No charge and for fee accts tbat differ by IP address

[mgregory]

I am looking for a solution to the problem of needing to provide no charge accounts for on client who is subsidizing Internet access for his patrons and another who is not. Each of the patrons is set up on different network segments and the patron IP addresses all come from separate routers and subnets. Does your software have the ability to automatically differentiate between the two types of patrons using their IP addresses and charge them appropriately? That is, no charge in one instance and per plan in another.

[mgregory]

Just to clarify the last post. The clients in this case two ferry boat companies. Their vessels and therefore their patrons are on different network segments and behind separate vessel routers that support different subnets.

[alan]

The easiest way is to simply set up 2 FirstSpot servers. It seems that 2 network segments are quite different and that there isn't a lot of data sharing between 2 FirstSpots.

Alternatively, you can do that using one FirstSpot by putting the free network segment behind a NAT router. After that, just put NAT router WAN side IP (assuming IP-based Session Handling) in the Passive Login uesrname list.
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[mgregory]

I probably will have at least half a dozen situations like the one described previously where a payment plan needs to be tied to a range of IP addresses in a manner similar to Apache's virtual hosting where the server can be configured for each virtual host.

I do not mind purchasing and runnig multiple copies of the FirstSpot server, however, purchasing computers and new hardware is not something I am interested in doing. Which raises the question, " Does FirstSpot support VMWare's virtual server? If so, how does the licensing work since I understand that you bind the license to the downstream (visitor network) NIC.

thanks

[alan]

VMWare is fully supported in the current FirstSpot v6 (Premium and Advanced Edition). You can check out http://patronsoft.com/firstspot/editions.html for more information.

The licensing is just like a physical machine, i.e. one FirstSpot license per install (per VMWare)
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~ Patronsoft Limited ~