complex to understand for the vast majority of hotspot owners. This is why it won't be proposed as it can be complex to understand and implement.

Static bandwidth allocation is NOT the good way to go.

A starting point: http://lartc.org/

This could be possible only if worldspot create its own firmware. Which is not really planned for the near future.

[dijnebbh]

(QoS) is currently used on the HotSpot to cap total bandwidth usage by the HotSpot so it does not interfere with other network devices.

Most power users have a utorrent or similar application going in the background, which uses encryption and encrypted headers and so therefor cannot be easily be (L7) shaped. It uses up whatever remainder bandwidth not already being used by web, email and voip or Skype calls.

Yes I realize QoS can also be used to prioritize packets, say only prioritize HTTP requests and Skype. More complex shaping rules, improve the connection of any one client, however, they also increase the processor utilization on the HotSpot to some point where the algorithms for QoS drive down the overall performance of the HotSpot. I am not sure where that point is on a typical 16 meg 200 mhz router, to use a common device as a standard.

We are talking about a 50megabit (10 up) link with practically-speaking 42mbit down and 7.8 mbit available (due to tcpV4 overhead), with 2.5mbit up and 25mbit down allocated to the HotSpot.


Better per-client shaping could be had by a dedicated linux box running chilli, however then additional costs are introduced. Going back to limiting the widest deployment of using the router's internal CPU and RAM, I'm not sure of the weight of QoS demands for say, every 10x clients. If there was a known load with a given set of L7 shaping rules and 10x clients...


I'm not suggesting you code your own hotspot firmware, I'm suggesting existing options which at minimum, cap the number of clients per profile, are needed. People don't look at how many people are logged in. They don't even look at the hotspot page. They just scroll down and click connect, then wonder when performance is poor.

[WorldSpot]

No need for l7 rule.
Just have  2 class of service: free users, paying users.
Allocate 10 or 20% of bandwidth for free users, 80% for paying users.
Use a fair scheduling algorithm, so that if paying users don't use their bandwidth, it will be automatically allocated to free users.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_queuing
Weight Fair Queuing is the most know algorithm. But there are newer algorithms which are still better.
You might also use hierarchical fair queuing: 2 top class: free and paying. below you have subclasses: real time telephony, interactive protocols like ssh, etc...


About capping the number of clients.
I think that people would prefer being connected with a slow connection, than not being allowed to connect...
There is still a good probability that there will be some bandwidth remaining.

Definitely, prioritizing paying people over free people is the way to go. Just let everybody connect.

Also, limiting the volume per day for free and paying people is also the way to go. This will prevent abuse of your internet line, and this should be largely enough.

[dijnebbh]

That's an interesting solution.

Now there is another hurdle. The paypal account used is used mostly for other activities at present, and we added an email address for the hotspot. I can get the PayPal Donate buttons to use the secondary email address correctly, but no matter what I am doing at present with Worldspot.net settings, it ignores the secondary email address, even when specified in the 'Online Billing Setup'.

Perhaps you could fix the code so it pulls the email address from the 'online billing setup' field..

The specific example is in your inbox.

[WorldSpot]

This is a paypal issue.
The page you are talking about is a paypal page.

I think you must create another paypal account.
You don't absolutely need a bank account to verify it. You may use a credit card. (I also succeded with a virtual credit card number).
Then you can make free transfer to your other paypal account, then make bank transfer.

I'd also suggest to create a micro payment paypal account if payments are under 12euros.

[dijnebbh]

we should put this out there for other people so they know of what the following means:

I asked regarding creating a ticketing profile which does not expire for 60 days:

Does it matter that with those parameters it says below:

"Per ticket pricing"
This profile can't be used with the per ticket pricing. There must be a time limit (<= 30 days).

Will it still work with PayPal?

Yes
Paypal has its own pricing. It is not a "standard" ticket.

Do you intend something like 'I cannot generate my own tickets, I must use PayPal for this profile'?

[dijnebbh]

This is a paypal issue.
The page you are talking about is a paypal page.

I know it is a PayPal page, on the PayPal website.

However it is generated based on the inputs from the Worldspot.net code.

For example, this is the code from a donate button which includes the email address, using the secondary email address:

Code: [Select]

<form method="post" action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr">
    <input type="hidden" value="_donations" name="cmd" /> <input type="hidden" value="your_email_address_here@email_domain.com" name="business" /> <input type="hidden" value="DE" name="lc" /> <input type="hidden" value="frei internet" name="item_name" /> <input type="hidden" value="wlan hotspot" name="item_number" /> <input type="hidden" value="0" name="no_note" /> <input type="hidden" value="EUR" name="currency_code" /> <input type="hidden" value="PP-DonationsBF:btn_donateCC_LG.gif:NonHostedGuest" name="bn" /> <input type="image" border="0" alt="PayPal - The safer, easier way to pay online!" name="submit" src="https://www.paypal.com/en_US/i/btn/btn_donateCC_LG.gif" /> <img width="1" height="1" border="0" src="https://www.paypal.com/en_US/i/scr/pixel.gif" alt="" />

</form>


[WorldSpot]

we should put this out there for other people so they know of what the following means:

I asked regarding creating a ticketing profile which does not expire for 60 days:

Does it matter that with those parameters it says below:

"Per ticket pricing"
This profile can't be used with the per ticket pricing. There must be a time limit (<= 30 days).

Will it still work with PayPal?

Yes
Paypal has its own pricing. It is not a "standard" ticket.

Do you intend something like 'I cannot generate my own tickets, I must use PayPal for this profile'?

No, you can also have both for the same profile.
If you give a price, paypal is proposed.
If you check "show ticket login..." tickets are enabled.

[WorldSpot]

This is a paypal issue.
The page you are talking about is a paypal page.

I know it is a PayPal page, on the PayPal website.

However it is generated based on the inputs from the Worldspot.net code.

For example, this is the code from a donate button which includes the email address, using the secondary email address:

Code: [Select]

<form method="post" action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr">
    <input type="hidden" value="_donations" name="cmd" /> <input type="hidden" value="your_email_address_here@email_domain.com" name="business" /> <input type="hidden" value="DE" name="lc" /> <input type="hidden" value="frei internet" name="item_name" /> <input type="hidden" value="wlan hotspot" name="item_number" /> <input type="hidden" value="0" name="no_note" /> <input type="hidden" value="EUR" name="currency_code" /> <input type="hidden" value="PP-DonationsBF:btn_donateCC_LG.gif:NonHostedGuest" name="bn" /> <input type="image" border="0" alt="PayPal - The safer, easier way to pay online!" name="submit" src="https://www.paypal.com/en_US/i/btn/btn_donateCC_LG.gif" /> <img width="1" height="1" border="0" src="https://www.paypal.com/en_US/i/scr/pixel.gif" alt="" />

</form>


Worldspot use paypal express checkout API. Not buttons. This might explain the different behaviour