wifi-soft solutions - Hotspot controller | Wireless Access Point

Transcription

WIFI-SOFT SOLUTIONS
WiFiLAN – A complete Wi-Fi
management solution
Administrator’s Guide
Version 2.0
Copyright Notice
Copyright © 2014, Wifi-soft Solutions Pvt. Ltd. All rights reserved.
No part of this document may be copied, reproduced, or transmitted by any means, for
any purpose without prior written permission of the company.
Disclaimer
We shall not be liable for any technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein;
nor for incidental or consequential damages resulting from furnishing this material, or the
performance or use of this product. We reserve the right to change the product
specifications and implementation without notice. Information in this document may also
change without notice.
Trademarks
All brand and product names mentioned herein may be registered trademarks of their
respective owners. Customers should ensure that their use of this product does not
infringe upon any patent rights. Trademarks mentioned in this publication are used for
identification purposes only and are properties of their respective companies.
Copyright  2014 – WiFi-soft Solutions Pvt. Ltd.
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Table of contents
INTRODUCTION............................................................................................................. 8
INTRODUCING WIFILAN ................................................................................................. 8
FEATURE SUMMARY ........................................................................................................ 9
RADIUS Features ..................................................................................................... 10
Network management and monitoring features ........................................................ 10
Content Filter ............................................................................................................ 11
Install management ................................................................................................... 11
Customer relationship management ......................................................................... 11
Billing management .................................................................................................. 11
Provisioning Features ............................................................................................... 12
Security Features ...................................................................................................... 12
Portal Design and Advertisement ............................................................................. 12
General Features ...................................................................................................... 12
TECHNICAL SUPPORT ..................................................................................................... 13
NOTATIONS AND CONVENTIONS .................................................................................... 13
IMPORTANT CONCEPTS ........................................................................................... 13
WIFILAN OVERVIEW ................................................................................................. 18
ARCHITECTURE .............................................................................................................. 18
MENU SUMMARY ........................................................................................................... 19
RADIUS MANAGEMENT ............................................................................................ 20
CONCEPTS ...................................................................................................................... 20
RADIUS MENU ............................................................................................................. 22
RADIUS USERS ............................................................................................................... 23
User Summary ........................................................................................................... 23
New User ................................................................................................................... 23
List Users .................................................................................................................. 25
User Details ............................................................................................................... 27
Edit User .................................................................................................................... 30
User Accounting........................................................................................................ 32
Edit RADIUS Attributes .............................................................................................. 33
Suspend User ............................................................................................................. 35
Unsuspend User ........................................................................................................ 36
Delete User ............................................................................................................... 36
RADIUS GROUPS ............................................................................................................ 36
New Group ................................................................................................................ 37
List Groups................................................................................................................ 37
Edit Group ................................................................................................................ 38
Edit RADIUS Attributes ............................................................................................ 39
Delete Group ............................................................................................................. 40
GATEWAY ......................................................................................................................... 40
List Gateways ............................................................................................................ 41
New Gateway ............................................................................................................ 41
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Edit Gateway............................................................................................................. 43
Edit Radius Attributes ............................................................................................... 44
Delete Gateway......................................................................................................... 44
AUTOLOGIN ...................................................................................................................... 45
List AutoLogins .......................................................................................................... 45
New AutoLogin .......................................................................................................... 46
Edit AutoLogin .......................................................................................................... 47
Edit Radius Attributes ............................................................................................... 48
Accounting ................................................................................................................ 50
Delete AutoLogin ....................................................................................................... 50
LOCATIONS ....................................................................................................................... 50
New Location ............................................................................................................ 51
List Locations ............................................................................................................. 52
Edit Location............................................................................................................. 52
Delete Location ......................................................................................................... 53
HOW LOCATION ID IS USED? ................................................................................................ 54
USER APPROVALS ............................................................................................................... 54
USER IMPORT AND EXPORT............................................................................................ 56
Importing Users ........................................................................................................ 56
Exporting Users ........................................................................................................ 57
NETWORK MANAGEMENT AND MONITORING .............................................................. 59
ADMIN ........................................................................................................................... 59
Administer Monitoring .............................................................................................. 59
Manage Alerts ........................................................................................................... 61
Device Defaults ......................................................................................................... 62
DEVICE MANAGEMENT .................................................................................................. 63
New Device ............................................................................................................... 64
List Devices ................................................................................................................ 71
Edit Device ................................................................................................................ 72
Add Sub-Device ......................................................................................................... 75
EDIT SUBDEVICE ............................................................................................................ 77
DELETING SUBDEVICE ................................................................................................... 78
Network Status .......................................................................................................... 78
Monitoring Details .................................................................................................... 80
Status Change History ............................................................................................... 80
Network Alerts .......................................................................................................... 81
IP change management ............................................................................................ 82
INSTALL MANAGEMENT ....................................................................................................... 82
Collecting Install Data.............................................................................................. 83
List Install Info ........................................................................................................... 85
SITE MANAGEMENT............................................................................................................ 86
List Sites..................................................................................................................... 88
Edit Site Details ......................................................................................................... 88
CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT .................................................................... 91
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PROBLEM TICKETS ......................................................................................................... 91
Ticket Configuration .................................................................................................. 92
New Ticket ................................................................................................................. 93
List Tickets ................................................................................................................. 94
Ticket Summary ......................................................................................................... 95
Ticket Details ............................................................................................................. 95
Ticket Response ......................................................................................................... 96
Edit Ticket ................................................................................................................. 97
View Notes ................................................................................................................ 98
Edit Note ................................................................................................................... 98
CUSTOMER CARE ........................................................................................................... 98
Send Customer Emails .............................................................................................. 98
Email Templates...................................................................................................... 100
FAQ MANAGEMENT .................................................................................................... 102
New FAQ................................................................................................................. 102
List FAQs ................................................................................................................ 103
Edit FAQ ................................................................................................................. 104
KNOWLEDGEBASE............................................................................................................. 105
Creating New Entry ................................................................................................. 105
Search Knowledgebase ........................................................................................... 107
Entry Description ..................................................................................................... 108
Edit Knowledgebase Entry ...................................................................................... 108
BILLING ADMINISTRATION .................................................................................................. 111
Configure Billing ...................................................................................................... 111
Configure Gateway ................................................................................................. 113
Configure Payment ................................................................................................. 113
BILLING USERS ............................................................................................................ 115
Billing User Summary ............................................................................................. 115
List Billing Users .................................................................................................... 115
Edit Billing User ..................................................................................................... 116
New Billing User ..................................................................................................... 117
BILLING PLANS ............................................................................................................ 119
List Plans ................................................................................................................ 119
New Plan ................................................................................................................. 120
Edit Plan ................................................................................................................. 122
Delete Plan.............................................................................................................. 123
BILLING TAXES ............................................................................................................ 124
LIST TAXES .................................................................................................................. 124
New Tax .................................................................................................................. 125
Edit Tax ................................................................................................................... 125
PREPAID CARDS ........................................................................................................... 126
List Prepaid Cards .................................................................................................. 127
New Prepaid Cards ................................................................................................. 130
Prepaid Usage ........................................................................................................ 131
Export Prepaid Coupon codes ................................................................................ 132
BILLING TRANSACTIONS .............................................................................................. 134
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List Transactions ..................................................................................................... 134
Transaction Details................................................................................................. 135
New Debit Transaction ........................................................................................... 137
New Credit Transaction ........................................................................................... 140
PROMOTIONS ............................................................................................................... 141
New Promotion ....................................................................................................... 142
List Promotions ....................................................................................................... 143
View Promotion History ......................................................................................... 143
GENERAL ADMINISTRATION .......................................................................................... 144
ADMINISTRATOR ACCOUNT ................................................................................................ 144
New Admin Account ................................................................................................ 144
List Accounts ........................................................................................................... 148
VIEWER ACCOUNTS .......................................................................................................... 148
List Viewer ............................................................................................................... 151
USAGE HISTORY .......................................................................................................... 151
Account Login History ............................................................................................ 151
Database Change History ....................................................................................... 152
EXTENDED USER ATTRIBUTES ............................................................................................. 152
New User Attribute ................................................................................................. 153
List User Attributes ................................................................................................. 153
EXTENDED DEVICE ATTRIBUTES ........................................................................................... 154
New Device Attribute .............................................................................................. 154
List Extended Device Attributes .............................................................................. 155
EDIT PROFILE................................................................................................................... 155
CHANGING PASSWORD...................................................................................................... 157
ADVERTISEMENTS ........................................................................................................ 158
REPORTING ..................................................................................................................... 161
RADIUS REPORTS ............................................................................................................. 161
Online RADIUS Users ............................................................................................ 161
Device Usage Reports ............................................................................................. 163
Accounting Report .................................................................................................. 165
Authentication Report ............................................................................................. 167
NETWORK REPORTS .......................................................................................................... 168
PROBLEM TICKETS REPORTS........................................................................................ 170
SUMMARY REPORTS .................................................................................................... 171
Ticket Vs Time Reports ........................................................................................... 173
BILLING REPORTS ........................................................................................................ 174
Revenue Reports...................................................................................................... 175
Declined Cards Report ........................................................................................... 178
Payment Receivable Report .................................................................................... 179
Amount Credited Report (Refund Report) .............................................................. 179
Promotion Usage Reports ....................................................................................... 180
Prepaid Usage Reports ........................................................................................... 181
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WEB-BASED INTEGRATION................................................................................... 185
USER REGISTRATION ................................................................................................... 185
PROBLEM TICKET REPORTING ..................................................................................... 191
COMMON TASKS ............................................................................................................ 193
ADDING NEW DEVICE ........................................................................................................ 193
ADDING AN ATTACHED DEVICE FOR MONITORING .................................................................... 195
COLLECTING AND RECONCILING INSTALLATION DATA ................................................................ 196
SENDING CUSTOMER EMAILS .............................................................................................. 197
ADDING EXTENDED USER/DEVICE INFORMATION ..................................................................... 197
REPORTING BUGS .................................................................................................... 198
GLOSSARY ....................................................................................................................... 199
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Introduction
This chapter presents an overview of WiFiLAN and explains high-level concepts required to
understand the working of WiFiLAN.
Introducing WiFiLAN
WiFiLAN is a web-based, hosted solution for managing and maintaining Wi-Fi networks
remotely. It integrates all key features required for managing, installing, configuring and
maintaining Wi-Fi networks in a single intuitive online application. It works seamlessly with
WiFiLAN backend servers to provide round-the-clock, reliable service to the customers.
WiFiLAN is hosted on a Linux-based platform in a state-of-the-art data center and can be
accessed from any where in the world with the help of an SSL-capable web browser. The
solution is device-agnostic i.e. it is not designed for a specific hardware vendor and supports
wide range of wireless gateways from vendors like Cisco, Zyxel, Gemtek, Colubris, DLink and
others. It provides a range of services including RADIUS authentication, gateway management,
monitoring, CRM, billing, user management and provisioning, reporting and content filtering.
Customers don’t have to install any software or hardware on their premises to use WiFiLAN. The
above services can be access securely and remotely from Wifi-Soft’s servers.
Some of the key attributes of WiFiLAN are as follows:

Comprehensive
WiFiLAN integrates all WLAN management features into one single application. It avoids
the task of juggling disparate applications and instead provides a simple, unified view of
the operational data. WiFiLAN offers array of backend services including RADIUS
authentication and accounting, network monitoring and management, CRM, billing,
automated user provisioning and security. Having an integrated solution also makes it
easier to train support staff and keeps the operational cost down.

Scalable Architecture
WiFiLAN is built on a scalable architecture to handle high-load environments. Multiple
instances of servers run on separate servers to handle load balancing and traffic
distribution. Each server is fully capable of handling all backend services and new
servers can be easily added to handle increased load.

Redundancy
All WiFiLAN services have redundancy built into their design.
Each process has a backup instance running on a separate server, which takes over the
operation in case the primary one goes down. This provides a highly reliable operating
environment to the customers. Remote gateways can be configured to automatically
switch to secondary authentication server when the primary one goes down. WiFiLAN
management application is also hosted on separate servers to that customers can use
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the backup instance in case the primary one is not accessible. All the services are
monitored round-the-clock to ensure they are operating within specified parameters.

Fault Tolerance
All the servers are hosted in a state-of-the-art data center on a commercial-grade
hardware platform. This minimizes the risk of hardware and communication faults and
provides top quality service to the customers.

Security
To ensure the security of the data, all servers are protected by a firewall. Only
authorized clients are allowed access to our services through configured ports. WiFiLAN
application can be accessed only through an SSL-capable browser to ensure that the
data between customer’s browser and the server is protected from hackers and
malicious users.

Ease-of-use
Managing Wi-Fi networks can be technically challenging. WiFiLAN provides a simple and
intuitive management interface that makes the task of managing Wi-Fi networks easy
and trouble-free. The application is very easy to learn and extensive documentation is
available for each feature. Each data entry screen displays helpful notes to reduce errors
while entering data.
Feature Summary
WiFiLAN provides range of features required to operate large-scale, distributed Wi-Fi networks.
These features run on a common WiFiLAN management platform, which in turn makes use of
WiFiLAN servers. At high-level, these features can be categorized into:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
RADIUS management
Network management and monitoring
CRM Services
Billing and Customer Management
Reporting
Provisioning
Portal Design and advertising
The data needed for running WiFiLAN resides in the WiFiLAN database.
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RADIUS Features
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
Robust, reliable, redundant and professionally management RADIUS server
Support for Radius users, groups and gateway management
Support for standard and vendor-specific Radius attributes
Auto-login feature (allows users to login without username and password)
Location data management.
Tracks dynamic IP changes
Approval based user provisioning
Email Verification
Detailed Radius reporting
a. Snapshot of online users categorized by locations
b. Device usage summary and graphs (number of session, bandwidth usage,
sessions against day of the week, hour of day, unique sessions, etc)
c. Accounting history
d. Authentication history
Network management and monitoring features
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
Device agnostic network management and monitoring
Centralized repository for storing all network data
Supports management and monitoring of gateways and attached devices
Provides a real-time network status with easy to follow color schemes
Uses different protocols for monitoring – ICMP, SNMP, HTTP based on network
requirements
Tracks device status change history
Creates network reliability report based on the past monitoring history for all devices
Centralized management of remote devices using SNMP
Ability to manage and track remote users
Displays history of traps (alerts) from devices
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11. Sends email/SMS notifications to concerned party. Notifications can be configured
globally or on per-device basis
12. Automatically detects new devices on network and tracks device restarts, failures and
configuration changes using SNMP
13. Perform centralized network audits
Content Filter
1.
2.
3.
4.
Ability to block unwanted or malicious content on your Wi-Fi networks
Provides management interface to dynamically configure the content filter server
Blocked list is always current. The list is automatically updated twice a week
Allows content filter based on IP address thus allowing users to specify the sites that
need content filtering and the site that don’t
Install management
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Provides interface for network installers to capture installation data
Consolidates all installation data into a central repository
Ability to upload site layouts and map, and view them along with network data
Capture all relevant data for a installation site
Ability to track and manage hardware inventory
Customer relationship management
1. Provides web-based interface to capture problem tickets in WiFiLAN from a reporting
page
2. Ability to track and manage problem tickets
3. Allows customer service reps to send email response for problem tickets
4. Comprehensive reports on problem tickets based on
a. By agents
b. By category
c. By severity
d. By location
e. By Resolution
5. Graphical view of ticket history
6. Provides interface to send announcements and system messages to all or specific set of
customers
7. Ability to create and manage custom email templates
8. Create hierarchical FAQs for customer service reps
9. Provides ability to search and add entries to knowledgebase. Knowledgebase can
contain install notes, how-to, articles or any other document relevant to the customer.
Billing management
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Provide interface to seamlessly integrate web-based registration with the billing system
Provides credit-card clearing and authorization
Architecture support wide range of merchant gateways.
Allows administrators to create customized billing plans with validity periods
Comprehensive prepaid card management
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6.
7.
8.
9.
Supports simple and cumulative tax structure
Provides support for promotions and discounts
Allows administrators to export and print prepaid coupons
Detailed billing reports
a. Revenue by site, location and plans
b. User transactions
c. Time-based reports
d. Promotion effectiveness
e. Prepaid usage
f. Declined card reports
g. Account receivable
h. Daily, weekly, monthly, yearly revenue reports
i. Credit report
j. Expense report
k. Plan fraud report
10. Sends automated (template) reminders and receipts
11. Supports automatic suspension of user accounts when credit card fails. Releases the
user when the card transaction succeeds
Provisioning Features
1. Web-based integration interface for developers
2. Create custom portal pages for user registration, account management and trouble
ticket reporting
3. Location-aware user registration
4. Real-time credit card checking and clearing
Security Features
1.
2.
3.
4.
Supports WPA and WEP authentication mechanisms
All traffic is encrypted and digitally signed while traveling in the public domain
Secure firewall to prevent unauthorized users from accessing backend services
Servers are hosted in state-of-the-art data centers that have round-the-clock intruder
detection and monitoring
5. Sensitive data like card numbers, passwords, etc is encrypted while displaying in
WiFiLAN
Portal Design and Advertisement
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Create custom designs for login, landing, signup and account management portal pages
Customize images, text, links, advertisements and layout of the portal pages
Choose from different readymade templates
Simple intuitive interface for portal design along with instant preview option
Upload any custom advertisements on login and landing pages.
General Features
1. Supports any currency and date formats
2. Automatically adjusts reports and user data to local time zone
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3.
4.
5.
6.
Provides reporting-only interface for partners, consultants and other external entities
Tracks login and database history
Allows administrators to store extra user and device information in extended attributes
Supports location-based view i.e. view of data only for a specific location
Technical Support
If you need technical support while using WiFiLAN, please refer to the online documentation on
our website: http://www.wifi-soft.com or send us an email at [email protected].
WiFiLAN provides a ‘Report problem’ feature that you can use to submit a bug or feature
request. Additionally, comprehensive help is available for each WiFiLAN screen by selecting the
Help menu.
Notations and Conventions
This document assumes several different actors. The role and responsibility for each actor is
highlighted in the table below:
Actor
Customers
Description
The set of people who will be customer of WiFiLAN.
Usually WISP or Wi-Fi network operators.
The set of people in an organization (WISP) who will use
WiFiLAN for managing and operating their Wi-Fi networks
The users who will use the Wi-Fi services provided by
WISP or Wi-Fi operators.
The field technicians who go into the fields to do Wi-Fi
installations
The staff that handles customer problems and questions.
Administrators
End Users
Installers
Customer Service
Representatives
Important Concepts

Network Operating Center (NOC)
NOC is the centralized location where backend servers like RADIUS, Web, Mail, DNS and Monitoring
servers are hosted. Additionally, it also host management consoles to manage remote network
elements from a centralized location.
Wifi-Soft provides a hosted NOC solution to Wi-Fi service providers and hotspot operators. This frees
the operators from maintaining their own NOC and employing people to manage it. Moreover, they
don’t have to worry about performing software upgrades, maintaining backups, doing regular
maintenance and fine-tuning their servers. Wifi-Soft handles all these tasks for them thus allowing
them to focus on the core business. Hosted solution offers operators considerable cost saving and
enhanced productivity.
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
RADIUS Services
RADIUS server provides AAA (Authentication, Authorization and Accounting) services to the
network operators. These services ensure that only valid and authenticated customers get
access to the network resources and the session information gets tracked and archived for
billing purpose.
o
Authentication
Authentication is the process in which the RADIUS server verifies the username and
password supplied by the user. The username and password are sent to the RADIUS
server in the Auth-Request packet. Typically, the RADIUS server maintains list of
usernames and passwords in a flat file or database. When the request is received it
does the comparison and returns back success or failure.
o
Authorization
Authorization is the process in which the RADIUS authorizes the end user client and
determines the scheme to use for authentication.
o
Accounting
Accounting is another service provided by the RADIUS server. This service is
responsible for maintaining the user session information, also called accounting, in
the RADIUS server. Accounting information can be stored in files or database.

Security
Security is an important aspect in any service provided to the customer, especially when
sensitive customer information is collected and stored. Information like passwords, credit
card data, personal details like phone number, passwords, etc need to be protected so that
malicious users don’t get access to them.
To ensure security, various encoding and encryption schemes are adopted in applications.
RADIUS server uses various encoding schemes like CHAP, MSCHAP, PAP, EAP to encode the
sensitive information passed between the gateway and RADIUS server. Many gateways
support 802.1X recommended security methods like WPA. Since WEP has limitations, many
vendors are making WPA (Wireless Protected Access) as their standard security scheme for
WiFi. Good implementation of WPA requires support from the RADIUS server.
Similarly, the data transmitted over public Internet is vulnerable to hackers and malicious
users who can intercept the data and gather sensitive information. To secure this
information, it is necessary to encrypt the transmitted data using strong SSL encryption
mechanism.
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
Network Monitoring
Unlike wired networks, wireless networks are more prone to failures. Misaligned radio,
channel interference, lightening strikes and improper wiring are some of the common
causes for failure in Wi-Fi networks. So, it is important that these network are monitored
continuously and any outages be notified to the concerned parties to minimize the
downtime.
WiFiLAN not only supports round-the-clock monitoring of the remote gateways, but also
monitors access points installed on the internal wireless or wired network. Network status
information is consolidated on the server and presented to the network administrator in a
tabular format. This feature is especially important for service providers who have outdoor
Wi-Fi network and want to ensure high reliability of their network.

Billing
Billing feature allows service providers to charge their customers over the Internet using a
payment gateway. Since minimum human intervention is required for Internet billing, it
provides a cost effective way of collecting recurring or one-time payments from their
customers.
Billing gateway (e.g. Authorize.net, Verisign, PayPal, OpenEcho, etc) are third-party
application service providers that function as a broker between the customer and the
vendor’s merchant bank. They convert the Internet transaction data into proprietary format
required by the merchant bank. All billing gateways publish an external applicationprogramming interface (API) that developers use to integrate their applications with the
billing backend systems.
WiFiLAN provides integration to various payment gateways such as Authorize.Net and
OpenEcho. It handles all the interactions with the payment gateways including credit card
authorization, recurring billing, debit and credit transactions, billing reports and fraud
prevention. WiFiLAN also provides integration with RADIUS accounting data to allow
administrators to charge customers based on their usage.

Portal Design
Portal design allows administrators to create custom portal pages for user login and
registration. Most hotspots, free or paid, have a login page where the user enters his/her
authorization information before getting access to Internet service. For paid access, the user
needs to enter his/her username and password or a prepaid coupon code. For free access,
service provider usually has a click-through login page that displays usage terms and
conditions.
For self-signup hotspots, these login pages also provide a link to a registration page. The
registration page accepts user’s billing and personal information to create an account in the
user database. Many wireless ISPs also need to provide an account management page so
that their subscribers can view and change their account information online.
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WiFiLAN portal section makes the design and implementation of such pages easy and
trouble free. It allows administrators to create highly customized login and registration
pages for each hotspot location. They can apply a particular design template to these pages
and then further customize the template by uploading images and inserting appropriate
text.
The login and landing pages also provide support for adding advertisements. This powerful
feature allows service providers to host commercial advertisements on their login pages
thus allowing them to generate extra revenues from their hotspots.

Content Filtering
Content filtering is an important function for hotspots serving public places like cafes,
restaurants, libraries and parks. It prevents users from accessing undesirable Internet
content like pornography, adult entertainment, violence, etc.
Unlike other content filtering solutions, WiFiLAN’s content filtering solution doesn’t require
proxy server or a dedicated hardware. Administrators just need to point their DNS servers to
Wifi-Soft’s DNS servers to enable content filtering at their locations.
It is also important that the content filtering database is kept up-to-date with the everchanging landscape of the Internet. WiFiLAN updates its database twice a week from a thirdparty source, which is solely responsible for constantly updating the list of blacklisted sites.

IP Change Management
Since RADIUS protocol is an UDP-based protocol, any remote device can send RADIUS
packets to the server for authentication. However, RADIUS server only handles
authentication packets that are received from a legitimate source. It determines the
legitimate source by verifying the IP address of the device with the one configured in its
database. Only gateways/devices with pre-configured IP address are allowed to use AA
services on the RADIUS server.
However, the above restriction enforces that all gateway should use static (non-changing) IP
address to authenticate itself with the gateway. Or else, there should be some mechanism
in place that will automatically detect the IP address change and will update the RADIUS
information accordingly.
WiFiLAN provides this service for selected gateways thereby allowing services providers to
use dynamic IP addresses for their gateways. Since dynamic IP addresses are cheaper than
static ones, this feature helps service providers to cut down their cost of operations.

Data Replication and Redundancy
Computer systems are prone to failures. To circumvent outages and loss of data during
these failures, it is important to maintain redundancy within the system. This mechanism
will ensure that the end users will not get affected and will continue to get desirable
services when the primary server goes down.
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WiFiLAN is designed with a built-in redundancy. It maintains dual server architecture in
which one server acts as a primary and other one as secondary. All data from the primary
server gets replicated on the secondary server. In case of failure of the primary server, the
users are transparently redirected to the secondary server. Since WiFiLAN maintains realtime replication of data no data loss occurs during this transition. This ensures all services
are operational on the secondary server.

Email Verification
Email is widely used medium of communication in the interconnected world. With the increase
in popularity of email, its misuse has also increased. Spam is a common example. Many people
are reluctant to enter their correct email address when they signup online. However, wireless
service providers need correct email address to send electronic invoices and receipts.
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WiFiLAN provides a feature that allows service providers to enforce an extra email verification
step during the online signup process. The system automatically sends a verification email to
customer’s email address that contains instructions to activate the account. Only customers
who have entered valid email addresses are able to activate their account. This ensures that the
customer database contains only valid email addresses and the service provider can be assured
that their billing and announcement emails will reach the intended parties.
WiFiLAN Overview
Architecture
The diagram below provides a high-level architectural overview on the WiFiLAN system. The
WiFiLAN management platform is the central component of the architecture. The end-users
interact with this component to manage the functioning of the backend servers. WiFiLAN
provides range of features including AAA services, network management and monitoring, CRM,
billing, reporting and user provisioning.
Network administrators, customer service representatives and managers are primary users of
WiFiLAN. The network administrators are generally concerned with the network and RADIUS
sections where they specify different parameters to control the functioning of their Wi-Fi
networks. The CSRs usually work on the CRM section and use data provided by other sections to
solve customer problems. Finally, the managers view different types of reports, billing data and
constantly review information stored in WiFiLAN.
WiFiLAN management platform uses several different servers to provide various functions to its
users. The billing server is responsible for communicating with the external payment gateway to
perform credit card billing and clearance. The RADIUS server provides authentication,
authorization and accounting services to the end users. The Network Monitoring server
periodically scans all the remote gateways and attached devices to determine whether they are
operating properly. It sends notifications to the administrators in an event of failure. The Trap
Manager listens for traps and heartbeats (periodic pulse) from the remote devices and notifies
administrators of undesirable events. Finally, the content filter allows administrators to filter
unwanted content from reaching the end users on their networks.
WiFiLAN application runs on a web server so it can be access from anywhere on the Internet
using a compatible browser. It uses SSL to ensure that the data transmitted between the
browser and the web server is encrypted and secure. All the data resides in WiFiLAN database
where it gets replicated and backed up periodically. This ensures that the data remains safe and
secure.
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Menu Summary




Home
RADIUS
o Users
o Groups
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RADIUS Management
Wifi-soft hosts dual, redundant RADIUS server to provide Authentication, Authorization and
Accounting services to its customers. The RADIUS management section allows administrators to
manage users and groups, configure gateways, define autologins, approve users and view
accounting information of all users. In this section, we will learn more about following concepts:






RADIUS Users
Groups
Gateways
AutoLogins or MAC Addresses
Locations
Approvals
Concepts
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
RADIUS users and groups
Users having common RADIUS attributes are grouped together in a RADIUS groups. This
allows the administrators to specify common RADIUS attributes once for the group and all
the users belonging to that group will automatically inherit these attributes. This structure
greatly reduces the task of defining RADIUS attributes for users since the common attributes
will be defined once and used for each user.
There are two types of groups – device and user. The device group consists of RADIUS
gateways or NAS (Network Access Server), while the user group consists of RADIUS users.
Many advanced wireless gateways like Colubris have a separate authentication mechanism
for the gateways. This allows the administrators to fetch the gateway initialization
parameters from the RADIUS server where they can be managed dynamically. Only the
gateways successfully authenticated are allowed to send user authentication and accounting
request to the RADIUS server. Besides allowing dynamic gateway configurations, this
mechanism also prevents an unauthorized gateway from using any RADIUS services.

AutoLogin
Some gateways support MAC address-based authentication. In this authentication
mechanism, the user’s MAC address is verified with a predefined list of MAC addresses. If
the user’s MAC address matches one of the listed ones, then the user is automatically
authenticated. The user is not required to use username and password to login. This feature
provides seamless authentication to the user and can be offered as a premium service to
the users.

Gateways
Gateways are devices that function as gatekeepers in a wireless network. Depending on the
vendor, gateway is responsible for number of functions. Most common functions of a Wi-Fi
gateway are redirecting unauthenticated users to a login page and providing access to only
authenticated users. It is also responsible for managing user sessions, running network
services like firewall, DHCP, NAT, VPN, etc. Gateways also have a RADIUS client that is
responsible for communicating with the RADIUS server to authenticate users.

Locations
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Location information is important for hotspot operators who have installed Wi-Fi hotspots
in different places and need a way to track their operational data based on the location of
these hotspots. For examples, a wireless ISP needs to find the correct location of the user
when s/he calls the customer service center and provides username or phone number.
Location also helps managers to generate reports and manage data systematically.

Approvals
Some places like universities may need to provide free access to its students but paid access
to its visitors. In such scenarios, the administrator can configure the user provisioning
process with an extra approval step. All newly created user accounts will be sent for
approval to the administrator, who can allow free access to students and discard the
dummy or illegitimate ones. The approval section provides an interface to approve or deny
the newly signed up users and purge the ones that are denied registration.
RADIUS Menu
The RADIUS management menu is shown below.
Each sub-menu will open multiple tabs in the right browser frame. The functions of each
menu are as follows:
Menu
Function
Users
Groups
Gateways
Manage and configure RADIUS user settings
Manage RADIUS groups
Define user profiles for gateways and configure RADIUS settings
Autologins
Locations
Manage MAC address authentication
Manage locations of Wi-Fi networks
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Approvals
Reports
Manage approvals process for new user accounts
View reports and statistics related to RADIUS data
Radius Users
User Summary
The User Summary page provides summarized information of all the users in the system. The
users are categorized by the location where they belong. The summary table displays active,
suspended and online users per location.
You can do a quick search for a particular user(s) based on the login name or the full name of
the user. The search fields accept even partial search entries. For example, you can search for all
users whose first name is John. You can click on the username in the result list to get more
information about the user.
New User
To create a new RADIUS user, click on the ‘New User’ tab. A form is displayed that accept all
relevant information. The description of each form element is given on the right side.
23
The user information can be entered in different sub-sections. The Authentication subsection
gathers all the information required for authenticating the user in the RADIUS server. The realm
(e.g. @wifi-soft.com) is automatically appended to the username. The password should be at
least 6 characters in length and should not be same as the username. Since user group is a
required field, administrators need to create user group entry before creating users in that
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group. Similarly, the location has to be defined beforehand. The expiry date captures the date
until which the user’s account is valid. The account will be automatically deactivated after the
expiry date is reached.
If there is a data validation error, then an error message will be displayed next to the respective
field.
Note: All the fields marked with * are required fields
Additionally, the administrators can define extended attributes for the user. These extended
attributes are helpful in capturing extra information about the user. The extended attributes will
be displayed along with the standard information on the user details page.
n the above example, administrator wants to capture the Business user, Date of birth, Gender
and Session Timeout for this user.
List Users
The List Users tab displays a list of all users in the system sorted by their full names. The Status
column indicates whether the user is active or suspended. The RADIUS server will deny
authentication to all suspended users. Thus by suspending users, the administrators can
temporarily restrict users from using their services. For example, the administrator can suspend
the user’s account if his/her credit card is expired. The account can be activated once the user
has updated the credit card information and the necessary amount is charged.
25
The search section provides different options to search for specific users. To search using one of
the standard field (address, city, phone numbers), select the appropriate field from the dropdown list and enter the search value. The search results are displayed in tabular format.
The list can be sorted by clicking on the underlined columns. Clicking on column will sort the list
in ascending order. Second click will resort the list in descending order.
The user list can be exported in a CSV (Comma Separate Values) format. To export the user list,
26
click on the Export button in the center of the screen. User will be prompted for apply filter window
where user can select location and date ranges fro which he want reports.
Note: The exported file can be viewed and modified using Microsoft Excel.
User Details
To view the details for a particular user, click on the username in the user list. All the
information related to the user is displayed in a tabular format. The first table displays the
personal information such as address, phone numbers, etc for the user. If extended attributes
are defined, then the table also contains the extended attribute information for the user.
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The various buttons on the top of the page are used for viewing or modifying the user
information. To edit the user information, click on the Edit button. The Accounting button
displays all the accounting history for the user. The Radius button allows administrators to
change the RADIUS attributes for the user, and finally, the Suspend button is used for
suspending the user. If the user is in suspended state, then Unsuspended and Delete buttons are
displayed. The unsuspended button will allow administrators to activate the user’s account and
the Delete button will delete the account.
The session information for this user is displayed below the personal user information section. If
the user is currently online, then a message is displayed indicating that the user is online.
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The Session information also displays the last five sessions for the user. If the user is online,
then it displays a “Logout” button next to the session that is currently open. The administrators
can logout the user by pressing the logout button.1
Finally, the Accounting Details section displays the summary of the accounting information over
the past seven days for the user. The table displays the total session, usage time and bandwidth
usage for the users for each day of the week.
The information listed on the User Details page helps customer services reps to diagnose user
problems and analyze the overall usage patterns for the users.
1
The gateway needs to support this feature.
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Edit User
To edit user’s information, click the Edit button on the User Details page. The administrators are
not allowed to change the username for the user.
30
31
Note: If the administrator’s account is configured to view passwords, then all passwords will be
displayed in plain text.
User Accounting
Clicking on the Accounting button displays the accounting history for that user. Each entry in the
table indicates a user session with session start time, duration, MAC address, Location, Upload
bandwidth, Download bandwidth and reason for session termination. The MAC address listed is
the MAC address of the user’s machine, while the Location column displays the location from
where the user initiated the session.
The table below provides the explanation for the End Reason column:
End Reason
Lost Carrier
User Logout
Force Terminate
Description
The user’s machine was shutdown or taken
away from the Wi-Fi zone without explicitly
logging out
The user logged out using logout button
The gateway forcibly terminated user’s session
after the threshold for a particular parameter
was exceeded. For example: Session-Timeout
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Idle-Timeout
NAS Reboot
User session was idle for time longer than the
threshold configured
The gateway was rebooted
Edit RADIUS Attributes
The RADIUS attributes define the characteristics for a user session. The RADIUS server passes
these attributes along with the response to the gateway after processing the authentication
request from the user. The gateway uses the attributes to define the parameters for the session.
For example, the Session-Timeout parameter is used to restrict the length of the session for the
user. The gateway will automatically terminate the user’s session once the threshold for
Session-Timeout is exceeded.
The attributes are divided into two sections – General RADIUS attributes and Vendor-specific
attributes. The general attributes are common across all the gateways and are part of the
RADIUS specifications. The vendor-specific attributes are generally defined by the vendors to
extend the functionality of their gateway. More information on these attributes can be found by
reading the documentation or manual for the specific gateway.
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Adding Standard RADIUS Attributes
To configure standard RADIUS attributes for a specific user, click on the RADIUS button on the
user details page and then on the top “Add New” button. A popup window will appear that
displays a list of all RADIUS attributes in a drop-down list. Select the appropriate attribute and
enter its value in the textbox. Administrators can also select appropriate operator for the
attribute. To add another attribute, simply select another entry from the drop-down list and
enter its corresponding value. Click on the Close button once you are done adding the
attributes.
Adding Vendor-specific RADIUS Attributes
To add vendor-specific attributes, first select the appropriate vendor by clicking on the Select
Vendor button. The vendor attributes are appended along with standard RADIUS attributes and
passed to the gateway. The gateway uses them to customize the session for the particular user.
Next, click on the bottom “Add New” button. A popup window will appear with all the vendorspecific attributes listed in the drop-down list. Select the appropriate attributes and enter its
value in the text field. To add another attribute value, select a new entry from the drop-down
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list and enter the appropriate value. Click on the Close button once you are done entering
values. The RADIUS page will update automatically and will display the newly added attributes.
Note: All the common user attributes should be moved to users group. Only user-specific
attribute values should be defined here.
Suspend User
Administrators have the option to discontinue service for a particular user by suspending her
account. WiFiLAN preserves all the information (including accounting records) of the user during
the suspension. Thus the user’s state is restored back once the user account is unsuspended.
Administrators can suspend RADIUS accounts for variety of reasons. For example, if the
administrator detects that a particular user is misusing the network resources or using his
account for fraudulent activity, the administrator can prevent the user from using the network
by suspending the account. In some cases, the account may be suspended automatically. For
example, if the billing engine detects that the user’s credit card is expired and it is unable to
charge the user for the monthly dues, then the billing engine may suspend the account
temporarily until a valid credit card become available. The administrator can control the
automatic suspension by configuring the billing cycle appropriately.
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Unsuspend User
The administrator can unsuspend the user by clicking the Unsuspend button on the User Details
page. The Unsuspend button is only displayed for suspended users. WiFiLAN restores back the
user’s state and moves the user into active state. Once active, the RADIUS server can process
the authentication request from the user and thus allow access to network resources.
Delete User
If a particular user account is no longer needed, then administrators can chose to purge the user
from the system. All the user’s data (including the accounting records) will be lost after the
deletion. Please note that only suspended users can be deleted.
Note: WiFiLAN won’t be able to restore any user information once the user is deleted.
Radius Groups
Radius group is a logical entity to represent a collection of users or devices (gateways) that have
common characteristics. The users or gateways defined within a particular group share the
RADIUS attributes of that group. This minimizes the task of defining attributes for each
individual user or device, instead the administrator can define attributes for the group and all
users or devices within that group will automatically inherit those attributes. Administrators can
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also define the authentication protocol that the RADIUS server will use for authenticating users
or devices within a group.
New Group
To define a new group, click on the New Group tab. The Group Name field is required and
should be unique. The group name should also not have any spaces. Select the type of the group
and the location (if any) associated with the group.
Note: Avoid using white spaces in the group name. Instead use ‘_’ to separate two words in the
group name.
List Groups
To view all the groups defined in the system, click on List Groups tab. The groups are listed in
alphabetical order with the device groups on the top. The table also displays the list of active
and suspended users within the group.
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To sort the list based on particular field, click on the underlined column. First click will sort the
list in ascending order; the following click will sort the list in descending order.
Note: If a group is associated with a location, then it is a good idea to have some naming
convention for the group name. This helps in easily identifying the group while selecting it on
other screens.
So, instead of using just the site name (eastcondo), we can use state_sitename or
state_city_sitename to easily identify the group
Edit Group
To edit the group, click on the group name is the List Group table and make appropriate changes.
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Edit RADIUS Attributes
As mentioned previously, you can define common RADIUS attributes for users or devices by
defining them in the group configuration. This saves the effort of defining attributes for each
and every user. All users or devices defined within the group automatically inherit the attributes
defined for the group.
Like user attributes, the group attributes are also divided into General RADIUS attributes and
vendor-specific RADIUS attributes. The general attributes are common to all gateways and are
defined in the RADIUS specifications, while the gateway vendors define vendor-specific
attributes.
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Delete Group
To delete a particular group, click the Delete button on the Edit Group tab. Please note that all
the users belonging to the group will become “groupless” or orphaned and the administrators
will have manually move these users from the orphaned group to the new group. It is generally
not advisable to delete a group once users or devices are assigned to it.
Gateway
The gateway submenu allows administrators to manage the RADIUS configuration for wireless
gateways installed in the Wi-Fi network. These gateways are responsible for controlling the
traffic between internal machines and the Internet. Besides acting as a gatekeeper, these
devices may also function as an access point, DHCP server and firewall. Most of these gateways
have redirection feature whereby unauthenticated clients are redirected to a login page.
Typically, these gateways are linked with access points using RF links or wired connections to
cover a large area.
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List Gateways
To list the configured gateways, click on the Gateway submenu and then on the List Gateway
tab. The gateway devices are listed in alphabetical order along with its IP address and location.
You can click on the gateway name to view the RADIUS configuration for that gateway.
To sort the list, click on the column header. The list will be sorted in ascending and descending
order on successive clicks.
New Gateway
To configure the RADIUS parameters for a new gateway device, click on the New Gateway tab. It
displays a form that collects all the information required configuring and authenticating a
remote gateway device.
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The description of each attribute is as follows:
Attribute
Device Type
Hotspot Name
IP Address *
Secret *
NAS ID
MAC Address
Description
Location
Description
The Type of Devices specified by vendor.
Name given to the hotspot.
The IP address of the gateway
The shared secret configured in the gateway admin
page
Identifier for the RADIUS authentication.
The MAC address of the WAN port of the gateway
Short description about the gateway
The location where the gateway is installed
* These parameters should match the ones specified in the gateway’s admin page.
Advanced gateways like Colubris, retrieve their initialization parameters from the RADIUS
server. These gateways periodically send RADIUS authentication request to the server and
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RADIUS server responds back with initialization parameters. You need to enter the Device
UserName and Password for such gateways.
WiFiLAN automatically creates a Network device entry when you add a new gateway. The
Network entry contains monitoring information along with other technical details of the device.
For more information on Network device, please refer to the Network section.
Edit Gateway
To edit the existing configuration for a gateway device, click on the gateway name in the List
Gateway table. If your gateway is configured for RADIUS authentication, they you need to enter
the Device UserName and DevicePassword fields. Please note that the Device UserName should
be unique for each gateway. WiFiLAN will prompt an error if you enter a duplicate Device
UserName.
Note: You can use the gateway serial number as the Device UserName.
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Edit Radius Attributes
Like users and groups, you can also specify the RADIUS attributes for a gateway device. These
attributes control the behavior of the gateway and are typically sent to the gateway when the
device is authenticated. Please note that not all gateways support this feature.
The RADIUS attributes are divided into two sections – General and Vendor-specific. The general
attributes are common across all gateways and are defined in the RADIUS specifications. Only
the most commonly used ones are displayed in this section. To enable display of other general
RADIUS attributes, please contact our technical support.
The vendor-specific attributes are different for each gateway. Administrators need to select the
right vendor using the Change Vendor button. The list of commonly used vendor-specific
attributes is displayed. Some attributes can be defined multiple times. The default operator (e.g.
+=) is automatically selected for each attribute.
Delete Gateway
To delete a gateway configuration, click the Delete button and confirm the deletion.
Note: Deleting a gateway will also delete the network device entry. All the network device data
(monitoring, network configuration, installation, etc) for the device will be deleted. Additionally,
all the data for attached devices (sub-devices) will be deleted too. Please exercise caution while
deleting a gateway.
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AutoLogin
AutoLogin section manages MAC address authentication for the RADIUS server. Normal login
mechanism requires the user to enter username and password in a login form to gain access to
network resources like Internet. In case of MAC address authentication, the wireless gateway
detects when the user’s computer with a given MAC address is switched on and automatically
performs the authentication for the user. The user doesn’t have to remember username and
password and normally gets a perception that his computer is always logged on.
Although many wireless gateway support MAC address authentication, not all of them support
RADIUS based MAC address authentication. Some of them allow administrators to specify MAC
addresses within the gateway configuration. In such cases, AutoLogin feature may not be used.
However, many advanced gateways do send a RADIUS authentication request when they detect
a predefined MAC address and request RADIUS authentication.
List AutoLogins
To view all the AutoLogins defined in the system, click on the List AutoLogins tab. Each
AutoLogin’s MAC address, a friendly name and the group name are listed in a tabular format.
You can also search for particular AutoLogin entry using the search section. The search fields can
accept partial MAC address entries, in which case all entries containing the partial address will
be returned.
45
New AutoLogin
To add a new AutoLogin entry, click the New AutoLogin tab and enter the details for the
AutoLogin entry. Although the Friendly Name is not a required field, it is a good idea to enter a
friendly name for the entry to easily search for it in the future.
Each AutoLogin entry can be associated with one or more gateway (devices). The MAC address
authentication for an AutoLogin will only work on gateways that are associated with the
AutoLogin entry. To enable free roaming for a particular MAC address, you need to associate its
AutoLogin entry with all the devices.
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Note: MAC address bytes must be separated by dash. Example: 00-03-CD-49-D8-A8
Edit AutoLogin
To edit an AutoLogin entry, click the MAC address in the AutoLogin list. Note that you can’t
change the MAC address once it is created. If you need to change the MAC address then you will
have to delete and add the entry again.
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Edit Radius Attributes
Like users, it is possible to define RADIUS attributes for AutoLogin entries as well. These
attributes will be sent to the gateway along with the authentication response for a MAC
address. The gateway uses these attributes to control the behavior of the session for that MAC
address. Please refer to Edit Radius Attributes section for users for more information.
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Accounting
Since AutoLogins are treated just like normal RADIUS users, the RADIUS server collects
accounting data for each MAC address session. To view the accounting history for a particular
MAC address, click on the Accounting button on the Edit AutoLogin page.
The accounting records are displayed in reverse chronological order starting with the most
current session. The table also displays the total duration, internal IP address, location,
bandwidth usage and reason for session termination for each session. If they are more than 50
entries, click on the ‘Next Page’ link to view the subsequent pages.
Delete AutoLogin
To delete an AutoLogin entry, click on the Delete button on Edit AutoLogin page. Confirm the
deletion.
Deleting AutoLogin entry will delete all accounting information for the particular MAC address.
Locations
Each Wi-Fi network or hotspot is installed at a particular location. WiFiLAN allows you to
manage the list of locations. For hotspot providers having nationwide installations, location list
help their administrators to keep track of their hotspots, users and network infrastructure. The
location-based reports and statistics help administrators and managers understand the
customer demographics and trends based on a geographical area.
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New Location
To create a new location entry, click on the New Location tab. Fill or select the necessary fields
and click Create Location. You can also enter the Latitude and Longitude for that location.
You need to select a city-state combination while create a new location. If a particular city-state
combination doesn’t exist in the list, you can click on the New button to create a new combination.
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List Locations
To view all the locations defined in the system, click on the List Location tab. All the locations are
displayed in alphabetical order. You can sort the list by clicking on the underlined table headers.
The export button allows administrators to export the list of locations in an Excel format. The list
can be easily uploaded into Wi-Fi finder websites such as Jwire.
Edit Location
Click on the name of the location to edit a given location.
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The entries with * are compulsory.
Delete Location
To delete a location, click the Delete button on the Edit Location page. Click on the Delete
Location button to confirm your action.
53
How location ID is used?
Location ID is important during user registration process. To associate the new user with a
particular location, it is necessary to pass the location ID along with the registration request.
WiFiLAN registration module will use the location ID to associate the user to a proper user group
and location. Please refer to External Website Integration section for more information.
User Approvals
A typical user registration is a one-step process. The user visits a registration page, fills a form
along with his credit card information and submits it. If the registration succeeds, then the
user’s account is created in the RADIUS database and the user can begin using the Internet
service.
However, sometime wireless ISPs or network operators may have to introduce a two-step user
registration process. For example, a university may decide to provide Internet service free to its
students but charge the visitors who visit the campus. Since student population is dynamic and
every student may not need access, the network operator can allow free registration for
students and paid for visitors. The student registration has to be approved before the account
becomes active. The approval similar process can be used by wireless ISPs while signup bulk
deals with apartment properties or hotels.
In approval process, the registration goes to the administrator for approval before the account
becomes active. The administrator can approve or deny the registration. The denied users are
purged from the database using the Purge Denied feature.
List Approvals
All users submitted for approval are displayed under List Approval page. To view this page click
on RADIUS -> Approval menu. The table displays the list of all pending approvals. Each entry
consists of approve/deny actions radio buttons, Name of the user, location, apt number (if
applicable) and signup date.
Administrators can select approve or deny action for each entry and then hit submit. All
approved users will be activated in the system and denied users will be suspended. The
administrator can navigate to the Purge Denied tab to clean the denied users.
The search section allows administrators to search for a particular user based on user attributes
or signup location.
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To view the detail information about the user, click on the user’s name.
Purge Denied
Administrators can delete / purge all denied users using the Purge denied page. To purge all
users in the list, check the box in the Purge column header or check the individual checkbox to
purge a specific user.
All user information is lost once the account is purged.
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User Import and Export
WiFiLAN allows you to import and export list of users so that administrators can view or user the
user data in other applications. The exported data can be loaded in Excel to generate custom
reports and imported in other applications as needed.
Importing Users
To import users, click on the Import Users tab in the Users section. Select the name of the group
in which you need to import the users. Then select the format of the imported file. Currently,
WiFiLAN supports Airpath CSV format.
After selecting the above fields, the administrators need to select whether the users should be
imported as active or suspended users. By default, the import process assumes that the users
are active. If the Update Duplicate option is checked, then the import process will update the
data for existing users with the newly imported data.
Finally, the last field allows administrators to select the CSV file from the local computer. Click
the Browse button to select the appropriate filename and then press the Import Data button.
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After the import process finishes execution, it will print the total number of users imported
successfully. If the process encounters errors while importing a particular user record, then it
will list the user in the failed list and continue execution. The administrator can take appropriate
action (manually edit or add) for the failed imports.
Exporting Users
WiFiLAN allows administrators to export existing users in a CSV (Comma Separated Values)
format. The exported file can be opened in Excel and further converted to other format.
To export the existing users (active as well as suspended), Click on the Export button on the List
Users tab. Confirm the export action by clicking on the Export Users button. The browser will
prompt you the either open or save the CSV file. Choose appropriate action.
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To export a subset of user list, first perform the user search and then click on the export button.
The export feature will automatically export only those users that match the given criteria.
Following fields are exported in the CSV file:
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
Full name
Email
Address
City
State
Zipcode
Country
Home Phone
Work Phone
Cell Phone
Username
Password
Signup Date
Location
User Group
Status
Additionally, all the extended user attributes are also exported.
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Network Management and Monitoring
The network section is responsible for configuring and supervising the management and
monitoring of your Wi-Fi networks. It also allows administrators to store all network related
information in one central repository and help them to keep track of hardware inventory,
manage installation data, configure content filter and perform network audits.
To view the Network submenu click on the Network button in the Main Menu. It displays the
following submenu options:
Sub Menu
Admin
Function
Configure monitoring, alerts and network management services
Devices
Manage central repository that maintains all network related data
Status
Install
Reports
Displays network monitoring status and traps sent from the device
Track and maintains installation data
View network related reports
Admin
The Admin section allows administer to configure parameters for the monitoring server, specify
the actions to execute when an alert is received and configure the default values for network
devices.
Administer Monitoring
To configure the parameters for monitoring server, click on the Monitoring tab in the Admin
submenu. The administrators can define the default parameters that will be used by the
monitoring server. One can define the same set of parameters in the device section. However, if
they are not defined for a particular device, then the monitoring server will use the ones defined
in this section.
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Here’s a brief description for each parameter:
Parameter
Default Monitor Type
Monitoring Interval
Master Notify Emails
Notify After *
Notify Frequency
Up Notify Template
Down Notify Template
Description
Select the default protocol to be used for monitoring. The
monitoring server can use Ping (ICMP), HTTP or SNMP to
determine the status of a device.
The default interval between two consecutive monitors. To set
custom interval, enter a number greater than 10 in the Custom
Interval field
List of email addresses (comma separated) to which a notification
email will be sent if a device is down or comes back up.
Number of successive failures before sending DOWN notifications.
Generally you need to set this parameter to 2 or more to avoid false
positive reports.
Number of times the notifications should be sent. Values are:
1. Notify one time
2. Notify multiple times (sent for every monitor event)
3. Do not notify
The reason For notifications should be sent. Values are:
1. Card Expired Email
3. Deny Registration
4. End subscription Template
5. Free Registration
6. Monthly Charged Template
The Reason For notifications should be sent. Values are:
2. Card Expiring Email
3. Deny Registration
4. End subscription template.
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* This parameter is used to compensate for false positive notifications, which may arise due
to temporary network glitches.
Manage Alerts
Many gateways send SNMP traps to broadcast the occurrence of interesting events such as
device reboot, lost authentication, hacker attacks, configuration changes, etc. WiFiLAN’s alert
manager server is responsible for handling these alerts and processing them based on the rules
defined. In most cases, an email alert is sent to administrators whose email addresses are listed
in this section. To configure the notification emails, enter the list of email addresses (comma
separated) in the Alert configuration section.
Different devices send different types of traps. To configure traps for a particular device type,
select the device type in the Configure Traps section. All the listed traps for that device type will
be listed in the table below. First select all the traps that you would like to enable and click the
Update button. The same screen will reappear and the trap actions will be enabled. Now check
the appropriate actions for each enabled trap and hit Update button again.
The Log trap action will log the trap in a database. These traps can be viewed by clicking on the
Alerts tab under Status submenu. The Send Alert action will send a notification to the configured
email addresses.
Note: The Run Script action is currently disabled. It will be enabled in the future versions of
WiFiLAN.
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Device Defaults
Device Management section allows administrators to store several network related parameters
in a common repository. Many large hotspot providers tend to standardize their network
configurations so that they are easy to manage and deploy. To lessen the burden of entering
repetitive values in device configuration, WiFiLAN provides an option to specify the standard
network parameter once and reuse them when creating a new device entry. The Device Default
section allows administrators to define these standard values.
For more information on using the values defined in this section, please refer to Device Wizard
under Device Management.
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Device Management
The Device Management section allows administrators to maintain network device information
and configure their devices for monitoring. This section acts as a central repository of
information for network managers, technicians and administrators.
Before we dwell into this section, let’s understand a typical Wi-Fi network topology to gain
better understanding of the various terms involved in this section.
A non-trivial Wi-Fi installation consist of a wireless gateway and one or more access points, each
providing Wi-Fi coverage in a specific area. The wireless gateway acts as a bridge, connecting the
outside Internet or Intranet with the Wi-Fi network. Depending on the requirements, it may also
provide other network services such as DHCP, DNS, firewall, VPN client, RADIUS client, port
forwarding, etc. The wireless gateway is connected to other wireless access points (AP) via a
Radio Frequency (RF) link or a CAT5 connection. Each access point is capable of providing signal
coverage to a specific area. The gateway may also function as an access point. Network installers
may also install antennas to boost the signal or change the shape of the coverage area.
The client devices (laptops, PDAs, Tablet PCs, etc) connect to the access points to gain access to
network resources such as the Internet. The access points forward the client’s request to the
gateway, which acts as a gatekeeper to the outside world.
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This network topology allows network managers to scale their Wi-Fi networks to cover a large
area. In many cases, antennas are also used to expand the coverage area or concentrate the
signal in one particular direction.
The Device Management section allows network administrators to maintain data for both large,
complex Wi-Fi networks like the ones installed in RV Parks, apartments, metros, etc and smaller
ones like those installed in coffee shops, restaurants and even homes.
New Device
To create a new device entry, click on the New Device tab in the Devices submenu. A form with
several different sections appears on the screen. Each section captures specific attributes of the
device or the Wi-Fi network.
General Information
This section captures general information related to the device such as IP address, serial
number, device type, location, etc. All fields except SSID are mandatory. If a particular type of
device is not present in the drop-down list, then click on the New button to add the one needed.
It’s a good idea to put the vendor name followed by the model of the device.
Brief explanation of the fields is as follows:
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Parameter
Device Name
IP address
Serial Number
Wireless MAC
Address
LAN MAC
Address
SSID
Device Type
Location
Description
A friendly name for the device
The WAN address of the device. The monitoring server
uses this IP address to check the status of the device
The serial number listed on the back of the installed
device. The number is unique for a vendor
The MAC address of the internet port of the device.
The MAC address of the Internet port of the device
The SSID configured in the Wi-Fi device
Select one of the predefined type of the device
Select the location where the device is installed from the
drop-down list
RADIUS Information
This section captures the RADIUS configuration for the gateway device. This same information
can be entered in the RADIUS -> Gateway configuration. If administrator enters information in
this section, then a corresponding RADIUS gateway entry will be created for this device. The
RADIUS gateway entry is required for authenticating clients from the gateway.
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Parameter
Secret
Device
UserName
Device
Password
Device Group
Description
Shared secret for the gateway. This attribute is required
for all gateways to support user authentication
If the gateway required RADIUS authentication during
initialization, then enter the UserName of the gateway
Enter the password used for device authentication
The group for this device
Short descriptive text for the radius entry
Monitoring Information
The information defined here is used by Wifi-soft Monitoring Server to periodically check the
status of the device. All the parameters are active only if the Is Monitored checkbox is checked.
The information defined here overrides the default parameters defined in the Administer
Monitoring section as explained in the previous section. However, the list of email addresses
defined in this section will be appended to the one defined in the Administer Monitoring section.
This allows network administrators to create a hierarchy of email notifications in which email
related to a specific device are delivered to only concerned people, while the people in NOC will
get notifications from all devices.
Administrators can also set monitoring server to monitor the broadband modem separately. In
most hotspot installations, the modem and wireless router/gateway are separate and each of
them may fail separately. If the public IP of the modem is separate from the gateway/router IP,
then enter the IP address in Modem IP field. Else, the monitoring server will assume that the
Modem IP is same as the gateway IP.
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Description of the fields is as follows:
Parameter
Is Monitored
Monitoring Type
Monitor Port
Monitor Modem
Description
If checked, the Monitoring Server will monitor this device
at periodic interval
The type of protocol to be used for monitoring. The
monitoring server supports ping (ICMP), HTTP and
SNMP.
The Port that has to monitor.
If checked, monitoring server will monitor the broadband
modem connected to the gateway
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Modem IP
Modem Monitory
Type
Monitoring
Interval
Notify Enabled
Notify After
Email
Notifications
Special
Monitoring
The public IP address of the modem if it is different from
the gateway IP
The protocol used for monitoring modem.
The time interval between two consecutive monitoring
cycles. The user can choose a custom interval or 10
minutes or more by entering a number in the Custom
Interval field.
If checked, monitoring server will notify the interested
parties if the device is down or if the device is operational
after a failure
Number of successive failures before sending DOWN
notifications
List of email addresses to which notifications will be sent.
This list is appended to the default notifications list
If checked, Monitoring can be done by Satellite or Highloss links.
Network Information
The network information section allows administrators to capture various network-related
parameters for a device such as ISP information, internal LAN IP address, NAT and DHCP
information, etc. All the fields in this section are optional.
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Description of each field is as follows:
Parameter
ISP Vendor
Name
ISP Phone
ISP Email
ISP Contact
Gateway IP
Lan IP
Wlan Gateway
NAT Enabled
DHCP Enabled
WLAN Gateway
Description
The Name of the Internet Service Provider (ISP)
The contact number for ISP
Customer support email address for the ISP
The contact number (if any) for the ISP
The IP address of the gateway. This IP address is useful
when the gateway itself is installed on a NATed IP
address behind a router.
The LAN side IP address of the gateway. This IP address
will be visible from the Wireless LAN side.
Indicates whether NAT (Network Address Translation) is
enabled on the gateway
Indicates whether DHCP (Dynamic Host Control Protocol)
is enabled on the gateway
WLAN Gateway IP address.
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Authentication Information
This section stores the authentication related data for the device. If the administrator’s account is
configured to view passwords, then all the passwords will be displayed in clear text, else they will
be encrypted. The community name field is required if the monitoring type is set to SNMP.
Parameter
Admin Login
Admin Password
Community
Name
ReadOnly Name
PPPoE
Username
PPPoE Password
Description
The username for access the admin pages of the device
The password for admin pages
The SNMP community name (if supported) for the device.
This field is required if the monitor type is set to SNMP. It
is also used to manage the device remotely using SNMP
MIBs.
The SNMP readonly community for the device
If the device is configured for PPP(Point to Point Protocol)
over Ethernet, then enter the username in this field
The password for PPPoE login.
Miscellaneous Information
This section collects miscellaneous information such as install date, firmware version, notes, etc
for the device. All fields are optional.
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Parameter
Install Date
Firmware Version
Notes
Is Paid
Latitude
Longitude
Description
The date on which the device was installed. Click on the
calendar icon to select the date.
The current firmware version
Administrators can enter any custom notes related to the
device in this field
Indicates whether the users on this device get free or paid
access
The latitude where the device is installed
The longitude where the device is installed
List Devices
To view all network devices in the system, click on the List Device tab. The table displays device
name in alphabetical order along with its IP address, device type and the monitoring state.
Administrators can view the details for a particular device by clicking on the name of the device.
As described in the earlier section, a device or gateway can be associated with multiple access
points or attached subdevices. If a device is configured with attached subdevices, then the
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device entry has a + or – sign next to their entry in device list. On clicking on the + sign, a list of
attached subdevices will be displayed below the device name. To collapse the device tree, click
on the – sign.
Administrators can also export the device list in a CSV format by clicking on the Export button.
The export feature is described in detail in the Export Devices section.
The list can be sorted according to a particular field by clicking on the underlined table header.
Administrator can click on the name of the device to edit a particular device or subdevice entry.
Edit Device
To edit device information, click on the device name in the List Devices section. A separate tab is
displayed for each section. The administrator can navigate through the tabs to edit the necessary
information and then click Edit Device button.
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Additionally, the Edit Device page also lists two sections to manage the installation and site
information associated with the device. Typically, the network installers are responsible for
filling the install information, which is later merged into the device information. To read more
about this feature, please refer to the Installation Management section in the document.
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Similarly, the Site tab displays the site related information, including site maps, associated with a
device.
In short, the Edit Device page provides administrators with a single, unified view of all the data
associated with a device.
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Add Sub-Device
This tab allows administrators to add new sub-devices (attached access points) to the network
configuration. Each sub-devices needs to be associated with a device (gateway) and can be
monitored along with the device. The Monitoring Server tunnels through the device to check the
status of these attached devices. This feature helps administrators to get a complete, up-to-date
status of their network, and thus ensure the reliability of their network.
To add a new sub-device, click on the New SubDevice tab in the Devices submenu. A form with
multiple sections will be displayed.
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Most parameters are similar to those in the device tab. Some of the different ones are as
follows:
Parameter
SubDevice Name
Parent Device
Internal IP
Sub-Device Type
Tunneling Port
Tunneling Protocol
Internal Location
Section
Device
Device
Device
Description
Name given to the Device.
The parent device (gateway) for this sub-device.
The internal NATed IP of the device
E.g. 192.168.1.102
Device
The type of sub-device. Click on the New button to
create a new sub-device type
Monitoring
The tunneled port number that is configured in the port
forwarding section of the gateway. See Tunneling
section below
Monitoring
The protocol to use for tunneling the monitoring
request
Miscellaneous The internal location where the sub-device is installed.
E.g. On Northeast light pole.
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Monitoring using Tunneling
Monitoring complete Wi-Fi network (including attached devices) is one of the distinguishing
features of WiFiLAN. We believe that any Wi-Fi networks that are not monitored regularly are
inherently unreliable. Moreover, all network elements should be monitored including attached
access points to ensure that connectivity is solid and customers get a reliable service.
WiFiLAN seamlessly tunnels through the gateway to periodically monitor the attached subdevices. This tunneling mechanism is administered by setting the tunneling port and tunneling
protocol in the Monitoring Section of Sub-Device tab. Additionally, the administrators also have
to enable port forwarding on the gateway as explained below.
Port forwarding on Gateway
For monitor using tunneling to work, administrators have to enable port forwarding on the
gateway. This allows the monitoring server to tunnel through the gateway to check the status of
the attached access points (sub-devices).
Assuming that an access point’s internal IP address is 192.168.1.101, we can configure port
forwarding from port 8101 to port 80 of the access point. Once this port forwarding is set up,
the gateway will send all requests on port 8101 to port 80 of the access point. The
administrators have to ensure that no other application or device is using port 8101, else the
application will not work correctly. Typically, the chance of port conflicts with larger port
numbers like 8101 is low.
Edit Subdevice
To edit a subdevice, you need to first expand the device entry and then click on the
corresponding subdevice name. All the subdevice entries are displayed in a tabbed form. Click
on the particular tab, edit the corresponding entry and click the submit button.
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Deleting Subdevice
To delete a subdevice entry, click on the Delete button on the edit subdevice page. Please note
that all subdevice information including monitoring records will be permanently lost.
Network Status
The Network Status page displays the status report of all monitored devices in a tabular format.
To view Network Status, click on the Status submenu and then on the Network Status tab. A
table listing all the monitored devices is displayed on the page. The table uses a color-coding
scheme to identify the status of each device. Each device entry can be expanded to view the
status of each
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sub-device. WiFiLAN will automatically expand a device entry if it detects one or more subdevices have failed monitoring.
Each table entry displays the name of the monitored device, the location, IP address, current
status, last monitored time and the heartbeat time (if supported) for the device. Based on the
current status of the device, the list highlighted in Red, Orange, Yellow, Green or White. The
description for the color-coding is as follows:
Color
Red
Orange
Yellow
Green
White
Description
The device is down since it is unreachable
from the monitoring server
The modem is reachable, but the device
may be down or not functional
The device was temporarily down in the
last 24 hours, but is UP and reachable from
the monitoring server
The device is UP and reachable
The device is not monitored
The monitoring history for a particular device can be viewed by clicking on the current status of
the device – UP or DOWN. Administrators can also view the administration page for the gateway
in a separate browser window by clicking on the IP address for the device. For some gateways,
WiFiLAN will automatically pass the username and password (configured in the Authentication
Section) to the URL thus allowing administrators to directly log into the administration pages.
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For attached devices, the URL for accessing administration page is automatically constructed
using the tunneling port. This allows administrators to click on the IP address field for the subdevice and directly access the administrative pages. Based on the requirements, the
administrator can change the firmware parameters on these pages.
Administrators can also search for device status based on the search criteria defined in the
search box.
Monitoring Details
To view the monitoring details for a device, click on the current status of the device on the
Status page. A table displaying the status history over past 24 hours is displayed. This table helps
the administrator to determine the exact time when the device failed to respond to monitoring
request.
Status Change History
The status change history allows administrators to track the changes in the monitored status of
each device. The monitoring server will log an entry in the database as soon as it detects a status
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change in the monitored status of the device. A status change occurs when the monitored state
of the device changes from DOWN to UP or vice versa.
Administrators can also search for the change in the status based on the device and subdevice
name or based on a date range. The history also helps WiFiLAN to calculate the reliability of a
particular device.
Network Alerts
Some advanced gateways have a feature to track interesting events and send SNMP traps to a
remote server. For example, a gateway may send an alert to the administrator if it detects a
change in its configuration file or if the administrative login fails consecutively. So, if a malicious
user is trying to again access to the gateway or is trying to change the configuration file, the
administrators will be notified immediately. This feature helps administrators ensure that all
their remote devices are operating properly and the reliability of the network is maintained.
WiFiLAN Alert Manager keeps track of all the alerts received from the remote devices. It can
either log them in a database and/or notify administrators via email. The administrators can
view the alert history on the List Traps page. To view the page, click on the Status submenu and
then on the List Traps tab. The alerts are listed in reverse chronological order. A short
description indicates the reason why the alert was generated.
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Note: WiFiLAN cleans the old alerts periodically. All alerts older than 3 months will be removed
from the system.
IP change management
Some customers choose to install their Wi-Fi networks on a dynamic IP address to save
operational cost of their networks. Dynamic IP addresses are cheaper than static IP addresses.
However, these networks run into trouble when the IP address changes since the RADIUS server
fails to authenticate users from that gateway unless the gateway configuration is updated with
the new IP address.
The IP change management feature in WiFiLAN helps administrators to use dynamic IP
addresses on their networks without having to worry about changing the RADIUS and other
configurations when the IP address changes. WiFiLAN automatically detects the IP change and
makes the necessary configuration changes so that the downtime for network is avoided. Please
note that this feature is not supported by all gateways. Please contact our technical support to
find out whether your wireless gateway supports this feature.
Additionally, WiFiLAN also can detect a new device on the network using SNMP. WiFiLAN sends
an email notification to the administrator when it detects a new device. The administrator can
quickly configure the new device and WiFiLAN, and make the device operational within minutes.
This feature is especially important when administrators need to keep track of several
distributed installations and reduce the installation time.
Install Management
A non-trivial Wi-Fi installation generates a sizable amount of installation data such as operating
channel for AP, SSID, internal IP for an AP, MAC address, operating mode, antenna type,
direction, operating frequency band, etc. All this information becomes useful when a customer
calls with a problem or when a maintenance representative needs to service the installation. If
the Wi-Fi installations are remote and a technical person is not present on site, then this kind of
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information hard to capture after the network is installed and operational. The best time to
capture this information is during the installation and configuration time, when the field reps
can quickly fill the technical data after the installation is done.
WiFiLAN provides an interface to easily capture this information, manage it and then
integrate/merge it with rest of the data for the Wi-Fi network. This feature streamlines the
installation process and captures the necessary network information in one central repository. It
is particularly effective if the network managers introduce the install hardware and log data
process to their install teams. This will ensure that all the field data is captured in a timely
manner thus saving time and cost when the networks are maintained or a customer service calls
are handled.
Collecting Install Data
To collect install data, click on the New Install Info tab after clicking on the Install submenu. The
tab contains a form that collects all the install related data. The field installer can fill this form after
they finish doing the install but before they leave the site.
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A short description for each parameter in this section is as follows:
Parameter
Device Name
MAC Address
Username
Password
Access Point
Model/subdevice
model
Firmware
IP Address
Description
The name of the device or subdevice
The MAC address of the device/sub-device
The username for admin pages
The password for admin pages
The type of model for the access point. Only
administrators can add new types of models to the list
The current version of firmware installed on the access
point or the gateway
The public IP address of the device
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Operating Mode
Channel
Antenna Type
Antenna Direction
SSID
Signal Strength
Band Frequency
Lightening Protector
Client Bridge Device
Amplifier Power
Rating
Config File
Netstumbler Log File
The operating mode for the access point. The options
are:
AP Mode
Bridge Mode
Repeater Mode
The operating channel for the device
Type of antenna installed along with the access point.
Administrators can add new types to this list
The direction in which the antenna is pointing
The SSID broadcasted by the access point
The average signal strength found at the location where
the device is installed.
The operating band for the access point. The values
are:
2.4 MHz
Mhz
MHz
Indicates whether a lightening protector is installed
If the operating mode is Bridge Mode, then this
parameter indicates the client for the bridge
The rating on the amplifier that supplies power to the
access point
The configuration file for the access point. Users can
upload the installed config file into the WiFiLAN
database
The file containing netstumbler logs collected over a
period of time.
List Install Info
To view the list of all the data collected for the installations, click on List Install Info tab. The
entries are sorted in alphabetical order of the location name. The M icon next to the device
name indicates that the install information was not merged with the existing information about
the device in WiFiLAN. The administrators can click on the device name to view all the install
information about the device.
The list can be sorted in ascending or descending order by clicking on the underlined column
header.
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To merge the install information with existing device data, the administrators can click on the M
icon next to the device name. A dialog box prompts the administrators to select the device/subdevice for merging the information. On confirming the dialog box, the install information will get
associated with the device data and will get displayed in the Install tab on Edit Device/SubDevice page.
Site Management
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WiFiLAN helps administrators manage the site related information like site maps and contact
details of the site owner and manager. This information becomes available in the Site tab of the
device information.
To add new site details, click on the New Site tab in Install submenu and fill the appropriate
details. Administrators can enter URLs for physical and layout maps of the site. These maps can
help customer service personnel understand layout of large site to resolve coverage issues or
diagnose other RF related issues.
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Note: The map image files will have to be stored at a publicly accessible address. Administrators
can choose to upload these files on Wifi-soft’s FTP server from where they can be easily
accessed.
List Sites
To view the site list, click on the List Sites tab after clicking the install submenu. The table
contains all the sites listed in alphabetical order. If administrators have configured the URLs for
the site maps, then users can view the site maps by clicking on the Display Map link for the
respective maps.
The list can be sorted in ascending or descending order by clicking on the underlined column
name.
Edit Site Details
To edit site details, click on the site name on the List Sites tab. Make the necessary change and
then click the Edit Site button to save changes.
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Sketched and Physical Maps
To view the sketched and physical maps of the installation sites, click on the corresponding
Display Map link on the List Sites page. The map image is displayed as shown below. To view the
image in its original size, click on the Original Size link.
Note: It is a good idea to mark the places where you have installed access points, antenna and
other network devices. This information is valuable to the network team in diagnosing RF
problems and connectivity issues.
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Customer Relationship Management
The Customer Relationship Management (CRM) section of WiFiLAN provides range of
services to help maintain and develop relationships with the customers. It also helps
customer service representatives to better serve the end users by using the various tools
provided under this feature.
To view the CRM submenus click on the CRM button in the Main Menu. It displays the
Sub Menu
Admin
FAQ
Knowledge Base
Function
Allows an administrator to configure various features in this
section
Manages problem tickets submitted by the end-users.
Provides ability to respond to them using email
Information of the assistance provided to the client. Ticket
information.
Allows an administrator to send mass emails to the end users.
Also manages email templates
Manages Frequently Asked Questions
Provides ability to add entries and search a knowledgebase
Reports
View various CRM related reports
Tickets
Calls
Emails
Problem Tickets
WiFiLAN provides set of tools to capture and manage the problem tickets submitted by the end
users. The administrators can build custom web pages to capture the problem ticket
information from the end user and then use WiFiLAN web integration module to log these
tickets in WiFiLAN’s problem ticket database. Using WiFiLAN administrators can assign these
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tickets to support technicians, track their progress, resolve the issues and generate reports for
the management.
Ticket Configuration
After the custom web page is integrated with WiFiLAN, the administrators need to configure the
problem ticket section in WiFiLAN by clicking on the Admin submenu and then on the Ticket
Config tab.
The brief description of each field on this page is as follows:
Field
From Address
To Addresses
CC Addresses
SMTP Server Name
Send Confirmation
Confirmation
Template
Description
If non-empty, then the administrators will receive
notification about a new problem ticket from this
address
The list of comma-separated email addresses to which
notification is sent whenever the end user submits a
new problem ticket
The CC address for notification emails
The name of the SMTP server used to send notification
emails. If empty, Wifi-soft’s SMTP server will be used
Indicates whether a confirmation email should be sent
to the end user indicating that ticket was received.
The template used to send the confirmation email to
the end user.
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New Ticket
Usually the end users using Wi-Fi services submit new problem tickets by filling a form on
customer’s web page. However, WiFiLAN administrators or customer services representatives
can also create new problem tickets within WiFiLAN. This feature is useful to capture customer’s
problem in WiFiLAN when the end user calls customer service center with a problem.
To create a new problem ticket, click on the Tickets submenu and then click on the New Ticket
tab. A form will be displayed that collects various details about the problem.
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Brief description of various fields is as follows:
Field
Summary
UserName
Name
Problem Type
Priority
Category
Property
Assign by
Fix By Date
Problem Description
Network Outage
Status
Status Reason
Description
One line summary of the problem
The Radius username of the end user reporting the
problem
Full Name Of the User who is reporting the problem.
Type of the problem user is facing. The admin can
create a several categories for this.
The priority level for the ticket
The category of the ticket. Administrators can either
select existing category or create a new one by using
the New button.
The location from where the problem is reported
The agent who will handle the problem ticket.
Administrators can assign a problem ticket based on the
expertise or current load of the agent
Date by which the problem should be fixed
Long description about the problem
Whether the network at this location is down or not.
Status of the Ticket
1)Pending
2) Escalated.
3) Resolved.
Appropriate Reason for the Above problem status.
Note: The refresh button is used to refresh the category list when a new category is added. All
the form data will be lost when the form is refreshed. So it is a good idea to create a new
category before filling the form
List Tickets
To view all the tickets submitted in WiFiLAN, click on the List Tickets tab. The tickets are listed in
reverse chronological order. Each problem ticket is automatically given a unique identifier. The
administrator can click on the ticket identifier to view the details of given ticket.
Administrators can also search for tickets using various search criteria defined in the Ticket
Search section.
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Administrators can sort the list in ascending or descending order by clicking on the underlined
table header.
Ticket Summary
The ticket summary page provides an overview of the tickets present in WiFiLAN. The summary
table displays total number of tickets assigned to various agent based on the current state of the
ticket.
Ticket State
New
Assigned
Resolved
Closed
Delayed
Description
The ticket was newly created and not assigned to
any agent
The ticket was assigned to an agent by the
administrator
The agent has take appropriate action and the end
user’s problem is fixed
The administrator/supervisor has verified that the
user’s problem is fixed and closed the ticket
The agent has not resolved the ticket on time. The
ticket is open past the fix by date.
Administrators can also perform a quick search for a given ticket based on the ticket id, status or
assigned agent. The results are displayed a tabular format just like the List Ticket section
explained in the previous section.
Ticket Details
To view details for a particular ticket, click on the ticket identifier (E.g. TUNG000006) on the
summary or list ticket tab. The details of the ticket are listed in a table as shown below:
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The administrator can edit or delete or send a response to the ticket by clicking on the
appropriate button.
Ticket Response
WiFiLAN allows agents to send email responses to the end users who have submitted a problem
ticket. To send a response, the agent needs to click on the Reply button on the Ticket Details
tab. An email form with end user’s email address is displayed to the agent.
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The agent can draft a response and hit the Send Response button. Agents also have an option to
specify CC and BCC addresses so that they can copy the response to their supervisors if
necessary.
Edit Ticket
To change the ticket data, click on the Edit Ticket button on the Ticket Details tab. The agent will
not be allowed to change the non-editable fields like Originator or Ticket Id. Other fields can be
edited as needed and the changes committed by clicking on the Edit Ticket button.
If the status of ticket is changed to Resolved or Closed, then WiFiLAN will force the agent to
enter the resolution text and select a resolution identifier. The resolution identifier is mostly
used in reports generation and to track the trends in resolving problems.. To add new resolution
identifier, click on the New button next to the drop-down list. Some of the common resolution
identifiers are:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Problem Fixed
Not reproducible
Insufficient information
Deferred
Email Response
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A new note can be added to the problem ticket by clicking on the Add Note button. The agent
can also edit the existing note(s) if necessary.
View Notes
Notes allow agent and administrators to store snippets of information for a problem ticket. For
example if the agent deduces that the end user is experiencing a slow connection because of a
virus on the user’s machine, the agent can insert a small note for the problem ticket. If other
agent is assigned the problem ticket, then he can take the note into consideration while
resolving the customer issue
There is no limit on number of notes that can be added to a problem ticket. Each note can be
edited or deleted based on the need.
Edit Note
To edit a note, click on the <Edit> link at the bottom of the note section. Make necessary
changes and click Edit Note to save the changes. Similarly to delete a note, click on the <Delete>
link. Agent will be prompted to confirm the delete before deleting the note.
Customer Care
The Customer Care section of WiFiLAN allows administrators to send bulk emails to the end
users. The administrators can select users based on user group or a location. Additionally, this
section also allows administrators to create and manage email templates. The email templates
are pre-written email messages with placeholders that are sent to the subscribers as canned
messages. The email sender program will automatically substitute placeholders with customerspecific data before sending the email.
Send Customer Emails
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To send bulk emails to the end users, click on the Emails submenu and then on the Send Email
tab. The administrator can select the list of users who need to receive the bulk email. S/he can
choose users based on user group or a particular location. Alternatively, if the administrator
wishes to send emails to all his subscribers, then he can leave both fields blanks and hit the
Select button.
Next, the administrator can further refine the user list by selecting the users from multiple
selection list. To select all users press Ctrl-A. Finally, the administrator needs to select the email
template that will contain the subject and body of the email.
An email form containing the pre-defined text is displayed to the administrator. The administrator can
customize/change the text in the email and add/remove email addresses as required. He also needs to
specify an appropriate From Address for the email. Once all these changes are made, he can click on the
Send Email button to dispatch the emails to the selected users.
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WiFiLAN iterates through the individual email address and sends a separate email to each
selected user. All the placeholders in the email template are substituted with user-specific
attributes. For examples <<FullName>> will be substituted by “Bill Gates”.
Email Templates
Email template is a custom, cannel message that the administrator can create once and reuse
them. The template reduces the burden of typing a similar message every time and thus allows
the agent to handle busy load and save service time. An email template has few customizable
fields that vary based on the context. For example, the Firstname and Lastname are
customizable fields. They need to be substituted with the correct value from the database
before the email is sent to the concerned party.
New Email Template
To create a new email template, click on the Emails submenu and then on the New Template
tab. Fill out the details in the template and save the template by clicking the Create Template
button.
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Each template can be associated with a particular category. To create a new category click on
the New button. Additionally, the template can also contains different substitution parameters
that can be replaced with actual values before the email is sent to the end user. These
substitution parameters are listed below:
Template Name
FullName
FirstName
LastName
UserName
Password
Email
DateTime
TotalAmount
VerifyCode
VerifyUrl
Description
Full name of the user/subscriber
First name of the user
Last name of the user
The username (e.g. john@openhouse) of the user
User’s password. Not a good idea to include
passwords in email template. Use caution.
Email address of the user
Date and time when the email was sent
The total amount charged to user’s credit card using
registration process
The verification code. Please refer to Email
Verification section for details
Verification URL. Used only when verifycode is not
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SiteName
ManagerName
ManagerPhone
present
The name of the site/location from where the user
has registered
The manager’s name listed under the site information
The manager’s phone number listed under site
information.
Note: All the Placeholders are case-sensitive. Please make sure that you specify exact parameter
name inside << >>.
List Templates
To view all the templates defined in the system, click on the List Templates tab.
To edit a particular template, click on the name of the template.
FAQ Management
WiFiLAN allows administrators to create and maintain a list of Frequently Asked Questions.
People from different departments can refer to these FAQs while carrying out their duties. For
example, the customer service representatives can use them to provide answers to common
customer issues. The installation team can refer to them while doing a new installation. Any new
employee can understand your internal processes or Wi-Fi concepts by reading through them.
In its future version, WiFiLAN will provide an interface that will allow website developers to
fetch these FAQs dynamically to construct public FAQ pages on the website or login portal
pages.
New FAQ
To create a new FAQ, click on the FAQ submenu and then on the New FAQ tab. Enter
relevant data in the question and answer field and choose the correct category.
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Administrators can create new categories by clicking the ‘New’ button and entering the
new category name. Make sure that the Is Visible box is checked.
Note: Administrators can specify HTML tags in the text if required.
List FAQs
To view all the defined FAQs, click on the List FAQ button. The FAQs are categorized based on
the category. Administrators can search for FAQ by specifying various search criteria in the FAQ
search section. To search using multiple texts fields, enter the text separated by white space.
E.g. “Wi-Fi adapters”
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Edit FAQ
To edit a FAQ, click on the question listed on the List FAQ page. The administrator can make
necessary changes and save the FAQ by clicking on the Edit FAQ button.
Administrators can delete the FAQ from the Edit page. To delete, click on the Delete button and
confirm the action.
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Knowledgebase
The knowledgebase feature in WiFiLAN allows administrators to create and maintain a rich
repository of information that people in all departments can use as reference. Unlike FAQs, the
knowledgebase can store any kind of free-form text like articles, reports, procedures,
information snippets and binary attachments. It contains a full-text search engine that allows
WiFiLAN users to quickly locate the information they need. The results are ranked based on the
relevance, with the most relevant item on the top of the list. The future version of WiFiLAN will
also integrate problem tickets, FAQs and knowledgebase items to create a central content
repository for the company.
Knowledgebase is usually built over time as the content is accumulated from variety of sources.
It also requires commitment from company’s employees to document any article of information
so that other team members can get benefited from it. However, once the knowledgebase is
built, it becomes a central place to find any information.
Creating New Entry
To create new knowledgebase entry, click on the K-Base submenu and then click on the New
Entry tab. An entry description form is displayed to the user. The user can enter any free-flowing
text in the description field. The topic helps knowledgebase categorize the content based on
various subjects. The topics can be nested i.e. Procedures is a sub-topic under Installation topic.
Additionally, the knowledgebase entry can also contain binary attachments. To attach a file,
click on the browse button and select the file that needs to be attached.
Note: In the current version of WiFiLAN, the attachments are not searchable.
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To create a new topic, click on the “New” button next to the topic field. Enter the name of the topic
and select the parent topic from the drop-down list. The parent topics hierarchy is displayed using
the following notation:
Parent -> Child -> Grand Child
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Search Knowledgebase
The Search K-Base tab provides an interface to search the knowledgebase using a text string.
Alternatively, administrators can also retrieve knowledgebase entries based on a particular topic.
The search string can contains multiple words separated by white space. The results of the
search are listed in descending order of relevance. The relevance (usually a decimal number)
indicates the relevance of the article with respect to the query. The higher the number greater is
the relevance of the document to the query.
Note: The relevance number doesn’t have a range and varies based on number of items in the
knowledgebase, search text and other internal parameters. A decimal number greater than one is
normal behavior.
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Entry Description
One can view the knowledgebase entry by clicking on the Summary column in result table. If the
knowledgebase search is performed based on topic, then the Score or Relevance entry is not
applicable (N/A), else the score indicates the relevance of the topic for that query.
One can change the description of the item by clicking on the “Edit” button. Additional
attachment can be added using the “New” button in the Attachment section and existing ones
can be deleted or saved to the disk using the “Delete” or “Save” button.
Edit Knowledgebase Entry
The Edit Entry tab allows WiFiLAN users to edit the existing knowledgebase entry. The tab
appears when the Edit button is clicked on the Entry Description page. Users can make
necessary changes to the text content and save the entry by clicking the Edit Entry button.
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Adding attachments
Administrators can add any type of attachment to a knowledgebase entry. Each entry can
contain zero or more attachments. To add an attachment click on the Add button next to
Attachment section on the entry description page. Upload the required file using the form
shown below.
The attachments can be viewed or removed from the entry description page by clicking on the
appropriate buttons.
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Billing
Billing is one of the important features for any paid Wi-Fi installation. WiFiLAN’s billing solution
provides a comprehensive sert of tools for handling all billing related activities associated with
the paid hotspot or Wi-Fi installation. It includes credit card authorization and clearing, user
management, provisioning users, reporting, promotions campaigns, prepaid coupons and
configuring flexible billing plans. WiFiLAN also integrates all billing information with RADIUS
and CRM features to provide a complete, integrated solution to the customers.
Billing management works in tandem with RADIUS server and a billing server. The billing server
is responsible for handling recurring and batch billing. The RADIUS server is responsible for
limiting user access based on billing plans (users signed up for a day should be given only day’s
access), enforcing restrictions specified on prepaid coupons, suspending users on credit card
failures and generating billing reports based on usage and other RADIUS parameters.
Manager can view over 10 different types of billing reports based on the historical and realtime data captured in the database.
To view the Billing submenus, click on the Billing button in the Main Menu. It displays the
Sub Menu
Admin
Users
Plans
Prepaid
Transactions
Promotions
Function
Configure parameters for the billing server.
View and manage billing users
Create and manage billing plans and taxes
Create prepaid coupons and view their usage
List transaction history and run manual debit and credit
transactions
Define promotion campaigns and view the promotion usage
Receipt
Generate and send receipt to the customer Location wise.
Reports
View over 10 different types of billing reports
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Billing Administration
Configure Billing
The Configure Billing tab allows administrators to control the functions of the billing server and
customize the operation of billing module. They can parameters to control the functioning of
the billing server. Any updates will take effect during the next execution cycle of the billing
server. Administrators can also specify various email templates that will be sent to the end-user
when the specific condition occurs in the billing process. For example, the Confirmation
template is sent to the end-user after the new user registration process is complete.
The table below provides a description of each parameter that is configured in this section
Attribute
Billing Cycle Time
Description
The time of the day when the billing cycle should be invoked
Cycle Frequency
From Billing Email
Cycle Frequency in number of Days.
The email address from where the billing emails will be sent to the
subscribers
Whether to notify new registrations to the email addresses listed below
Notify Registrations
New Registration
Emails
Billing Summary Emails
Daily Signup Email
Signup Receipt
Template
Monthly Receipt
Template
Card Decline Template
Card Expiring Template
Renewal Template
Account Expired
Template
SMS Template
Max Failed Attempts
Suspend On Fail
Release on Success
The email addresses (comma separated) that will receive notification
when new user registers
The email addresses (comma separated) that will receive billing
summary emails from the billing server
The email addresses (comma separated) that will receive notification
when user signup.
The receipt email template that is sent to the customer when the
customer’s signup.
customer’s credit card is charged
The email template sent to the customer when the credit card is decline
by the merchant gateway
The email template sent to the customer when the credit card is due to
expire
customer’s account will be renew.
customer’s account will expire.
The SMS template have to select from already created SMS Templates.
Number of times the billing server will try charging a customer’s credit
card. On exceeding the attempts, the customer’s account may be
suspended and customer will be notified. Please note that transaction
cost may be incurred for each failed attempt
Whether to suspend the customer’s account when the credit card
transaction fails
Whether to release the customer’s account (make it active) when the
credit card transaction succeeds after it was failed.
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Verify Card Updates
Whether to verify the credit card when the customer updates his/her
credit card from the account management portal
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Configure Gateway
Configures the merchant gateway parameters like the merchant account id and PIN code. The
list of supported merchant gateway is provided in the Gateway Type drop-down box.
Attribute
Gateway Type
Merchant ID
PIN Code
Confirm PIN Code
Description
Select the type of merchant gateway
The merchant gateway identifier provided by the
merchant bank
The secret PIN code for the account
Confirmation of PIN Code
Note: Please contact your merchant account provider for this information.
Configure Payment
This section captures the business and payment information of the WiFiLAN account holder. The
payment information is used to charge the account holder for using WiFiLAN services. The
address information is used for sending snail mails or payment checks (for customers who don’t
have their personal merchant account). The email address is used for electronic communication
with the customer.
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Note: This information is necessary for using WiFiLAN services
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Billing Users
WiFiLAN maintains billing user and RADIUS user accounts separately. This distinction is needed
to support free user accounts, prepaid coupons and bulk user accounts. While each billing user
will have a corresponding RADIUS user account, the reverse MAY not be true. Administrators
can create RADIUS users separately without entering any billing information. Such accounts are
used to support sites that provide free registration.
The billing user accounts will contains billing information such as credit card number, billing
address and card expiry date that is used for charging usage fee to the customer. A new billing
user can be created in two ways: 1) Registration/Signup portal page 2) New Billing User page in
WiFiLAN. In each scenario, WiFiLAN inserts a RADIUS account entry and a billing account entry in
the database.
Alternatively, administrators can also create billing account entry from an existing RADIUS user
entry. This any be used by sites that provide free access to their customers for the trail period
and then move them to paid accounts.
Billing User Summary
This page provides the summary of all the billable users in the system. The users are categorized
based on their primary location. Primary location is the site where they register for the Internet
service. The summary table displays active, suspended, new and total number of users per
location.
List Billing Users
The List Billing Users tab displays a table listing all users in the system sorted by their names.
The Status column indicates the status of user. The valid states are:
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





Active
Suspended
New
Verified
Denied
Expired
The RADIUS server will only authenticate active users. The table also displays the location, billing
plan and the signup date. To sort the table entries, click on the underlined table headers. If more
than 50 users are present, then administrators can browse through the list by clicking on the
NextPage and PrevPage links located at the top of the table.
Administrators can search for specific users based on their name, location and status. The name
search field can accept partial names, in which case all the users matching the partial name will
be displayed.
The list can be sorted in ascending or descending order by clicking on the underlined header.
Edit Billing User
To view or edit existing billing user information, click on the name of the user from the user list.
The user information is displayed in different tabs as shown below. The billing tab displays all
the billing related information such as billing address, card information, and billing plan. The
General information displays the address and contact information, while the Auth information
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displays the user’s group and encrypted password. To change any information, just update the
necessary fields and hit submit.
If the user’s status is changed from active to suspended then the user won’t be able to
authenticate with the RADIUS server. On the contrary, to unsuspend the user, change the user’s
status from suspended to active.
Note: If the card number is changed, then WiFiLAN does not verify the changes against the
merchant gateway. The new card number will be used during next billing iteration.
New Billing User
To create new billing user, click on the New User tab. If the New User button is clicked, then
both the RADIUS and billing information is collected separately as displayed below in the form.
The authentication section collects the RADIUS authentication information, the general section
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collects the general RADIUS information and the billing section collects the billing related
information for the new user.
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All fields marked with asterisk are mandatory.
Billing Plans
Administrators can define billing plans that the end-users can select during the registration
process. The user will be charge a usage fee based on the rates defined in the billing plan. Each
billing plan has a unique ID that needs to be passed to WiFiLAN during the registration process.
WiFiLAN will calculate setup fee with taxes and apply appropriate promotions before charging
the customer. The setup fee is a one-time charge and is generally charged during the account
registration process. The recurring fee, if any, is charged at the end of each billing cycle. The
billing cycle is defined along the plan.
WiFiLAN also supports time-based plans with validity periods. So, to create a daily plan that will
expire exactly after 24 hours, the administrator defines the plan with a validity period and
validity unit. The user account will be activated as soon as the registration completes and the
plan will remain valid for exactly one day. WiFiLAN will terminate access for the user after the
validity period is reached.
The billing cycle and validity periods are highly customizable. This allows administrators to
create highly customized billing plans, specific for their needs.
List Plans
To view all the plans defined in the system, click on the List Plans tab. The table displays all the
active and inactive plans in the system. Each entry in the table contains the plan name, the plan
ID, setup fee (in USD), recurring fee (in USD) and the status of the plan.
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To edit a particular plan, click on the name of the corresponding plan.
New Plan
To define a new billing plan, click on the New Plan tab. Administrators are given an option to
create a one-time or recurring billing plan as shown below:
Select the appropriate type of plan and click Select. Before creating a plan for a new location,
you need to create a plan group for that location. The group helps you neatly organize your
plans and view location based statistics for the plans. To create a new plan group, click on the
New button next to Plan Group field.
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Next, enter the appropriate information for the plan. Brief description for each field is given
below:
Attribute
Plan Name
Plan Group
Setup Fee
Recurring Fee
Description
Billing Cycle
Validity
Number of User
Is Active
Description
The name of the billing plan
Group name of the plan
The one-time setup fee for the plan in USD
The recurring fee that will be charged to user’s credit
card during each billing cycle. In USD.
Short description of the billing plan
Indicates the frequency of billing cycle. For example, it
should be 1 week for a weekly plan.
Enter the validity period for the plan. Select
appropriate validity unit from the drop-down list.
Number of users allowed to use the plan
Indicates whether the plan is active in the system
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Edit Plan
To edit an existing plan, click on the name of the plan in the List Plans tab. Please note that the
changes will take effect for the next billing cycle.
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Delete Plan
To delete a billing plan, click on the Delete button on the Edit Plan tab. Please note that only the
billing plans with no associated users can be deleted. If users are associated with a billing plan,
then an error will be flagged.
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How to use Billing Plan ID?
The billing plan ID is displayed on the List Plans page. This ID is important for the user
registration process. If you choose to create you custom portal pages, then you need to pass this
ID along with the registration request for all paid registrations. Please refer to External Website
Integration section for more information.
Billing Taxes
WiFiLAN allows administrators to define taxes against billing plans. This allows WiFiLAN to
automatically calculate taxes on the amount charged to the customer. If no tax is defined for the
billing plan, then the administrator needs to ensure that appropriate tax amount is included in
the setup or recurring fee of the billing plan.
Taxes will be automatically calculated during all (real-time, manual or recurring) WiFiLAN
transactions. A tax can have a sub-tax associated with it. Sub-Tax is calculated against the taxed
amount. For example:
List price: $20
Parent Tax (5% of list price): $20 * 5% = $1
Amount with parent tax: $21
Sub-Tax (2%): $21 * 2% = $0.42
Total amount with taxes: $21 + 0.42 = $21.42
List Taxes
To view all the taxes defined in the system, click on the List Taxes tab. The table displays the tax
name, location (if applicable), associated plan and the tax percentage. A tax can also have a subtax associated with it. Sub-Tax will be displayed as the child of parent tax.
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To edit tax information, click on the name of the tax.
New Tax
To create a new tax entry, click on the New Tax tab. Enter/Select the right parameters and click
submit button. To create a sub-tax, make sure that you select the right parent tax entry. Tax
Location and Tax Description fields are only for informational purpose.
Edit Tax
All existing taxes can be edited by clicking on the name of the tax on the List Taxes page. Make
the necessary changes and click the submit button. The changes to tax information will be
reflected in the next billing cycle or during the next registration process.
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Administrators can also delete the tax by click on the delete button. Confirm the action to
complete the delete operation.
Prepaid Cards
Prepaid cards or coupons are used for giving temporary access to transient users. Normally,
prepaid system is used in places where credit card signup is not viable and the hotspot operator
needs an alternative way of collecting fees from the subscribers. Prepaid coupons usually have
restricted time duration or limits of bandwidth or other usage parameters. The cards are
automatically activated when they are used and deactivated once the restriction is reached. For
example, 3 hours prepaid card will be expire after the user had finished using the card for 3
hours.
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Prepaid cards are also a good way of introducing your service to your subscribers. Instead of
asking the subscribers to signup for recurring plan, the service provider can first ask the
subscriber to try out the service using the prepaid card system. If the potential subscriber is
satisfied, then she can signup for the monthly subscription service.
Prepaid coupons can vary based on the restrictions applied on them and how they are activated.
WiFiLAN provides an array of options to the administrator to create prepaid cards. He can create
prepaid cards based on following criteria:
Criteria
Location
Usage Duration
Bandwidth usage
Number of sessions
Number of clients
Number of days
Specific Dates
Description
Cards can be used at a particular location only
Cumulative usage duration. Can have multiple session
Total bandwidth upload and downloaded
Total number of times the user has logged in
Total number of client machines the user used to log in
Number of days the card will remain active
Specific dates when the cards can be used
Administrators can also create cards based on combinations of the above criteria. For example,
to create cards for 3 hours durations that will be valid for 1 day, the administrator can choose
Usage Duration and Number of Days option. WiFiLAN will automatically disallow conditions that
are inconsistent.
Cards created with specific criteria are organized into prepaid groups. By changing the property
of the group, administrator can change the properties of all the cards listed in the group. For
example, if the administrator decides to change 3-hour limit to 4 hour limit, she just needs to
change the Usage Duration field for the group and the change will take effect for all cards.
WiFiLAN provides two different options to export the cards. The CSV format allows
administrators to view the list of cards and other relevant information in an excel document.
The data can be further modified or exported for printing. The PDF format allows administrators
to print the prepaid coupons on a business card paper. WiFiLAN provides an option to customize
text and images on these cards thus allowing administrators to create professional looking cards
ready for distribution.
List Prepaid Cards
To view all the prepaid cards in the system, click on the List Prepaid tab. The list of prepaid
groups is displayed in a tabular format. Each row displays the name of the group, total cards
contained in the group, total number of cards used, expiry date (if any) and a button to view the
cards within the group.
Administrators can also search for specific cards within the groups based on various criteria
displayed in the search box. All cards, irrespective of their group, matching the search criteria
are listed to the user.
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Administrators can view and edit the properties of a specific prepaid group by clicking on the
name of the prepaid group. Short description for each field is displayed on the right side of the
form. Administrator can change the necessary parameters for the group and save the changes
by clicking the submit button.
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To view all the prepaid coupons within a particular prepaid group, click on the List button.
WiFiLAN displays all the prepaid coupons within the group as shown below. The coupons that
have been used are displayed with active status. Unused cards are marked as new. The third
coupon displays the total usage time of the card. Administrators can export the prepaid codes
by clicking on the export button.
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New Prepaid Cards
The New Prepaid tab is used to create new prepaid cards. Creation of new prepaid codes is a
two-step process. In the first step, the administrator selects the options that decide the criteria
for creation of prepaid cards. The next step will prompt the administrator to enter the values for
the selected restrictions. WiFiLAN will automatically create a prepaid group for the newly
created prepaid cards.
The first-step prompts the user to enter the following criteria:
Criteria
Password Required
Location Required
Prepaid Type
Activation Type
Description
Whether to create prepaid coupons with a randomly
generated pincode
Whether the card is valid only for specific locations
The type of restriction on the prepaid cards
1. Usage Time
2. Bandwidth usage
3. Specific Dates
4. Number of sessions
5. Number of days
6. Total clients
How the cards are activated. Valid types are
1. On first use
2. Immediately on creation
3. On a specific date
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The second-step will create a form based on the criteria selected in the first step. For example, if
usage time and number of days are checked, then WiFiLAN will prompt the administrator to
number of duration minutes and number of days as shown below. Additionally, administrator
also needs to enter a unique group name, number of cards to generate, user group for the cards
and the price for cards.
Prepaid Usage
To view the usage for a specific prepaid card, click on the username of the card in the List
Prepaid tab. The accounting information for the card is displayed along with the summary of the
total usage.
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Export Prepaid Coupon codes
WiFiLAN provides two options for exporting prepaid cards. The CSV (comma separate values)
format is used for exporting coupon codes to other applications. The list of cards exported in
this format can be imported in Excel document and proceeds as needed.
Administrators can also export list of coupon codes in PDF format. WiFiLAN generates a
professional looking PDF document contains the coupon codes that can be directly sent to
printer for printing. Each coupon code is formatted into a business card sized box along with
relevant information like price, expiry date, duration, etc. WiFiLAN also allows administrators to
insert custom headers, footers, background image and logo on each card thus allowing
administrators to create professional looking cards.
The text and images on these cards are customized using the form shown below.
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To export prepaid codes, click on the export button in the top right corner of the page displaying
prepaid codes.
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Note: If you have Abode Reader 4.0 or higher, then WiFiLAN will automatically open a new
browser window to display the PDF document
Billing Transactions
All credit card transactions for end-users are recorded in WiFiLAN database. Transaction can
take place in three ways:
1. Manual transaction: Administrator charges existing customer’s credit card by manually
running the transaction against the merchant gateway. This is done using the New
Transaction tab.
2. Real-time transaction: Transactions are done in real-time when a subscriber registers
with the service using WiFiLAN web integration interface. The subscriber’s credit card
needs to be cleared and charged before the account is created in WiFiLAN database.
3. Recurring transaction: WiFiLAN billing server executes these transactions every night by
running credit cards through the merchant gateway. Usually these transactions are done
to charge recurring fee for regular subscribers.
All transactions incur transactions fees. If you are using your own merchant account, then
please consult with your merchant bank to find the rates for your transactions. Wifi-soft will
charge a small usage fee for processing your transactions. On the other hand, if you are using
merchant account provided by Wifi-soft then please consult with our sales staff to determine
your transaction rates.
List Transactions
To view existing transactions, click on the List Transactions tab. The table displays all recorded
transactions sorted in descending order by transaction date. The list contains both successful
and failed transactions and the administrator can click on the specific transaction to view the
details of the transaction.
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Each table entry contains the name of the user, order ID, type of transaction (credit or debit),
status of transaction, amount charged or credited and the date of transaction. The list can be
sorted in ascending or descending order by clicking on the underlined table header.
Administrators can also search for specific transaction based on various search criteria listed in
the search box.
Transaction Details
The transaction details page displays the status of each transaction. It will display all the return
codes returned by the credit card processor of the merchant bank. WiFiLAN automatically
parses the response codes and displays a user-friendly message to the administrator.
The table below provides a brief description of each result field.
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General Parameters
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Attribute
Billing Name
Plan Name
Response Code
Amount Charged
Transaction Type
Card Number
Transaction Date
Description
Name of the customer
Name of billing plan
Result of the transaction – approved or declined
The total amount charged
Type of transaction
Encrypted card number of the customer
Date of the transaction
OpenECHO Result Parameters
Attribute
Auth Code
AVS Result Code
Transaction ID
Decline Reason
Security Result
Description
The authorization code returned by the merchant’s
billing gateway
The result of AVS (address verification) process
Unique transaction ID
The reason for declining the transaction
Result of security verification
Authorize.Net Result Parameters
Attribute
Response Code
Auth Code
AVS Result Code
Transaction ID
Decline Code
Security Result
Description
The response code of the transaction
The return code for credit card authorization. 1 =
success, 0 = failure
AVS check code. WiFiLAN translates the code into userfriendly string
Unique transaction identifier
The code for declined transactions
The return code for CVV match
WiFiLAN also displays last 10 transactions for the user sorted in reverse chronological order.
New Debit Transaction
To manual charge (debit) an existing customer’s credit card, click on the New Transaction tab.
Administrator needs to first search for the specific user and then run the transaction against
his/her billing account. To get a list of all active billing users, click on the search button without
specifying any search criteria.
The search results are displayed in tabular format. The administrator clicks on the name of the
desired user to view the transaction form as shown below. WiFiLAN pre-populates all the form
entries based on the data present in the billing database. The administrator is free to change
any field as needed.
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To run a debit transaction, select debit transaction type and click the Select button. Next select
the billing plan from the drop-down list. If the administrator needs to charge specific amount
(not related to any plan), then select ‘Select Amount’ entry and click on Select button. If a billing
plan is selected, then the Amount field automatically gets populated with the desired amount. If
any taxes are defined against the billing plan, then the tax amount is calculated and added to the
total amount. Additionally, the administrator can also apply discount to the amount. To apply
discount, enter the amount (numbers only) and click the Apply button. The grand total is
automatically calculated based on the options selected above and remained non-editable.
On the other hand, if ‘Select Amount’ field is selected, then the administrator can specify an
amount that needs to be charged against the credit card. If any tax needs to be applied, the
amount should be included with the entry.
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Before the transaction is processed through the merchant bank’s processor, the administrator is
given one more chance to review and confirm the transaction. The Confirm transaction page
displays all the details of the transaction. If the administrator needs to change any data in the
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transaction, then s/he needs to go back and re-initialize the transaction. To submit the
transaction to the payment gateway, click on the Submit Transaction button.
WiFiLAN will display a success or error message based on the result of the transaction. The
response from payment gateway is logged in the transaction table.
Note: Based on the type of payment gateway and its configuration settings, the payment will be
cleared immediately or after a few hours. Please refer to your payment gateway documentation
for more details on how the transactions are processed.
New Credit Transaction
Administrator can also credit charges back to customer’s credit card using the Credit feature in
WiFiLAN. Please note that the merchant bank needs to support this feature on its gateway.
To credit customer’s charge, select ‘credit’ transaction type of the New Transaction tab.
WiFiLAN will display all the previous transactions for the customer. Administrator can select one
of the previous transactions. Each transaction entry has plan name, amount charged and the
date of the transaction. Once the transaction is selected, the refund amount is displayed to the
administrator. Administrator can confirm the transaction and then submit it to the credit card
processor.
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If successful, the merchant gateway will credit the specified amount to customer’s credit card.
WiFiLAN will log the credit transaction in the database.
Promotions
Promotion is a great marketing tool to increase subscriber base and promote new or existing
service. Administrators can run promotion campaigns that provide incentives like no setup cost,
discount on monthly fee or free service for specified time to lure new customers. WiFiLAN
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makes it easy for the administrator to create and track these promotional campaigns using the
promotion feature.
Promotions usually have a unique promotion code that the new customers use during
registration process. This code helps WiFiLAN ascertain the kind of benefits the particular
customer will enjoy. The service provider is responsible for distributing the promotion codes to
their potential subscribers.
If the customer signs up with a promotion code, then WiFiLAN will automatically apply the
promotion to the customer’s account. Once a particular promotion code is used, it is
deactivated from the system.
New Promotion
To create new promotion codes, click on the New Promotion tab under Promotion submenu.
The table below explains the purpose of each parameter in the form:
Attribute
Promotion Name
Dates
Number of Cards
Credit Amount
Plan
Description
Is Active
Description
Friendly name to identify the promotion. For example:
AugustPromotion
The range of dates during which the promotion is
active.
Number of codes to generate
Amount in USD to credit to the customer who uses the
promotion code
The plan associated with these promotion codes.
Short description of the promotion
Whether the promotion is active
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List Promotions
To view the promotion campaigns currently defined in the system, click on the List Promotion tab.
The list of promotions is displayed in a tabular format. Each table row contains the name of the
promotion, credit amount, plan name, total number of promotion codes and the start date for the
promotion. To view the current status of a particular promotion, click on the List button under the
action column.
To edit a promotion, click on the name of the promotion.
View Promotion History
The promotion history page displays the status of each promotion code i.e. whether the code is
used or not. If used, then the table displays the name of the user who used the promotion code
and the date on which it was used.
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General Administration
The general administration portion of WiFiLAN provides options to manage WiFiLAN accounts,
edit profile, view application usage history and manage extended device and user parameters.
To view the submenu for general administration, click on the Admin menu option in the Main
Menu.
Administrator Account
WiFiLAN administrators can create unlimited number of sub-accounts for their staff. Each subaccount can be configured differently thus allowing administrators to precisely control access to
each feature in WiFiLAN. For example, the billing staff will need access to billing and Radius
sections in WiFiLAN but may not be interested in network related data. On the contrary, the
network technicians would have full control to network data but would not need access to
billing related data. All reports, especially billing ones, should be only accessible to managers
and executives. WiFiLAN’s fine-grained access control list allows administrators to easily create
such complex access rules.
Accounts are categorized into two types – admin and viewer. Admin accounts have privileges to
add, edit and delete WiFiLAN data, while the viewer accounts are restricted to view-only access
of WiFiLAN data. Furthermore, the access control list is used to configure access for each type of
account.
New Admin Account
To create a new WiFiLAN sub-account, click on the Accounts submenu and then on New Admin.
Typically the administrator creates a new account to restrict a portion of WiFiLAN to company
staff. The administrator has to properly configure the access control list for such accounts.
The username should be unique and should only contain alphanumeric characters. The
password should be at least 6 characters long.
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The Show Password parameter indicates whether the account will be allowed to view end user
or device passwords. If the parameter is unchecked, then the passwords will be displayed in
encrypted form.
The Access Control section allows administrators to configure the access rights to various
WiFiLAN features. The administrator can select appropriate radio button against the feature
name depending upon the right for that account. The description of each option is as follows:
Field
Full Control
Edit
ReadOnly
Hidden
Description
The account holder has full control for the feature
including deletion rights
The account holder is only allowed to view and
change the existing information. He can’t delete
the record.
The account holder can only view the information
in this feature. No edits or deletes are allowed
The feature is hidden from the account holder.
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Note: Only, the account holders (including administrator) having access to Admin Accounts
feature can create or change account access.
List Accounts
To view the list of all accounts, click on Accounts submenu and then on the List Admins tab. A
table containing all the accounts in the system is displayed. The administrator can click on the
account name to view and edit the account information.
Viewer Accounts
The viewer accounts are used for providing view-only access to the people outside the
organization. These accounts are purely for viewing WiFiLAN data and don’t have access to all
the features in WiFiLAN. These accounts are generally used for viewing reporting and statistical
information in WiFiLAN.
Viewer accounts do not have access to main WiFiLAN application. Instead, a subset of WiFiLAN
is created specially for viewer account. This sub-application is accessible from the following link:
https://www.wifi-soft.net/wifilan/wisplogin/
Like Admin accounts, the viewer accounts have two sections – account information and access
control. The account information section allows administrators to enter username, password,
account name and email address for the viewer account. Additionally, the administrator can
specify the one or more locations for the viewer account. If the locations are specified, then the
viewer account will have access only to the data for those locations. All the other location
information will be hidden for that viewer account. The administrator can choose to leave the
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location field blank, in which case the viewer account will have access to data for all locations.
This feature is useful to provide the view-only access to location managers for a particular
hotspot.
The access control section allows administrators to specify the features that can be viewed by
the account holder. To hide a feature, select the Hide radio button. Moreover, if all the features
for a particular section (E.g. Billing) are hidden, then the menu for that section (Billing) will be
automatically hidden in the Main Menu.
Once all the viewer account is configured, the administrator can click on the Create Viewer
button to create a new viewer account.
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List Viewer
To view the list of all viewer defined in the system, click on the List Viewer tab. A table
containing information for all viewer accounts is displayed. The administrator can click on the
account name to view or edit the information for a specific viewer.
Usage History
WiFiLAN keeps track of all login and database changes in WiFiLAN. This feature allows
administrator to monitor changes done by various WiFiLAN account holders and creates an
audit trail to track changes in the application. It may also help in diagnosing problems by
backtracking the changes made to WiFiLAN configuration.
Account Login History
To view login history for the application, click on History submenu and then on Login History tab.
The table displays all WiFiLAN access history in reverse chronological order. The Remote IP
address indicates the IP address of the client’s machine. If the logout time is empty, then the
session is either alive or the user has closed the browser without logging out explicitly.
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Database Change History
The database change history displays all the changes done to the database using the WiFiLAN
application. The action column indicates the action taken by the WiFiLAN account holder, while
the Description column gives a short description of the action. Tracing through this history will
provide administrator the exact sequence of changes made to WiFiLAN data.
Extended User Attributes
WiFiLAN defines a standard set of RADIUS user attributes like name, address, phone numbers,
etc. However, many times, customers need to capture custom attributes of their end users.
WiFiLAN allows administrators to add extended attributes to capture this extra data and present
it along with the standard information. This allows administrators to store arbitrary kind of data
about their end users in WiFiLAN.
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New User Attribute
To add a new user attributes, click on the User Attrs submenu and then on New User Attribute
tab. Enter appropriate information in the form and click on Create Attribute. Make sure that the
Is Visible checkbox is checked.
List User Attributes
To view all the extended attributes defined for end users, click on the List User Attributes tab. A
table showing all the extended user attributes is displayed. To edit an attribute, click on the
attribute name.
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Extended Device Attributes
Many times the existing fields in device configuration are not enough to store all the
information about the device. Administrators can add new fields to the device section by
defining extended device attributes.
New Device Attribute
To add a new device attribute, click on the Device Attrs submenu and then on New Device
Attribute. Enter data in appropriate fields and make sure that the Is Visible box is checked. A
new attribute is added to the device section.
The new attribute appears in the Extended Attribute section on the New Device and Edit Device
page.
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List Extended Device Attributes
To view all the extended device attributes, click on List Device Attributes tab. A table with all
attribute names is displayed in alphabetical order.
Edit Profile
The edit profile page allows administrators to change the profile for the WiFiLAN customer.
Besides setting the contact details, address and home page information, administrators can also
select the currency, date format and default time zone for the customer. WiFiLAN uses this
configuration to automatically calculate data adjustments and displaying dates and currency
symbols on WiFiLAN pages.
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Note: WiFiLAN uses algorithms to automatically adjust all reports, graphs and display
information based on the selected time zone.
Changing Password
To change the current account password, click on admin accounts and then type the new
passwords and confirm password in the password and confirm password field. Click on the
Update Password button to confirm the password change. The changes will take effect when the
account holder tries to login the next time.
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Advertisements
Advertisement section is used for managing advertisements displayed on the login and landing
portals. Administrators can upload any types of advertisements as long as they confirm to the
size specifications laid out on the page. The advertisements can be fixed or animated depending
on the requirements. Each advertisement is displayed as an image link. When clicked, the user is
redirected to the particular advertisement.
Note: Administrators are responsible for configuring the freelinks appropriately so that users
can view the advertisements from the login page without authenticating.
WiFiLAN allows administrators to upload advertisements separately and then select them during
the portal page design. This eases the process of changing the advertisements on the portal
pages.
List Ads
To view all the advertisements defined in the database, click on the Portal -> Advertisements
menu. Each entry in the list contains the name of the ad and its URL. To edit a particular entry,
click on the name of the ad.
The list can be sorted in ascending or descending order by clicking on the Adname header.
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New Ads
To create new advertisement entry, click on the New Ad tab. Add or upload the respective
entries. Please make sure that the Ad image confirms to the size and dimensions listed on the
template design page.
Here is brief list of parameters
Parameter
Ad Name
Ad Image
Link
Description
Adname for administrator reference.
Image that will be displayed on portals.
Actual URL for the ad. The browser is redirect to this link when
user clicks on the ad image. The URL should be present in freelinks
if the ad is displayed on the login page.
Edit Ads
Administrator can edit existing ads in this section. All current values for selected ad are provided
in edit fields.
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Here is brief list of parameters
Parameter
Ad Name
Ad Image
Link
Description
Adname for administrator reference.
Image that will be displayed on portals.
Actual URL for the ad. The browser is redirect to this link when
user clicks on the ad image. The URL should be present in freelinks
if the ad is displayed on the login page.
Delete Ads
To delete an existing ad, click on the Delete button on the Edit Ad page. The administrator is
prompted for a confirmation. If confirmed, the ad entry is deleted from the database and the ad
image is removed permanently.
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Reporting
Reporting is one of the most important functions of WiFiLAN. It provides wide range of reports
that allows managers to get consolidated and summarized view of WiFiLAN data. The RADIUS
reports provide statistics on user sessions, bandwidth usage, online users, usage based on
weekdays or hour of the day, unique user sessions, etc. The Network reports provide real-time
view of the network status, reliability of gateways and access points and audit reports. The CRM
reports provide consolidated summary of problem tickets and other CRM related statistics.
Lastly, the billing reports provide information about revenue generated, credited amounts,
expense reports, failed transactions, prepaid usage and promotion effectiveness.
Radius Reports
The RADIUS reports are further sub-divided into different categories. The online user report
provides a real-time view of the current users on the network. The device usage report allows
administrators to select various report criteria to create graphs from usage data such as
sessions, upload and download bandwidth, session time, unique users etc. User accounting
report provides a tabular view of all accounting data, while the authentication report displays
overall authentication statistics.
Online RADIUS Users
To view the summary of online users, click on the RADIUS -> Reports submenu option and then
click on the Online Users tab. A table with location name and total online users is displayed to
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the user. The table entries are categorized based on the state and city of the location and then
alphabetically sorted based on location name.
The summary page also displays a list box of all the devices defined in the system. The
administrator can select one or more devices to view the online users on each of them. To select
all devices, click on Select All button.
Once the list of devices is selected, the administrator can click on the Display Users button to get
a detailed view of online users. The online users are categorized into different tables, one for
each selected device. The device name and external IP address are displayed on the top of each
table. The online users contain both the normal RADIUS users and AutoLogins. Since AutoLogins
don’t have full names, they are displayed as Unknown User. The duration is the total time of the
user’s session.
Administrators can click on the username for a particular user to get user details and accounting
history for that user.
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Device Usage Reports
The device usage reports allow administrators to view user sessions, bandwidth usage and total
time usage for the devices defined in the system. Administrators can also view comparative
graphs by selecting multiple devices for a particular report.
To view device usage reports, click on the RADIUS -> Reports and then on the Device Usage tab.
Then select report type, time interval and one or more devices for the report. Finally, click on
the Display Report button to view the corresponding graph.
The administrator can select appropriate time unit based on the time interval selected. If a
shorted time unit is selected with a large time interval, then the graph will appear cluttered.
Administrator needs to adjust the time unit or time interval appropriately to generate a
viewable graph. The above options give unmatched flexibility to the administrators to generate
customized graphs.
Report Type
Number of sessions vs time
Downloaded bytes vs time
Uploaded bytes vs time
Total time usage vs time
Number of sessions vs day of
week
Number of sessions vs hour
of day
Number of unique users vs
hour of day
Number of sessions vs
Session Duration
Number of users vs total
Description
Displays a bar chart of total number of session
against time axis
Displays total downloaded bytes against time
Displays total uploaded bytes against time
Sum of all session durations vs time
Graph of number of sessions against the day of the
week within the given time period
Graph of number of sessions against hour of the day
within the given time period. Helps in understanding
the usage trends in the day
Graph of unique users against hour of the day within
a given time period.
Displays a graph of number of sessions against
session duration. Helps in understanding how long
users typically use the service
Displays number of users against total usage time.
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usage
Helps in understanding the stickiness of the service.
Listed below are few examples of the above graphs:
The graph below displays total number of sessions over one month period for the selected
device. The week period is divided into days and the bar graph indicates the total number of
session for each day. Similarly, when the administrator chooses other time intervals, the x-axis is
divided into appropriate time units.
This graph displays the number of sessions against hour of the day within a given time period.
WiFiLAN searches for all accounting records within the given time interval and plots them against
the hour of the day. This graph is helpful in understanding the peak hours and trends in usage.
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The administrators can crop, cut and paste these graphs in their reports for the management, if
required.
Accounting Report
The accounting report page displays all accounting records in descending order of their start
time. The records are displayed in a tabular format with each row containing the username,
session start time, MAC address of the end user’s computer, bandwidth usage and duration of
the session. The administrator can click on the username to get more detailed accounting
information for the specific user.
Additionally, the administrators can search for particular accounting records based on the
username or start and end times for user sessions. The nextpage and prevpage links are used to
navigate between pages.
To view accounting report, click on RADIUS -> Reports and then on the Accounting tab.
To get a detailed accounting report for a particular user, administrators can click on the username
in the accounting table or enter the username in the accounting search section. List of all
accounting records that match the search criteria are displayed as shown below. The table
contains session start time, NAT IP address of the user’s computer, location, duration, upload,
download and session end reason for a particular user session.
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The administrators can also enter various search criteria in the search section to narrow the
search.
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Authentication Report
The authentication report provides an overview of the authentication history at the RADIUS
server. Administrators can either view the report in tabular, pie or bar chart format. In case of
tabular format, each row corresponding to an hour interval starting from the current hour. The
other columns contain total number of successful logins, incorrect password and incorrect
username attempts.
To view authentication report, click on the RADIUS -> Reports submenu and then on the Auth
Report tab.
To see the Authentication History of Particular User search with the username then you
will get the authentication History for that particular User.
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Network Reports
The network report section allows administrators to view the reliability of the network devices
and perform audit on their network. Typically, the management can refer to the reliability graph
and understand the reliability of their service at a particular location. Additionally, they can also
compare the reliabilities of two or more devices over a period of time. The audit report scans all
network devices and retrieves the configuration parameters from each device. The
administrators can use this report to ensure that all network configurations are correct and upto-date.
To view reliability graph, click on Network -> Status submenu and then on Reliability Report tab.
The administrator needs to select one or more devices or sub-devices in the criteria section and
a time interval for the graph. The reliability for a particular day is expressed in percentage and
plotted against the time axis.
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Administrator can select one or more devices to view a comparative reliability of the devices.
Network Audit Report
Administrators can generate an audit report by scanning remote devices and fe tching the
appropriate configuration parameter. This report helps network administrators to ensure that
all their devices are configured correctly and operating at optimal level.
The audit report generation uses SNMP protocol to scan selected devices and retrieves the
value of the select network parameter. These values are displayed to the administrator in a
table. The network administrator is responsible for reviewing the parameters and correctly the
device configuration as needed.
Problem Tickets Reports
The problem ticket reports provide range of statistics for the tickets submitted by the end users.
Generally these reports help management in reviewing the nature of problems submitted, the
quality of service, effectiveness of the customer support staff and track trends in problems. This
data is extremely helpful in improving processes, solving problems within IT and network
infrastructure and streamlining operations.
The reports can be viewed either in tabular or graphical format. The tabular reports provide
overall statistics about the problem tickets based on categories, agents, severities, locations and
resolutions. The graphical reports plot total number of problem tickets against a specified
period.
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Summary Reports
To view problem ticket summary reports, click on CRM -> Reports submenu and Reports tab.
This page provides just a summary about the various reports.
To view summary of problem tickets, click on the Ticket Summary tab. This page allows
administrators to view ticket summary based on various display options. To view tickets
assigned to each agent, select Display = By Agent and click Submit. The table displays all the
defined agents and the total number of tickets assigned to them. Additionally, the table also
displays data based on the state of the ticket, namely New, Assigned, Resolved and Closed.
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To view tickets based on the user-defined categories, select Display = By Category and then click
Submit. All user-defined categories are displayed in the Name column and the corresponding
number of tickets is displayed in the other columns.
To view tickets based on location from where they were originated, select Display = By Location.
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Note: While web-based integration, the developer needs to set the location field. If the field is
missing, this report won’t be able to generate any data
Ticket Vs Time Reports
The summary reports provide statistics on total number of tickets in the system. However, they
do not give any idea on when the tickets were submitted, resolved or closed. To view the time
based reports, click on the Ticket By Date tab. This report page allows administrators to select a
particular time interval and view the tickets in graphical format within the selected date range.
Each bar in the graph corresponds to the number of tickets in a particular state (New, Assigned,
Resolved, Closed) on the given date.
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Billing Reports
Billing reports section provides comprehensive set of reports for the billing-related data. The
index page displays all the available billing reports to the administrator. Administrators of
WiFiLAN are responsible for creating sub-accounts with appropriate access control to ensure the
security of this data. Access to these reports can be controlled using the Access Control List
section while create a new WiFiLAN account.
The figure below displays the various reports available to the administrator along with its short
description. The administrator can click on the report name to view the respective report.
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Revenue Reports
The revenue reports provide statistics on total revenues collected from the end-users. These
include setup fees, recurring charges and any other charges that were manually billed against
the end-users’ credit cards. Three different types of revenue reports are available to the
administrator:
1. Revenue Vs Date report
2. Revenue Vs Plan report
3. Revenue Vs Location report
Revenue Vs Date report
This report provides a graphical view of the revenues against time. Administrators can select a
particular time interval by selecting the ‘From’ and ‘To’ dates. The time unit field is used for
selecting the granularity of the report. For example, to view yearly report, select Jan 1st as the
‘from’ date and Dec 31st as the ‘to’ date. The unit in this case should be month.
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Revenue Vs Plan Report
This report displays the revenue collected for different plans over a specified time interval. The
report is displayed in a tabular format sorted by the name of the plan. The revenues for each
time unit are displayed in the remaining columns and the individual amounts are summed up in
the total column.
If the time interval is too large and the time unit is too small, then an error will be flagged.
The administrator needs to readjust the time interval or time unit to generate a
viewable report.
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Revenue Vs Location report
This report displays the total revenue earned at each site over a specified time interval. The
administrator needs to select the interval and time unit (granularity) of the report. The results
are displayed in a tabular format as shown below.
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Note: Billing users should be assigned to specific locations when they register with the service.
Please refer to website integration section to learn how to assign users to specific locations.
Declined Cards Report
The declined card report displays a list of all credit cards that were declined by the merchant
bank’s payment gateway. The administrator needs to select the date range for the report. The
results are displayed in tabular format as show below. Each table row contains the name of enduser, error description that was received from the payment gateway, encrypted card number,
date and time of rejection and the amount.
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Payment Receivable Report
The payment receivable report is an extension of declined card report. It displays all the pending
receivable from the end-users. Usually, the receivable are as a result of declined credit cards.
The administrator needs to select a date range for the report.
Each table column contains the billing name, plan name, encrypted card number, date and time
of the failed transaction, amount that was tried to be billed and total number of days the
payment is due.
The “Late by” column helps administrators to determine customers who have cross a threshold
for late payment. Administrators can send reminder emails to these customers requesting them
to update their credit card information or other personal details to ensure that their cards are
charged properly and the accounts are activated again.
Amount Credited Report (Refund Report)
Sometimes administrators need to refund back the amount that was charged to the customer.
The credit function in WiFiLAN allows administrators to run credits transactions on end-user’s
credit cards. The specified amount is automatically deposited back into user’s bank account or
on his credit card.
This reports displays a graphical view of the total number of credits done over a particular time
period. Like revenue report, administrators need to select the time interval and time unit
(granularity) of the report. The dates are listed on the X-axis and the credited or refunded
amount is displayed on Y-axis.
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Promotion Usage Reports
The promotion usage reports provide statistics on promotions and helps administrators gauge
the effectiveness of their promotion campaigns. They can track number of users and the dates
when the promotions where used and understanding how their marketing and promotional
efforts correlate with their new subscriptions.
To view promotion usage over time, click on the Promotion Usage Report tab. Select the report
type, time interval, time unit (granularity) and the promotion(s) from the report criteria.
The image below shows a sample graph of the promotion usage. The report displays total
number of promotion codes used on the Y-axis and time duration on X-axis.
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To view summary of all promotions defined in the system, click on the Promotion Summary tab.
It displays the total number of used, unused and total number of promotion codes in a tabular
format.
Prepaid Usage Reports
The prepaid usage reports provide insights on the usage of prepaid cards/coupons defined in
WiFiLAN database. Administrators can view three different types of prepaid reports:
1. Prepaid Sessions Vs Time
2. Prepaid Session Usage Vs Time
3. Unique prepaid users Vs Time
The prepaid session vs time report displays total number of prepaid sessions that occurred over
a time period. Administrators can choose the ‘to’ and ‘from’ dates and the granularity of the
time period. Lastly, the administrator also needs to select the device(s) where they need to view
the usage.
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The graph below highlights prepaid session against time. The number of prepaid sessions is
plotted on the Y-axis and the time period on X-axis. Administrators can select more than one
device to view comparative prepaid usage at selected devices.
To view total prepaid session usage against time, select the second report type from the dropdown list. This graph plots session usage in minutes on Y-axis and time period on X-axis.
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Lastly, to view unique prepaid users vs time, select the third report type from the dropdown list. This graph displays unique prepaid users on Y-axis and time period on the Xaxis.
Fraud Report
The fraud report allows administrators to search for users who are consistently using multiple
user plans when they have subscribed for a single user plan. For example, users camping in RV
parks or staying in apartments can purchase a single user plan and share the username and
password with their friends or neighbors. The report filters outliers and list only those users who
have fraudulent usage pattern.
183
184
Web-based Integration
For subscription-based plans, service providers need to provide an online registration system
that would allow their new subscribers to fill a form and register for the service online. The
online signup process involves minimal human intervention and is extremely cost-effective and
hassle-free. The backend system captures all the relevant data from the user and creates a new
user account instantaneously.
Since WiFiLAN provides an hosted solution, service providers need to insert custom code in their
online signup page that would interface with WiFiLAN backend and create user accounts. WifiSoft has created a web interface that is used for this process. The HTML programmer can easily
create custom looking web pages for the service provider and interface them with WiFiLAN
backend using the documentation provided below.
Alternatively, the service provider can use Wifi-Soft portal design feature to create custom
signup and login pages for their hotspots that have the necessary integration logic built-in.
User Registration
A new user can register with WiFiLAN by submitting an online registration form. The registration
form contains personal information such as name, address, phone numbers, etc and billing
information such as credit card number, expiry date, CVV number. This information is posted to
user registration module in WiFiLAN, which reads the form data, validates and authorizes a
credit card and creates a new user account in the system.
If the registration is successful, then the module redirects user’s browser to the success URL
specified in the form. Else if the registration fails, the module redirects the user’s browser to fail
URL along with the return code and return message.
The table explains all the parameters that should be submitted along with the registration form.
All fields market REQUIRED should be included in the form.
Parameter
req_customercode
Usage
REQUIRED
req_successurl
REQUIRED
req_failurl
REQUIRED
req_action
REQUIRED
req_username
REQUIRED
req_password
req_repassword
req_fullname
REQUIRED
REQUIRED
REQUIRED
Description
Unique customer code assigned to the customer.
Wifi-soft will provide this code to the customer
during integration process
The browser will be redirected to this URL if the user
registration is successful
registration fails
Type of action requested. Values should be
1. create
Username of the end user. For example: [email protected]
The password for the new end user
Retyped password for the user
User’s full name
185
req_email
req_address
req_city
req_state
req_zipcode
req_country
req_homephone
req_cellphone
req_workphone
req_locationid
REQUIRED
REQUIRED
REQUIRED
REQUIRED
REQUIRED
REQUIRED
OPTIONAL
OPTIONAL
OPTIONAL
REQUIRED
Req_billdatarequired
REQUIRED
req_billingname
req_billingaddress
req_billingcity
req_billingstate
req_billingzipcode
req_billingcountry
req_cardnumber
OPTIONAL
OPTIONAL
OPTIONAL
OPTIONAL
OPTIONAL
OPTIONAL
REQUIRED
req_cardtype
Req_cardexpirydate
req_cvvnumber
req_planid
OPTIONAL
REQUIRED
REQUIRED
REQUIRED
Mailing address
Mailing city
Mailing state code (eg: TX, AL, etc)
Zipcode for the mailing address
Country name
Home phone number including area code
Cell phone number including area code
Work phone number including area code
A unique identifier for the location. The identifier is
available in WiFiLAN under RADIUS -> Location
section
Flag indicating whether billing data is required for
registration. This flag should be set to 1 to process
credit card transactions. Valid values 0 or 1.
Billing name of the new user
Billing address
Billing city name
Billing state code (e.g. TX, AL, etc)
Billing zipcode
Billing country name
Card number of the user’s credit card. No spaces or
dashes allowed
Type of card: credit or debit
Expiry date for the card in MM/DD/YYYY format.
The 3-4 digits CVV number on the card.
Unique plan identifier. This identifier is available in
WiFiLAN under Billing -> Plans section.
URL for submitting the registration form is as follows:
https://www.wifi-soft.net/wifilan/api/create_user.php
The explanation for return codes from the registration module is as shown below.
Return Code
0
-1
-2
-3
-4
-5
-6
-7
Description
Success
Invalid Customer Id
Invalid username or password
Missing action parameter
Data validation error
Missing return URL
Internal error
Card transaction failed
186
Verify Email
The verify email module is used for verifying the email address entered by the user during the
registration process. Since many user enter fake email address during registration, this feature
ensure that the user is able to complete the registration process only if a valid email address is
entered. Obtaining a valid email address is especially important for service providers who
provide service for an extended period of time. Invoice, receipts, important announcements are
generally sent electronically to the user via email.
If the verification is successful, then the module redirects user’s browser to the success URL
specified in the HTML form posted to the URL listed below. Else, if the verification fails, the
module redirects the user’s browser to fail URL along with the return code and return message.
The table explains all the parameters that should be submitted along with the verificaiton form.
All fields market REQUIRED should be included in the form.
Parameter
req_customercode
Usage
REQUIRED
req_successurl
REQUIRED
req_failurl
REQUIRED
req_action
REQUIRED
req_username
req_email
req_verifycode
REQUIRED
OPTIONAL
REQUIRED
Description
verification is successful
verification fails
Type of action requested. Values are
2. create
3. edit
4. delete
Usename of user whose account needs verification
The verification code sent to the user in the email
URL for submitting the registration form is as follows:
https://www.wifi-soft.net/wifilan/api/verify_email.php
The explanation for return codes from the registration module is as shown below.
Return Code
0
-1
-2
-3
-4
-5
-6
Description
Success
Invalid Customer Id
Account already verified or invalid verification code
Missing return URL
Internal error
187
Account Management
The account management module allows existing users to change their personal and billing
information online. Generally, the account management page is listed on the login page and
uses existing username and password to provide access to the account information. For
example, an user can change his credit card information before the card expires to ensure that
his service remains uninterrupted.
The account management page should be designed so that the user first logs into module using
his/her username and password. Once logged in, the user is offered a form to make changes to
the account information. Additionally a button should be provided so that the user can log out
of the session.
If the updates are successful, then the module redirects user’s browser to the success URL
specified in the HTML form posted to the URL listed below. Else, if the update fails, the module
redirects the user’s browser to fail URL along with the return code and return message.
The table explains all the parameters that should be submitted along with the update form. All
fields market REQUIRED should be included in the form.
Parameter
req_customercode
Usage
REQUIRED
req_successurl
REQUIRED
req_failurl
REQUIRED
req_action
REQUIRED
req_username
req_password
REQUIRED
REQUIRED
req_firstname
req_lastname
req_email
req_address
req_city
req_state
req_zipcode
req_country
req_homephone
REQUIRED
REQUIRED
REQUIRED
REQUIRED
REQUIRED
REQUIRED
REQUIRED
REQUIRED
OPTIONAL
Description
registration fails
Type of action requested. Accepted values are
5. login
6. edit
7. logout
Username of the end user. (used for login action)
The password for the new end user (used for login
action)
User’s firstname
User’s lastname
Mailing address
Mailing city
Mailing state code (eg: TX, AL, etc)
Zipcode for the mailing address
Country name
Home phone number including area code
188
req_cellphone
req_workphone
req_aptnumber
req_locationid
OPTIONAL
OPTIONAL
OPTIONAL
REQUIRED
req_billingname
req_billingaddress
req_billingcity
req_billingstate
req_billingzipcode
req_billingcountry
req_billingemail
req_cardnumber
OPTIONAL
OPTIONAL
OPTIONAL
OPTIONAL
OPTIONAL
OPTIONAL
OPTIONAL
REQUIRED
req_cardtype
req_cardexpirydate
req_cardexpirymonth
OPTIONAL
REQUIRED
REQUIRED
req_cardexpiryyear
req_cvvnumber
REQUIRED
REQUIRED
Cell phone number including area code
Work phone number including area code
Apartment number of the user
A unique identifier for the location. The identifier is
available in WiFiLAN under RADIUS -> Location
section
Billing name of the new user
Billing address
Billing city name
Billing state code (e.g. TX, AL, etc)
Billing zipcode
Billing country name
Billing email if separate from the primary email
Card number of the user’s credit card. No spaces or
dashes allowed
Type of card: credit or debit
Expiry date for the card in MM/DD/YYYY format.
Expiry month of the card
(either cardexpirydate or cardexpirymonth &
cardexpiryyear should be provided)
Expiry year of the card
The 3-4 digits CVV number on the card.
URL for submitting the update form is as follows:
https://www.wifi-soft.net/wifilan/api/edit_user.php
The explanation for return codes from the update module is as shown below.
Return Code
0
-1
-2
-3
-4
-5
-6
-7
Description
Success
Invalid Customer Id
Missing return URL
Internal error
Card authorization error
189
Change Password
Change password module allows existing users to change the password that they use to access
the service. Users need to first login using their existing username and password, and then reenter their old password along with a new one. If the new password is accepted by the system,
then the changes take effect immediately.
The change password page should be designed so that the user first logs into module using
his/her username and password. Once logged in, the user is offered a form to change the old
password. Additionally a button should be provided so that the user can log out of the session.
If the updates are successful, then the module redirects user’s browser to the success URL
specified in the HTML form posted to the URL listed below. Else, if the update fails, the module
redirects the user’s browser to fail URL along with the return code and return message.
The table explains all the parameters that should be submitted along with the update form. All
fields market REQUIRED should be included in the form.
Parameter
req_customercode
Usage
REQUIRED
req_successurl
REQUIRED
req_failurl
REQUIRED
req_action
REQUIRED
req_username
req_password
req_oldpassword
req_newpassword
req_newpassword2
REQUIRED
REQUIRED
REQUIRED
REQUIRED
REQUIRED
Description
registration fails
Type of action requested. Accepted values
1. login
2. edit
3. logout
Username of the user (used for login action)
Password for the user
Old password for the user (used for edit action)
New password
Retyped password
URL for submitting the change password form is as follows:
https://www.wifi-soft.net/wifilan/api/change_passwd.php
The explanation for return codes from the change password module is as shown below.
190
Return Code
0
-1
-2
-3
-4
-5
-6
Description
Success
Invalid Customer Id
Missing return URL
Internal error
Problem Ticket Reporting
Like user registration, the problem ticket reporting allows end users to submit problem tickets
from the customer’s portal page. The end user fills a problem report form with necessary details
and submits it to WiFiLAN where the data is extracted from the form and a new problem ticket
is created.
The table below highlights the parameters that can be included in the problem ticket form. All
parameters marked REQUIRED must be submitted; else WiFiLAN will report data validation
error. If the ticket creation succeeds, then the user’s browser is redirected to the URL specified
in the req_successurl parameter. On the contrary, if the creation process fails, then the user’s
browser is redirected to fail URL as specified in the req_failurl parameter. Please refer to the
return codes table in previous section for the description for return codes.
URL for submitting the problem ticket form is as follows:
https://www.wifi-soft.net/wifilan/api/create_ticket.php
Parameter
Usage
Req_customercode REQUIRED
req_successurl
REQUIRED
req_failurl
REQUIRED
req_login
REQUIRED
req_pincode
REQUIRED
req_action
REQUIRED
req_summary
req_description
REQUIRED
REQUIRED
req_from_email
REQUIRED
Description
The browser will be redirected to this URL if the
user registration is successful
The browser will be redirected to this URL if the
user registration fails
Login name for the customer. Wifi-soft will
provide the login to the customer
Pin code for the customer. Wifi-soft will provide
the pin code to the customer
Type of action requested. Values should be
‘create’
Short summary of the problem ticket
Long description of the problem ticket including
steps to reproduce
The email address of the user submitting the ticket
191
req_from_name
req_category
req_notes
REQUIRED
OPTIONAL
OPTIONAL
Full name of the user submitting the ticket
Category for the ticket
Additional notes, if any, for the ticket
The problem ticket module can be configured to send automated email confirmation to the end
user with the newly created ticket number. It automatically substitutes template parameters
with correct user information before sending the email. To configure confirmation template,
refer to the Ticket Config section in CRM -> Admin.
URL for submitting the change password form is as follows:
https://www.wifi-soft.net/wifilan/api/create_ticket.php
The explanation for return codes from the change password module is as shown below.
Return Code
0
-1
-2
-3
-4
-5
-6
Description
Success
Invalid Customer Id
Missing return URL
Internal error
192
Common Tasks
Adding new device
The device wizard is used to add a new device or gateway in WiFiLAN. The New Device Wizard
takes you step-by-step through the device creation process and ensures that all the details are
entered properly. To invoke the Device Wizard, click on the New Device Wizard button on the
top of New Device or New Gateway tab.
The administrator is prompted to select the type of the device. Upon selecting the type, he is
prompted to select either the Auto Wizard or Manual Wizard. In case of Auto Wizard, WiFiLAN
attempts to fetch the configuration data from the remote device using SNMP. An SNMP agent
needs to be running on the remote device to successfully fetch the configuration data. The
administrator also needs to know the public IP address and community name for the device.
For Manual Wizard, the administrator needs to enter the device configuration data by hand.
Select the appropriate device type.
193
The next page prompts administrator to either select the city where device is installed or create
a new city entry using the form below. Click Proceed after selecting or creating the city.
Next, the administrator is prompted to choose a location or create a new location entry. Click
Proceed button after selecting an existing location or creating a new one.
The next page prompts administrator to enter various details about the device. The page is
divided into various sections – General, Monitoring, Network, Authentication, Misc and
Extended Device Information. Since most of the information may be common across other
devices, the Apply Defaults button allows administrators to auto-fill the fields that contains
common information. The default values for devices are configured in Device -> Admin -> Device
Default section.
The Device Information section in Device Wizard is slightly different from the one in New Device
section. It prompts the administrator for some gateway attributes like Device Group, Secret,
Device UserName and Device Password. Once all the fields are entered, click on the Create
Device button to create a new gateway and device entry in WiFiLAN.
194
Adding an attached device for monitoring
For a large Wi-Fi installation, one access point is generally not enough to provide a complete
RF coverage. Attached devices or access points are used to extend the range of RF signal.
WiFiLAN allows administrators to monitor these devices to ensure that all endpoints are
operational and quality of service is maintained.
To add new attached device (sub-device) for monitoring, do the following:
1. Use the Device Wizard to add a new device. Generally, the gateway and main device are
the same.
2. Click on Add SubDevice tab to add new sub-devices to the main device. Assign an
internal IP (192.168.1.101 for example) to the sub-device.
3. Continue to add all sub-devices to the main device with corresponding internal IP
addresses
4. Login into the admin pages of the gateway device (CN3000 for example) and enable port
forwarding for each attached device. Select a higher port (8101 for example) for each
attached device and redirect traffic on that port to port 80 of the attached device.
5. Configure port forwarding for each attached device, each time selecting a different
higher port.
6. Make sure that the gateway authenticates each attached device. For CN3000/3200,
WiFiLAN automatically adds the attached device’s MAC address for automatically
authentication
195
7. Once port forwarding is active, check whether you can get to attached device’s admin
page using the following IP address: http://ip.address.of.gateway:8101
8. Configure the monitoring section for each sub-device with tunneling port set to higher
port (8101) and appropriate protocol (http/https)
9. Set monitoring type to Http and enable monitoring for the sub-device
10. Finally ensure that the main device (gateway) is also getting monitored
Collecting and reconciling installation data
One of the challenges of managing remote Wi-Fi networks is proper availability of the data.
If the technical team has access to the right data from the field, then it can make informed
decisions whenever a problem arises in the field. However, the task of collecting all the
installation data is not easy, especially when the install team is comprised of part-time
contractors or unskilled technicians.
WiFiLAN provides set of tools that makes the task of collecting and collating the installation
data easy, thus providing technical team and management all the installation data about
their Wi-Fi networks. The task of collecting and compiling the data is divided into two
phases:
1. Entering install data in a simple form after the installation
a. Each installer will be given restricted access to WiFiLAN, which allows him to
access the install management section.
b. The management needs to ensure that each installer fills out the details in the
install management section before he leaves the install site
c. The new install info section captures necessary information and stores it in the
database
d. The process repeats for each installed device in the field.
2. Merging and collating the installation data into WiFiLAN data
a. Once all the install information is collected in the database, review the
information and ensure correctness and completeness of the data
b. Create new devices and sub-devices in WiFiLAN for each installed device
c. From the install info list, click on the M icon next to a particular device
d. Select the appropriate device from the drop-down list in the pop-up window
and click on the Merge Info button
e. All the install information is merged with the device information.
f. Click on the Install tab in the Edit Device section to review whether the merge
was successful
g. Repeat the process for other device names.
196
Sending customer emails
WiFiLAN allows administrators to send bulk emails to the customers. This feature is
useful to broadcast special announcements or promotions to the end users. WiFiLAN
also allows administrators to create pre-written emails (email templates) that they
can use repeatedly while sending emails.
To do mass mailing to the end users, do the following:
1. First create a proper email template with subject and body using the CRM ->
Emails -> New Template section
2. The body of the template can have placeholders in them. These placeholders will
be substituted before the email is sent out. Following placeholders are currently
used:
3. Specify appropriate name to the template
4. Click on CRM -> Emails menu option
5. You need to select list of users based on the group or user’s location.
Alternatively, if you want to send emails to all users in the system, leave these
fields blank
6. The list of users will be displayed in multi-select list box. Administrator can
further narrow the list of users by selecting the appropriate names from the list.
To select all users, press Ctrl-A
7. Select appropriate email template from the template drop-down list
8. In the Preview Email section, the administrator can modify the subject and body
of the message. He needs to enter a valid From email address (e.g.
[email protected])
9. Click on the Send Email(s) button to send emails to all selected users.
Adding extended user/device information
Administrators can add extra fields to the user and device section by configuring new attributes.
These attributes are managed using in the extended attribute section in Admin menu.
197
To add new user or device attributes:
1. Click on Admin -> User/Device Attrs menu.
2. Click on the tab to add new extended attribute
3. Enter the name of the attribute (no spaces) along with a short description about the
attribute
4. Check the IsVisible checkbox
5. Next go the user/device edit tabs. The attributes will appear in the Extended Attribute
section.
6. Enter appropriate values and save the user/device configuration
Reporting bugs
To report problems or bugs in WiFiLAN, use the Report Problem button located in the top-right
corner of the application screen.
A new window pops up that allows WiFiLAN users to enter necessary details about the problem.
All the fields marked with * are required fields. Although the Steps to Reproduce field is
optional, it is a good idea to enter the step-by-step procedure to replicate the problem.
An email is sent to our technical support team whenever a problem is reported. Depending on
the nature of the problem and complexity involved in fixing it, we will either provide a patch to
existing version or include the fix in the next versions of WiFiLAN.
198
The customers can also report a problem by send an email to [email protected].
Please include all the problem details along with steps to reproduce the problem.
Glossary

Access Point: The hardware device that provides RF (Radio Frequency) signal in a
desired area. Users with mobile devices like laptops, PDAs, tablets, etc connect to these
devices wirelessly and gain Internet access.

AutoLogin: Allows users to authenticate automatically with the RADIUS server and thus
gain access to Internet services. It uses MAC address of the user’s device to authenticate
the user
199

Content Filtering: Process of filtering undesired Internet content such as pornography,
violence, hacking, etc. This feature is used in public hotspots where display of such
content is undesirable.

CRM: Stands for Customer Relationship Management. Allows companies to track
customer data and maintain a good relationship with the customer. Used to improve
customer satisfaction.

Email Template: A pre-written email with placeholders used for automating the task of
sending large number of similar emails. Used while sending bulk emails or automated
email responses to the customer.

Gateway: A Wi-Fi device that acts as a gatekeeper to the Internet. Besides acting as a
gatekeeper, this device can also functions as an access point, DHCP server, RADIUS
client, VPN client and firewall.

Group: A logical entity that represents a grouping of users or gateways in WiFiLAN. Used
to defined common RADIUS attributes and places where the grouping is desired.

Knowledgebase: Collection of articles, notes, documents and other informational
material related to Wi-Fi technology. Provides search functionality to retrieve relevant
information that can be used by various teams within the company.

Portal Page: WiFiLAN creates these customized HTML pages using pre-defined design
templates and allows administrators to customize them based on their needs

Prepaid Coupons: A temporary pair of username and password that is usually
distributed to end users for providing temporary, fixed-time access to Internet services.

RADIUS: Stands for Remote Authentication Dial In User Service. Provides
Authentication, Authorization and Accounting services to the end users.

SNMP: Stands for Simple Network Management Protocol. This protocol helps network
administrators to manage network devices using simple commands and parameters.

SNMP Trap: An SNMP trap is sent to a remote server whenever an interesting event
occurs in the network device.

Tunneling: The concept of passing through a network device (usually a gateway) to gain
access to other devices that are unreachable from outside.

Wi-Fi or 802.11: A protocol defined by IEEE that allows short-range wireless connectivity
within unlicensed frequency spectrum.
200

wifi-soft solutions - Hotspot controller | Wireless Access Point

Transcription

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