Prerequisites

Before you can bill for bandwidth utilization, you'll need a few things in place. By completing the steps below, you will be ready to configure the client's service, as well as the service plan, to bill for bandwidth usage

First, ensure you have a client to bill, by creating one in Client Manager. See Adding a New Client.
Next, create a service to bill the customer for. See Adding a Service Plan.
Then add the service to your client’s account. See Creating a Service for a Client.
From a device perspective, you will need to associate a device with a switch port to collect bandwidth data. See Adding and Configuring a Monitor.
For the service plan you intend to use for bandwidth billing, add the Bandwidth Billing service module. See Ubersmith Service Modules for more information.

Steps

Once you have all the prerequisites in place, you are ready for bandwidth billing. For Ubersmith to make the connection between a device that is using bandwidth, the appropriate client, and the service that will be used to bill for it, these items must be associated with one another. There are three ways to tie devices to a service for bandwidth billing.

Associating the Device and Service

You can associate a device with a client and a service. See Associating a Device with a Client and a Service.

Using Dynamic Device Filtering

For clients that add or remove devices from their account frequently, specifying basic rules and parameters within the bandwidth billing service can specify which devices to tabulate in the usage calculation upon service renewal.

On the Service Details page, in the Bandwidth Billing section, click the edit link. An advanced search window appears.
Specify one or more rules for Ubersmith to use to determine which devices to include when tabulating bandwidth. Each rule is made up of two main parts, the field being validated and the value being checked for.

Some examples of this rule are "Client id is 1005" and "Device Description contains 'server'".

Multiple rules can be used in conjunction with one another using the 'and’ or 'or’ operators. For example, if you needed to bill for all server devices under a particular client's account enter client ID is 1005 and device type contains server.

When the service renews it tabulates bandwidth for all devices that are associated with client 1005 and have the word 'server' in their device names.

The 'or' operator can also be used to include disparate devices such as device ID is 123 or device ID is 5390 or device ID is 9213. The resulting query will include bandwidth for all three devices.

Once the parameters are specified, click Search to run the query. A list of matching devices appear.
Click Save to activate the rules for the service.

Once set, the devices matching the specified rules will be listed on the service’s details window, in the bandwidth billing section.

Note: It’s possible that a device may match a specified rule, but isn’t able to report bandwidth usage. The Inc column indicates whether or not the device is properly configured for bandwidth monitoring. A green icon in the Inc column indicates a properly-configured device, while a red icon indicates a device not configured for bandwidth.

When Ubersmith tabulates bandwidth usage, any dynamic device filters set in a service will override the associated devices field, as well as any direct device-service associations.

Using the Associated Devices Custom Field

This method is primarily for backward compatibility with old Ubersmith versions. It is recommended to configure bandwidth billing for a service using device association or dynamic filter rules.

You can specify the ID number of one or more device that should be included in the bandwidth calculation. If multiple device IDs need to be configured, enter each number in the Associated Devices field, separated by commas.

Configuring Tiered Bandwidth Billing

When using Tiered Bandwidth Billing, clients can be charged at different rates depending on the amount of bandwidth used. The number of tiers available is unlimited, and additional tiers may be added by creating the appropriate service metadata fields in the 'Custom Service Data Fields' section of 'setup & admin', i.e.:

bw_tierX_minimum
bw_tierX_rate

where X is a number greater than 2.

Each 'tier' of bandwidth usage is defined by a minimum amount and a rate, with the standard bandwidth billing fields comprising 'Tier 1', with a minimum of zero.

In order to configure a server with 100GB included transfer, then $0.50/GB up to 1000GB total transfer, then $0.30/gb for any further usage, the configuration would be:

bw_billing_method    transfer
bw_included_transfer 100
bw_included_transfer_unit GB
bw_overage_unit    GB
bw_overage_rate    0.50
bw_tier2_minimum 900
bw_tier2_rate    0.30

Note that the tier minimum values are based on the overage, not the usage. You can set default values for these items on a per-service plan basis within the 'Service Plans' section of 'setup & admin', otherwise they can be configured on a per-client service basis in the 'Custom Data' section for the service.

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