Scheduled data pools

[trevorf]

Hi,

Living in Australia, everything is monitored as in all we download is monitored. So here we have peak and off peak times which provide us with two monthly download limits. For me I have 40G peak and 110g to download during offpeak. What I'd like to see is a way to manage this through each user account, e.g. each member has two data pools/period which kick in at different times of the day.
Cheers,

[WorldSpot]

This looks quite complicated to specify, to implement, to document and to use...
If there is no major demand for this, I don't think this can be done.

Sorry

[docdocdoc9]

Sorry for digging up an old thread but I am in the exact same situation, and this would be a very useful feature.

The ADSL plan I have allows me to download 40Gb monthly from 9AM to 3AM (peak), and 110Gb from 3AM to 9AM (offpeak).
Other plans exist with different schedules and limits, but unlimited ones like you have the rest of the world are very expensive and generally not available to consumers.
I therefore need to enforce a monthly quota per user in order to prevent abuse.

At the moment everything needed for my hotspot is hosted in house, the (dirty) trick I found is to force disconnect everyone at 3AM and 9AM to be able to tell who connected during peak and who connected during offpeak. Slightly modified SQL counters in freeradius then enforce the different quotas.
Having a server running 24/7 just for that is a big hassle and being able to use a hosted solution like worldspot would be a great.
Do you think it could be done ?

[WorldSpot]

I understand your problem.
However, it looks a little complicated to specify a behaviour that would please everybody.
How many time period per day? per week?

More important: What to do between these periods? disconnect the user? Apply a coefficient on the upload/download statistics?
Do you want a ticket for offpeak and another one for peak?

[DenbyWireless]

How about a 2 router solution. One being active during Peak, the other Off-Peak.
you could engineer a cron script to turn the wireless on and off at specified times for each router.

If the SSID name was the same and the time sync'd, your users would noticed the disconnect but it would only be seconds.

This would allow you to charge two price structures and track quota's per time.

I'd say you could do this with one router, but WS is organized by MAC address, and I'm not sure you can change the MAC reported on the fly. 

Just a thought

[docdocdoc9]

This is indeed a complex thing. There would be 2 daily pools in this case but I agree making something generic would be next to impossible.

The 2 routers solution is clever but then it would require specifying limits per access point per ticket, which does not seem possible at the moment. (because I would like to have one single ticket per user).

Is it possible to export the Hotspot connection history to something like a .CSV file ?

[WorldSpot]

Instead of 2 hotspots, you could setup your cron job to reconfigure chillispot and change the nasID.
You would have to disconnect all the users before that.
Yes you would need to have 2 sets of tickets.

Is it possible to export the Hotspot connection history to something like a .CSV file ?

Copy pasting the history from your browser to your spreadsheet works just fine.

[dijnebbh]

 

I don't see the issue as being undoable:

you can program how _long_ someone has access already, the exact times would be additional fields.
There would have to be a setting for local access point time which was corrected to DST or so..
Then the radius server would always know for a given stationary AP,
what time it was at the AP. The WorldSpot interface for these local hotspots around me always seems to be off by an hour but this hasn't been an issue. It would be in the case of managing bandwidth, changing the parameters during the day.

Maybe another issue is once the session is started, there is no way for the radius/web servers at worldspot, to intercede to the AP's chilli software, sending the command to reduce the client speed? There is a way to cut the client off, and there is a way to set the speed initially, however flow during usage is controlled actively at the AP client.

Just some ideas...

[niwlihp]

I would also like to see a similar feature as outlined above.

Is it possible to have a start and finish time of the day for an access profile?

You could then have two profiles. One profile for peak use and one profile for off peak use. Both profiles can be listed on the welcome page all the time. When the time limit runs out on one access profile users would have to log back in on the other access profile.

I'm not technical enough to understand the problems of implementing this but you've done a great job so far. Others I've put onto world spot are pretty impressed when they realize how easy and flexible it is to use.

[WorldSpot]

I will think about implementing this feature.


Thanks for using worldspot