Couple Questions....

[ssalerni]

I've read through most of this site and documentation, but I still have a few questions about this product.

I currently work for an ISP and we're looking to deploy hotspots at roughly 5 locations as a pilot, then expand if it takes off. I'd be looking to use the centralized architecture by building tunnels from the remote sites back to the core where the FirstSpot server would be.

Couple questions I have:

1. Your stock method for purchasing more time uses paypal, is there anything stopping me from modifying all the html/php pages for this procedure to use my own backend to handle all this and have it update the user database directly with this information? I would have my user database stored in a MYSQL. Also I'd like to restrict speeds initially and allow customers to purchase additional speed, and then directly updating the mysql db. Is there any problem with this either?

2. Is there any way to track what websites the users are visiting through this software, or will I have to implement this elsewhere (between the VPN concentrator and FirstSpot)? If you don't currently support this, are there any plans to?

3. Is there any way to restrict bandwidth to certain protocols or ports, specifically I'm talking about peer to peer type programs?

4. Do you, are or there any plans to, support some type of clustering among multiple servers for redundancy or loadsharing purposes?

5. Finally the issue of support, it appears it is only email based. How long is the typical response to emails and what hours (24/7?) do you activly monitor email?


Thanks in advance for answering these questions.

[kevin]

1. Our user database and php are open for customization by customers. All the things you mentioned are possible. For bandwidth throttling, after you've changed the limited; users will have to relogin to see the difference.

2. For URL tracking, not at this moment.

3. Not at the moment; but this is a very good suggestion (thanks!). We'll add this to the feature wish list.

4. Not yet but we are considering.

5. For customers purchasing manintenance modules, we provide unlimited technical support by email. Our response time is within 1/2 business day at most, usually within one or two hours.

~ Patronsoft Limited ~

[ssalerni]

Thanks, Karl, just a few more questions....

1. Is there any type of username to IP address logging? For example, is there any way to see who had 10.1.2.3 last saturday at 2pm?

2. Is there any way to push ads, popup or other, down to customers? I was thinking about using the logout box to pop up ads, and then possibly look at the client ip address to force down location specific ads. Any comments on this?

3. I haven't yet installed the demo, so I apologize if this is a simple option. Is there any easy way to backup the configuration either via tftp or at least dump it to a file?

Thanks in advanced again...I think that's all my questions.

[kevin]

1. If you use IP-based session handling, the usage log will show the ip/time/duration mapping. For MAC-based session handling, MAC address will be shown instead.

2. That's definitely possible.

3. Most of the configuration settings are stored in the config.ini file. The rest are stored in some other text files as well.

~ Patronsoft Limited ~