Features Highlights

The feature set of radcontrol is the response to the need of ISP’s to offer high speed internet services to users without suffering very high bandwidth costs due to users that abuse their subscriptions. In previous bandwidth management setups, static bandwidth limits where put in place to punish heavy users. With tough competition entering the ISP market every day, customers are becoming harder and harder to please and the static limitation scheme is no longer enough.

radcontrol was developed as a next-generation bandwidth management system. Experience from real networks using radcontrol have shown that using smart bandwidth management offered by radcontrol, it is possible to add more users to the same backbone internet link without hurting the performance of the majority of users that do not abuse the connection.

In addition to smart bandwidth management, control of user accounts by account billing features will ensure that wasted income in forgotten accounts is collected.

Quick overview of Bandwidth Management Features

  • Daily automatic-fallback bandwidth limits based on MB usage during the day: This allows for ladder type limits. For example, when a user crosses his first 50 MB, he gets BW limit 512 kbps. When he crosses 100MB, he now gets 256 kbps, etc... This is highly important to be able to give high broadband speeds to friendly users, while reducing the speed for abusing users dynamically and automatically without the need to disconnect them!
  • Extra speed time range. (Example: double speed during off-peak times)
  • Dynamic update of bandwidth limits means that there is no need to disconnect users for new limits to apply!
  • Customizable daily traffic counter reset time.
  • Penalty free time range: Can set a time range where no traffic penalties are applied (happy hour).
  • Bandwidth limits based on monthly MB usage.

Quick overview of Account Billing Features

  • Every dealer has his own page to manage his users
  • Service is offered by creating different “Account Types”
  • Every “account type” has a price and validity period
  • Can have “calendar month” validity period. See Optional Featuers: FN 150
  • User accounts expire and need to be renewed by dealers
  • Can have different account types (and prices) for different dealers
  • Ability to generate disposable scratch cards with session time limit (ex: 5 Hours, 10 Hours...)
  • Automatic binding of MAC address to account on first login (customizable)
  • All account creation and renewal actions are logged
  • Ability to have refundable accounts. If a dealer deletes the account before it expires, he will get money back based on how much validity time is left in the deleted account.

Optional Features

It is possible to add additional functionality to a radcontrol system by purchasing additional optional features. Optional features provide added functionality that might not be needed to all users of radcontrol.

Optional features are bought one-time and will persist after version upgrades. Please find below the optional feature description.

Feature ID Feature Name Introduction Release
FN150 Calendar Month Validity Period R1.86
FN151 Fingerprints for Dealer & Dealer Admin logins R1.90.0
FN152 Adjust Bandwidth Limits based on Time of Day R1.90.0
FN153 Unlimited Traffic during Time of Day range R1.91.0
FN154 Radcontrol Redundancy R1.91.0
FN155 User Graphs R1.9

FN150: Calendar Month Validity Period

Introduced: R1.86
User Interface Impact: Now possible to select “Calendar Month” as a validity period option inside account type settings.

Functionality: Many ISP suffer from the problem of selling 30 day accounts which always expire at a different day every month because not all months are the same number of days.

As an example, with this feature enabled, 1 month recharge will occur as “1” calendar month and not as 30 days. This means that if an account expires on the 10th of this month for example, it will expire the 10th of the next month after recharge regardless of what the current month is.

FN151: Fingerprints for Dealer & Dealer Admin logins

Introduced: R1.90.0
User Interface Impact: Now possible to force selected dealers & dealer admins to provide a secondary password (fingerprint) at login. This fingerprint will be logged in billing info.

Functionality: Allows to keep track of who did what when multiple human users are using the same dealer or dealer admin account (ex: support staff).

As an example, with this feature enabled, root can define valid fingerprints for selected dealers and dealer admins from the edit dealer page. After doing that, these dealers will be forced to enter a valid fingerprint at login. Dealers with an empty fingerprint list can leave the fingerprint field at login empty with no impact.

FN152: Adjust Bandwidth Limits based on Time of Day

Introduced: R1.90.0
User Interface Impact: Root can now specify time ranges and associated percent values (%).

Functionality: The percentages specified by root applied to the bandwidth limits of all users based on time of day.

With this feature enabled, root can adjust the total bandwidth demand by applying a percentage to all bandwidth limits issued by the system based on the time of day. This is useful to reduce the bandwidth demands at peak time (can be set to 80% at peak time for example).

FN154: Radcontrol Redundancy

Introduced: R1.91.0
User Interface Impact: None.

Functionality: With two servers, radcontrol now operates with hot standby. In case of primary server failure, the secondary server takes over all traffic with an up-to-date database within 5 seconds.

With this feature enabled, radcontrol redundancy is achieved. This eliminates any single point of failure in the radcontrol system by using a "shared nothing" approach. Two physical radcontrol servers are required. Special pricing is applied to the secondary server. Failover time has been measured at under 5 seconds.


FN155: User Graphs

Introduced: R1.92
User Interface Impact: Extra tabs in the manage user page of the root interface which include bandwidth graphs.

Functionality: Bandwidth graphs for each user which are zoomable. The bandwidth limit (y-axis) is configurable as well. Upload and Download bandwidth are both displayed.

Please see below screenshot:

Radcontrol
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