Clarification of abilities

[dylan]

Hi,

I'm evaluating FirstSpot for usage in our residence network at a university and I have a couple questions about how to access the data.

We need to be able to access the FirstSpot usage database for bill running and reporting. Our existing billing software is set up to pull data from a MySQL database. It appears you can have MySQL as a backend through ODBC, but not if you want to use RADIUS authentication (which I would - all our user accounts are stored in LDAP). Am I correct in believing if RADIUS is used as the Authentication server, that usage data is stored in RADIUS?

For reporting, we need to be able to see usage statistics with more granularity than "total". If a user comes in at the end of the month disputing the amount of traffic we're billing them for, we need to be able to show them their usage throughout the month. Currently we have 10 minute granularity. Is this possible with FirstSpot?

Thanks.

[alan]

For FirstSpot architecture, we support 2 Authentication Modes : ODBC (default) or RADIUS. In general, you don't really need to use RADIUS unless you already have a RADIUS-based directory built, and you have other devices share this RADIUS directory with FirstSpot. The article at http://patronsoft.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1175 has a detailed explanation.

To answer your questions, if RADIUS Authentication Mode is used, FirstSpot relies on RADIUS server for user information.

For reporting, you might also want to check out URL Tracking (under Access Control). It provides detailed log about user activities.
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[dylan]

Thanks for your quick reply.

So regardless of the authentication modes, the traffic & usage are always stored in FirstSpot's internal database?

I'll take a look at URL tracking.

[alan]

For user log:
ODBC Authentication Mode - it is stored in ODBC table fsusrlog
RADIUS Authentication Mode- it is stored in RADIUS server since RADIUS defines a standard way for "Accounting".

The URL Tracking log is stored in the text log file.
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[dylan]

FYI - The URL tracking doesn't give the type of information we need. We need to record not only web traffic, but P2P, SMTP, FTP, UDP, and anything else that gets sent over the network.

Also, I seem to remember there being a spot where we could allow concurrent logins, ie: One user can login multiple times & have each device from which they've logged in all be allowed to access the network.

For example: I can login on my laptop, and my iPhone with the same account, and have both the laptop and the iPhone able to access the network.

I can't seem to find that configuration setting. Does it exist or am I imagining things?

[alan]

The URL Tracking also tracks information such as SMTP, FTP. Go to Configuration Manager -> Access Control -> URL Tracking and you should be able to adjust the tracking level.

FirstSpot username is designed for one concurrent login. If you want to allow for Multiple Logins, you need to use the "Shared Secret" option (under Authentication Server).
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