Half the answer... Re: Traffic Accounting on Small System and User Limits.

[Don Gould <don@bowenvale.co.nz>]

http://forum.openwrt.org/viewtopic.php?pid=30841

I found half the answer, thanks for the tips.

Now I just need to put it all together to restrict the data to a quota.

Cheers Don

Don Gould wrote:
> This is a requirement for a small system I'm building for a local motel 
> to be able to give internet access away free to their customers.
> 
> I have looked in to a bunch of different stuff but don't know the best 
> way to go.  I know this might not even be the right list to ask on, so 
> please be kind. :)
> 
> OPEN SOURCE GPL PLEASE - I have already done some work on some systems 
> to get me what I want...  all the work I'm doing is on open source stuff 
> and is/will be made available back to the community, so, if you have a 
> need for this work as well but can't help, then please feel free to drop 
> me a line and I'll keep you informed.
> 
> 1. I want to keep a record of the amount of data each user uses over a 
> given amount of time.  I know the users IP number and their MAC address. 
>  I modified DNSMasq [1] to tell me this each time the user issues a DHCP 
> request.
> 
> 2.  It is proposed that each MAC will be given 50mb of data to use. 
> After this the user/MAC will have to be authorised to have more.
> 
> The servers I'm using will run Debian Saige and are only small - p2 or 3 
> with ~30 to 64mb ram and 2 - 3gb hard disk.  Each server only has to 
> look after < 50 clients and in most cases wouldn't get more than 10 
> using it at a time.
> 
> My problem is that I don't know how I should count the data used in a 
> light weight way.
> 
> I've read that packet counting programs can be CPU intensive.
> 
> vnstat looked good but doesn't count by IP or MAC (from what I can see).
> 
> 
> I read in some of the netfilter documentation (which is fantastic btw) 
> that iptables can place limits on accounts, but didn't fully understand it.
> 
> Can anyone make any recommendations?
> 
> TIA
> 
> Cheers Don
> 
> [1] The code is rough and still have debug statements in it, see: 
> http://www.tcn.bowenvale.co.nz/content/view/44/35/
> 
> I'm no C programmer so please don't flame me :)  Be kind :)
> 

-- 
Don Gould
www.thinkdesignprint.co.nz - www.tcn.bowenvale.co.nz -
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