Documentation

Please find below the documentation reference for the radcontrol system. It explains the main concepts and the ways of working of the radcotnrol system. For any questions or clarifications, please do not hesitate to e-mail us.

 

Concepts

Login Levels

The most powerful privilege level is the “root level”. The user “root” has the power to create and control “dealer admins” and “dealers”. “root” is also responsible of creating the different account types (which represent different service profiles). Account types are used by dealers in order to sell accounts. The root user can perform several tasks including the following:

  • Create dealer admins and dealers
  • Manage balance of dealer admins and dealers
  • Creation of account types and account type templates
  • Directly operate on user accounts
  • View various statistics (including TOP x users)
  • Manage viewer logins (viewer is the read-only mode of radcontrol login)
  • View Radcontrol license and upload new license

The Radcontrol root login can be reached by opening the URL http://YOUR_SERVER_IP/root

Dealer

The dealer is the basic “reseller” in the Radcontrol system. Dealers are created directly by root or by dealer admins. A dealer has a balance from which he can create or renew user accounts based on account types prepared for him by root or his parent dealer admin (if present). A dealer can also create batches of prepaid cards based on the same account types available to him. These batches consist of disposable accounts which are activated on first login of every card.

A dealer has access to his users’ statistics, including per session logs with details including login and logout time, session length and upload & download bytes.

The Radcontrol “dealer” login is the default Radcontrol login and can be reached by opening the URL http://YOUR_SERVER_IP/

Viewer

The viewer login is the read-only login level of Radcontrol. This login can be given to front desk personnel to investigate on account status before forwarding the request to the dealer or root. Viewer logins are managed by the root user.

The Radcontrol “viewer” login can be reached by opening the URL http://YOUR_SERVER_IP/viewer

Account Types

An account type is a definition of a service that can be sold by dealers. Account type parameters include both bandwidth and pricing options. Various sophisticated bandwidth management schemes can be implemented just by configuring a suitable account type.

Account type templates can be created by root so that common account types can be created once as a template, and then linked to every dealer or dealer admin with a different price for every instance. This allows for editing all the account type instances from a single location, which is the account type template. Account type templates can be created from the root main page. Account type templates can be used in two methods: either by creating a copy of the template for a dealer, or by creating a link. A copy of the account type will allow you to make changes in the instance without affecting the template, thus being completely decoupled from the template. A “link”, however, will make the instance always linked to the parent template, and any change in the template will be reflected in all the links. Note that most parameters can only be modified in the template itself and not the linked instance, with the exception of some instance-specific parameters.

Account type options will be grouped in this documentation into two groups: technical and administrative. What follows is a description of all the account type options.

Administrative parameters

Group Name: This option sets the account type name.

Commission: This field sets how much money does the parent dealer admin (if present) receives when a sale is made by a dealer.

Refundable Account: If selected, the deletion of a user account belonging to this account which has some validity (expiry) time left will cause the dealer balance to be refunded by exactly how much validity time is remaining.

Rate: This field sets the price of this account type.

Allow change of usernames: If toggled, dealers would be able to change the usernames of accounts belonging to this account type.

Allow change of MACs: If toggled, dealers would be able to change the MAC address of accounts belonging to this account type.

Technical parameters

IP pool name: This field sets the IP pool name inside the Mikrotik NAS that defines the IP address range to give to users of this account type upon connection. If an IP pool with this name does not exist in Mikrotik, login can fail.

Autobind account to MAC: If toggled, Radcontrol will automatically fill up the MAC address field of the account type if blank upon next login. This will bind the specific user account used to the MAC address of the machine the user account was used from.

Validity Period: This field defines the period of time the account can be used in (account expiry). The actual status of the account can depend on other parameters as well such as session time.

Total Session Time: This field defines the period of time that can be spent online (connected).

Daily Auto Fallback Settings: This is the most fundamental bandwidth management feature in Radcontrol. Bandwidth limits are defined based on traffic volume during the day. Traffic volume figures (MB) are cumulative. The bandwidth limit complete with all burst/threshold/time settings is configurable for every slice of traffic volume. Unlimited traffic volume slices are supported. Please see below screenshot for realistic example. In this example, 256k/1024k speed is offered for the first 50MB, after which the speed drops to 128k/512k for the next 50MB (upto 100MB). After 100MB total, the speed is reduced to 64k/256k for the rest of the day (or until Extra speed time or Penalty free time occurs).

Daily counter reset time: This field defines the time of day after which the bytes counter will treated as “today”. Before this time of day, all bytes transferred got transferred “yesterday”. This is useful for daily auto fallback.

Maximum Daily Volume (MB): This field defines the absolute maximum DL MBs a user can use per day. Crossing this MB limit will cause the user to be disconnected for the day. To disable, enter 0.

Extra Speed: This field represents the bandwidth limit you wish to apply to users of this account type for a specific period of time during the day (for example double speed). Format is UL / DL. Please note that the unit is “kbps”.

Extra Speed Time: These two fields define the time interval in which you want to apply the “Extra Speed” bandwidth settings. To disable extra speed, please leave blank.

Monthly Penalty Thresholds MB: Similar to daily auto fallback, the same concept is applied here but the byte counter is monthly instead of daily. Enter the MB slices is ascending order in the following format. Example: “1000;2000”. Please note the semicolon. This example means that the basic bandwidth limit is applied until 1000 DL MB have been transferred during the current month. After 1000 MB, the first “Monthly Penalty Speeds” bandwidth limit is applied. After 2000 MB have been crossed, the second speed of “Monthly Penalty Speeds” is applied. To disable, set this field to blank.

Monthly Penalty Speeds: This field defines the penalty speeds to apply after crossing the MB slices defind in “Monthly Penalty Thresholds MB”. Example: “24k/96k;16k/64k”. This would mean (along with the above example): Apply basic bandwidth limit upto 1000 MB, then apply 24k/96k upto 2000 MB, then apply 16k/64k for anything above 2000 MB in the current month.

Commissions and Dealer Admins

Radcontrol supports two levels of dealers. The idea of “dealer of dealers” is supported by the login level “dealer admin”. A dealer admin is created by root, and the account has a balance and account types all managed by root as well. The dealer admin can create dealers under him, and give them balance from his own balance (which was already given to him by root).

The dealer admin is also responsible to add account types to the dealers below him so that they are able to sell user accounts. When adding the account types, the dealer admin sets a commission value which he would like to receive at every sale of account by the dealer below him. At every sale (new account or renewal of account) the child dealers perform, the dealer admin “commission balance” gets incremented. At any point in time, the dealer admin can exchange his “commission balance” for read credit in his balance. This would enable him to transfer that credit he got from commissions to dealers below him once again.

A dealer admin cannot have user accounts directly related to him. If a dealer admin wants to sell user accounts, he can open up a regular dealer account for himself and set all the commissions for this new dealer account to zero. He would then login as a regular dealer to sell user accounts.

Common Tasks

Common root tasks

  • Add a NAS: Actions -> Manage NAS’s
  • Add viewer account: Actions -> Manage viewers
  • Adding a dealer admin: Click the “+” sign in the “Dealer Admins (+)” table in the root main page
  • Adding a dealer: Click the “+” sign in the “Dealers (+)” table in the root main page
  • Create account type templates: Click the “+” sign in the “Account type templates” table of the root main page
  • Edit dealer or dealer admin (also manage balance and account types): Click on pencil icon at the row of the required dealer(admin) in the root main page
  • Manage user accounts (force expiry date, disable/enable, move users between accounts types/dealers, delete etc…): Actions -> Bulk Management
  • Reboot Radcontrol Server: Actions -> Reboot Server
  • View Radius Log: View -> Radius log

Common dealer tasks

  • Add user: Click on “+” sign in dealer main page, or Actions -> “Add new user”
  • Create scratch cards (non-renewable disposable accounts with randomly generated username and password): Actions -> “Create Scratch Cards”
  • Disable/Enable user: Click on green (or red) dot in the rightmost column of user row. Green implied enabled user and red implies disabled user. Click to toggle.
  • Edit user: Click on pencil in the first column of the row of the user to be edited
  • Filter users for soon to expire users, expired users or not-yet-expired users (i.e. “Active users”) using the filter menu.
  • Renew user: Click on user row to highlight, then click “Renew” in toolbar above
  • Manage user accounts (force expiry date, disable/enable, move users between accounts types/dealers, delete etc…): Actions -> Bulk Management
  • Search for user account: Type search criteria into table header and press enter
  • View online users: View -> “Online Users”
  • View user information (including traffic details): Click on “i” icon in the rightmost column of user row
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