I just realized that I may have left the impression that we never implemented the BMU (though you COULD have figured it out in the details of my previous post).
In fact, we ARE now using the Powercode BMU, and it's working well. For our concerns about all of our traffic going through it, we inserted a work-around that would let us bypass the BMU (route around it) if it became problematic, or if we need to reboot it/maintain it. It is the part that is not 100% right now. It doesn't fully support remote subnets, like if we have a customer who has a /29 or whatever subnet on the LAN side of their CPE. They technically have more than 1 IP to track for OVERALL bandwidth usage. It doesn't fully support this with reporting and bandwidth limiting. Most of our customers have only 1 IP address, though, so it's not a large problem. However, the problem tends to be with larger clients. We have a non-Powercode solution in place as a stop-gap measure right now, until the problem is fixed. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Mark Nash - Lists" <markl...@uwol.net> To: "WISPA General List" <wireless@wispa.org> Sent: Friday, April 30, 2010 1:28 PM Subject: [WISPA] Powercode WAS: Overage thresholds and penalties > It's been love-hate. > > We've actually been using it since January 2008, for billing and > scheduling, > tracking leads, etc. We purchased the Imagestream Rebel router to work as > the Bandwidth Manager Unit (BMU) later that year, but never put it into > place. This was primarily because we didn't trust Powercode tech support > to > help us when we had a problem with it. > > Things were dicey & sketchy with Powercode for awhile. We think the tide > has turned with the company, being bought out by Bertram Wireless. We > like > better what's going on with them now, and we have upgraded to their > version > 9 with a substantial increase in monthly cost. We did this because we > wanted the bandwidth management integrated with our billing platform, so > that a low-cost customer service agent could pretty much help a customer > with whatever their needs were. We felt that it was time to "make or > break" > with Powercode, or switch to another platform (painful but maybe > necessary). > > Powercode, the company, has been working well with us to resolve our > problems. They seem to care about having our business more than they used > to, as they are responding to us and addressing our concerns. In fact, > the > other day, I requested a new feature...seemed like a simple one but most > times feature requests fall on deaf ears. Powercode has built-in > troubleshooting utilities like ping-flood (web-interfaced billing server > initiates the command and the BMU runs it and reports back the results to > the billing server then back to your web browser). Well, I wanted those > results to be logged in the customer account (PC has EXTENSIVE logging). > A > week later, that feature was released on an update. Now, whenever any > customer service agent runs a troubleshooting utility in Powercode, it is > logged on the customer account and stored forever. So, we immediately > began > having our installers running their tests from within Powercode before > they > leave the install. Now we have 3 tests logged for initial performance of > the connection. Anyway... pretty good turn-around on my request. > > I was at a turning point a few months ago, sending out an email to > everyone > to begin searching for a new OSS because we weren't 100% on our features. > Being 100% on features, I felt, will save us about .5 FTE. If we aren't > there, and are paying the high price of v9 Powercode...not worth it. > > They're working with us and I hope to be 100% in a week or so. Their new > pricing has good economy of scale, too...affordable from day > one...expensive > in numbers but advanced features will save you people time at this point. > > All-in-all, still I think it has been a positive adventure with Powercode. > I'm glad the product has a better managed company behind it now. > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Mark Dueck" <m...@netking.bz> > To: <wireless@wispa.org> > Sent: Friday, April 30, 2010 12:50 PM > Subject: Re: [WISPA] Overage thresholds and penalties > > >> How is your experience with Powercode? I once considered putting in >> Powercode, but it looked to be a little used product, so decided against >> it. >> >> On 04/30/2010 10:24 AM, Mark Nash - Lists wrote: >>> We use Powercode to shape bandwidth and to track bandwidth usage, and >>> when >>> the customer goes over the limit, they are throttled down very hard, >>> like >>> 64k. Powercode has a Customer Portal feature that lets them login and >>> check >>> their usage any time they want. Also, they can set up daily emails from >>> their Portal so that they can get an email each day about their monthly >>> usage. We have about 20 customers that do this. >>> >>> Took us a while to get the Powercode system to work, and it's still not >>> 100%, but I would say that putting in these usage thresholds and >>> tracking >>> has helped us identify who our heavy users are and to deal with them >>> appropriately. Doing this has generated about $500/mo in additional >>> revenue >>> as customers move up to higher speed packages with higher monthly >>> limits. >>> >> >> >> >> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- >> WISPA Wants You! 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