Well, assuming you have assigned each user an amount of credit (based on the average amount of data that can be chewed through by each user before the cap is exceeded) disable a user's internet access after they have reached their credit limit (make limits refresh each month so a user cannot rack up heaps of credits and single handedly blow the cap on a given month). Using some kind of non-monetary credit system like this you can avoid the m having to pay for usage and give them a first hand lesson in the distribution and usage of a precious resource :-)
Chris On Thu, 16 Oct 2003 12:40, you wrote: > I've got a problem. According to various government and ministry > circulars, schools cannot charge for internet access. Schools can > charge for items that have a take-home component (ie, food for cooking > class, or paper for printing) We're not allowed to disadvantage those > who can't/won't pay for an item. > > We routinely approch or exceed our monthly data cap, and incur penalty > rates on the excess data. What I've been directed to figure out - how > can we charge students for their internet traffic? (the legality of it > I'll leave for the BOT.) > > The setup - a linux firewall doing NAT and load balancing on two > cablemodems. Inside the network is one squid server running on linux. > Theres also a NT4 domain controller running PCounter. > > Each student has a credit balance in pcounter's database. > > What I'm thinking, is a little log processing every night to trap user's > usage, and debit their accounts. > > My questions: > 1) How to interface with the pcounter database server running on windows > server? > 2) Should I be using IP Accounting, or processed squid logs? > 3) What rates to charge? > 4) Is there a better way to do it?
