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It is essential to measure bandwidth usage of an enterprise, so that it can be kept under proper control. Also, with the ever-increasing demand for the ability to measure bandwidth usage and better billing plans, a service provider has to be flexible in terms of billing plans and bill generation cycles.
The above requirements are satisfied by the Traffic module of IT360, which allows you to cross check your bandwidth usage as given by your service provider.
The Billing process helps in keeping a tab on resource usage and takes the bandwidth monitoring one step ahead - Accounting.
It gives real-time information on bandwidth consumption using the Traffic data, which gives the Enterprises and ISPs the ability to plan and manage their network infrastructure better.
It provides with easy-to-understand reports, in terms of cost incurred.
It allows the customer-requested information to be presented in the form of highly professional, neatly formatted and detailed PDF reports, which can be used for efficient back-up of your bills.
Internally, organizations can use this process for department-wise billing.
The Internet Service Providers can use this to automatically generate reports for their customers.
The IP grouping and Interface grouping help in creation of virtual departments, for ease of bandwidth monitoring and accounting.
An Interner Service Provider (ISP) or a Managed Service Provider (MSP) monitor a typical network in the way, as mentioned in the below diagram. The Traffic module of IT360 helps you in effectively monitoring the devices and accurately billing them based on usage.
The Traffic module can be enabled on each of the customer`s CPE and only the WAN interface in the Traffic module can be monitored, thereby creating bill plan for each customer and associating the corresponding WAN interface.
In case, if you do not have control over the CPE’s on the customer side, the Traffic module allows you to monitor the Intermediate router WAN interfaces, create IP groups with customer’s IP network or range and associate the corresponding interface of Intermediate router to which they are connected. Finally, you can create Bill Plan for each customer and associate the corresponding IP group.
Two types of billing operations are available under ‘Admin -> Traffic’:
A bill plan can be created for both of the above operations, based on any of the following:
To create a bill plan for this type of billing, do the following:
Navigate to either ‘Admin -> Traffic -> Billing Plan List' [or] ‘Admin -> Traffic -> Billing Report'.
FieldDescription
Bill Plan
Enter the name you wish to assign for this bill plan
Bill Plan Description*
Describe the plan for detailed understanding and for future reference
Billing Type
Select "speed"
Base Speed
Enter the base speed of the connection in bps (bits per second)
Base Cost
Select the currency from the drop-down box and enter the cost
Additional Speed*
Enter the additional speed of the connection in bps
Additional Cost*
Enter the cost for additional usage
95th Percentile Calculation
Select one of the two options from the drop-down box.
Selecting "In & Out merge" will merge the In and Out values and calculate the 95 percentile value.
Selecting "In & Out separate" will calculate 95th percentile value of IN and 95th percentile value of OUT separately and the higher of the two is considered. This is calculated using 5 minutes average data points. For better understanding, see the example.Billing Period
Lets you select the option as quarterly or monthly. Incase you select the billing plan as quarterly, the bill will be generated quartely on the dateyou specify in the "Bill generation date"option. Incase you select the billing plan as monthly, the bill will be generated on a monthly basis on the date you specify in the "Bill generation date" option.
Bill Generation Date
Enter the date on which you want the bill to be generated either on monthly basis or quartely basis.
Note: Once an Interface/IP Group is added to one bill plan, the specific interface/IP Groups does not get displayed while creating other bill plans
Email ID To send Reports: Enter the mail ID/IDs, to which the generated Bill report needs to be sent. Multiple mail IDs should be separated by commas.
Click Save.
Example for the 95th Percentile calculation
IN & OUT MERGE:
inbound = [0.139 0.653 0.201 0.116 0.084 0.032 0.047 0.185 0.198 0.203 0.276 0.370 0.971 0.233 0.218 0.182 0.169 0.126 0.131 0.157]
outbound = [1.347 1.435 1.229 0.523 0.438 0.231 0.347 0.689 0.940 1.248 1.385 1.427 3.988 1.265 1.221 1.013 0.992 0.874 0.896 1.002]Inbound and Outbound merge
= [0.139 0.653 0.201 0.116 0.084 0.032 0.047 0.185 0.198 0.203 0.276 0.370 0.971 0.233 0.218 0.182 0.169 0.126 0.131 0.157 1.347 1.435 1.229 0.523 0.438 0.231 0.347 0.689 0.940 1.248 1.385 1.427 3.988 1.265 1.221 1.013 0.992 0.874 0.896 1.002]Sorted_In & Out= [3.988 1.435 1.427 1.385 1.347 1.265 1.248 1.229 1.221 1.013 1.002 0.992 0.971 0.940 0.896 0.874 0.689 0.653 0.523 0.438 0.370 0.347 0.231 0.276 0.233 0.218 0.203 0.201 0.198 0.185 0.182 0.169 0.157 0.139 0.131 0.126 0.116 0.084 0.047 0.032]
Sorted In and Out contains set contains 40 samples--5% of 40 is 2, so discarding the top 5% means we must discard the top two samples from the data set. We are now left with:
Sorted_In & Out= [1.427 1.385 1.347 1.265 1.248 1.229 1.221 1.013 1.002 0.992 0.971 0.940 0.896 0.874 0.689 0.653 0.523 0.438 0.370 0.347 0.231 0.276 0.233 0.218 0.203 0.201 0.198 0.185 0.182 0.169 0.157 0.139 0.131 0.126 0.116 0.084 0.047 0.032]
The highest sample from remaining data set is the 95th percentile value for the originating set. So we obtain the following value:
95th_in & out = 1.427 Mbps
IN & OUT SEPERATE:
inbound = [0.139 0.653 0.201 0.116 0.084 0.032 0.047 0.185 0.198 0.203 0.276 0.370 0.971 0.233 0.218 0.182 0.169 0.126 0.131 0.157]
outbound = [1.347 1.435 1.229 0.523 0.438 0.231 0.347 0.689 0.940 1.248 1.385 1.427 3.988 1.265 1.221 1.013 0.992 0.874 0.896 1.002]
After sorting, we obtain:
sorted_in = [0.971 0.653 0.370 0.276 0.233 0.218 0.203 0.201 0.198 0.185 0.182 0.169 0.157 0.139 0.131 0.126 0.116 0.084 0.047 0.032]
sorted_out = [3.988 1.435 1.427 1.385 1.347 1.265 1.248 1.229 1.221 1.013 1.002 0.992 0.940 0.896 0.874 0.689 0.523 0.438 0.347 0.231]
Each sample set contains 20 samples--5% of 20 is 1, so discarding the top 5% means we must discard the top sample from each data set. We are now left with:
remaining_in = [0.653 0.370 0.276 0.233 0.218 0.203 0.201 0.198 0.185 0.182 0.169 0.157 0.139 0.131 0.126 0.116 0.084 0.047 0.032]
remaining_out = [1.435 1.427 1.385 1.347 1.265 1.248 1.229 1.221 1.013 1.002 0.992 0.940 0.896 0.874 0.689 0.523 0.438 0.347 0.231]
The highest sample from each remaining data set is the 95th percentile value for the originating set. So, for each set, above, we obtain the following values:
95th_in = 0.653 Mbps
95th_out = 1.435 Mbps
The higher of the two computed 95th percentile values becomes the final 95th percentile value used for billing:
95th percentile = 1.435 Mbps
To create a bill plan for this type of billing, do the following:
Navigate to either ‘Admin -> Traffic -> Billing Plan List' [or] ‘Admin -> Traffic -> Billing Report'.
Click the ‘Add Plan’ link.
Field |
Description |
Bill Plan |
Enter the name you wish to assign for this bill plan |
Bill Plan Description* |
Describe the plan for detailed understanding and for future reference |
Bill Type |
Select "Volume" |
Base Volume |
Enter the base volume in bytes |
Base Cost |
Select the currency from the drop-down box and enter the cost |
Additional Volume* |
Enter the additional volume in bytes |
Additional Cost* |
Enter the cost for additional usage |
Data transfer calculation |
Select one of the three options from the drop-down box. |
Alert |
Checking this box will activate threshold based alerting. This will send alerts, if the user specified threshold value has been exceeded. |
Billing Period |
Lets you select the option as quarterly or monthly. Incase you select the billing plan as quarterly, the bill will be generated quartely on the dateyou specify in the "Bill generation date"option. Incase you select the billing plan as monthly, the bill will be generated on a monthly basis on the date you specify in the "Bill generation date" option. |
Bill Generation Date |
Enter the date on which you want the bill to be generated either on monthly basis or quartely basis. |
Note: Once an Interface/IP Group is added to one bill plan, the specific interface/IP Groups does not get displayed while creating other bill plans
Email ID To send Reports: Enter the mail ID/IDs, to which the generated Bill report needs to be sent. Multiple mail IDs should be separated by commas. The email subject can also be customized as per the user requirement.
Click Save.
Bills can be generated on demand. By clicking the 
icon for a particular bill plan in the bill plan list, a bill can be generated for the time period from the beginning of the billing cycle to the current date.
Bill plans can be edited by clicking the 
icon against the required bill plan.
An interface/IP group can be added during any point of the billing cycle. The bill will be generated for this interface/IP group during the mentioned billing date for the billing plan.
When an Intereface/IP group is removed from a bill plan, the bill for that interface is generated at the same instant.
Editing base speed / volume, base cost, additional speed / volume, additional cost, billing calculation (95th Percentile / Data transfer) will take effect only from the succeeding billing cycle. Editing email ID and threshold alerting will take effect at the same time.
| Note: "Billing period" and "Bill generation date" CANNOT be changed. When the interfaces/ IP groups are unmanaged/ deleted, bill is generated for the interface or IP groups at that instant. If you modify the cost in the bill plan, It will be effected from the next billing cycle and NOT at that instant. |
You can delete a bill plan by selecting the required plan and clicking the Delete link. Please be informed that deleting a bill plan will lead to deletions of all the reports, generated by that particular bill plan.
The generated Reports can be viewed by navigating to either ‘Admin -> Traffic -> Billing Report’ [or] ‘Admin -> Traffic -> Billing Plan List’ and then clicking the Report tab.
You can view all the plans or a single plan, by selecting the suitable option from the drop-down box. By default the Report page shows only the recent reports of all the bill plans. If you want to view all the generated reports for a particular bill plan, select the required bill plan from the Available Plans drop-down box. The reports are arranged with the most recent report on top.
See Also
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