Daily Quota usage based on overal time

Suggest improvements and new features for Gargoyle.

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nworbnhoj
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Re: Daily Quota usage based on overal time

Post by nworbnhoj »

tarbasd wrote:Is there any progress on this?
None that I am aware of - we have been working on other cool stuff
tarbasd wrote:I would even be satisfied if the user would have to manually disconnect wifi (or put the phone into airplane mode), or perform some action manually to stop the timer.
This is possibly a dooable approach as an alternative the issues raised by @Lantis
http://www.gargoyle-router.com/phpbb/vi ... 497#p31312
It was pretty annoying to me when hotels took this approach in the early days of wifi. I wonder if there is a more elegant approach.
Can you help someone else get Gargoyle up and running?
TL-WDR3600 : Gargoyle 1.9.0 : NBN FixedWireless
TL-WR1043ND-V2 : Gargoyle 1.8.0 : 3G Huawei E160E

Aragorn_Strider
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Location: south of Paris area, France

Re: Daily Quota usage based on overal time

Post by Aragorn_Strider »

Hi all,

By the way, there was also a former discussion about this subject, here.

If I can bring my two cents to the discussion, this is my point of view and how I could use this feature.

I have 5 kids at home, including 3 teens who massively use wifi access with smartphones, laptops and ipod touch...
That is why I was pleased to find a firmware such Gargoyle, to manage a little more intelligently their Internet access.
Quotas and restrictions are great, however with Time quota it would be even better.

Regarding the need :

They actually have during school time 3 hours per day on week-end and 30 minutes during week days, and 3 hours each day during holiday time.
Sometimes some of them are looking videos, or other are playing video games or just checking mails or snapchat.
I have monitored during one month their data consumption, in the idea to create quotas and extend their restriction time, to be more flexible...
[By the way, as in France we have ISP offers with unlimited data allowed, I realized with Gargoyle that they have used a little more than 60Go for the first month...]

If I put only quotas to them, based on their data consumption, for example 700Mo per day and per teen, and extend their restriction time to 6 hours during week-end and one hour during week days, they possibly can spent the whole available hours on Internet, only surfing...

Therefore wih a time quota, we can put start and end restriction hours, but also a maximum amount of time for one day, 3 hours for example. And they won't have to be connected at the same time. It would be more flexible.

Regarding the means :

I understand the reasons of Lantis and others, that is difficult to know if an host is really using internet access.
But the easiest and first test is to know if the host is connected.
At home, wifi on the router is off when it is not used, as well as on the wifi or cable hosts : we switch it on only when we need it.

Then we can consider that when the Ethernet connexion is on, the timer can begin.
It is not finest, but for many users I think it could be good enough.

Frederic
Netgear WNDR4300v1 with Gargoyle v1.9.2 (formerly 1.8.1)

neatomos
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Joined: Fri May 08, 2009 4:44 pm

Re: Daily Quota usage based on overal time

Post by neatomos »

A quick patch to a situation such as that would be to utilize an additional radio and plug it into the existing router. Open-Mesh has a dashboard function which supports their own radios and it is controlled via Cloudtrax.com. The interesting perk is the ability to utilize their voucher system based on the usage of time.

One could whip up a voucher system and generate codes with a certain allotment of time be it 1 hour to whatever you wish. Dish them out to the kids and away they go. Once they log in and authenticate via the voucher code, the clock begins to tick.

It may be a different approach, but after I started typing this up. I could see some perks... mow the lawn... get a voucher. Clean up your room, get an extra 2 hour voucher.

That way, you have Gargoyle still managing bandwidth, quotas, latency, etc,. With a second (or more if you wish to go mesh) radio tied into it to handle the time allotment.

Lantis
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Re: Daily Quota usage based on overal time

Post by Lantis »

So an unexpected update on this.
I've started working on it.

I've finished writing the module, now I'm just integrating everything into the firewall and UI.
Hope to have some things to test in a few weeks. :)
https://lantisproject.com/downloads/gargoylebuilds for the latest releases
Please be respectful when posting. I do this in my free time on a volunteer basis.

ispyisail
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Re: Daily Quota usage based on overal time

Post by ispyisail »

Thanks

ispyisail
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Re: Daily Quota usage based on overal time

Post by ispyisail »

Is it the same as this?

viewtopic.php?f=12&t=9195

Lantis
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Re: Daily Quota usage based on overal time

Post by Lantis »

No this will be time based quotas.
So you can set that someone can use 2 hours of internet everyday at ANY TIME of the day. Which is currently not possible.
This should allow more flexibility.
https://lantisproject.com/downloads/gargoylebuilds for the latest releases
Please be respectful when posting. I do this in my free time on a volunteer basis.

Aragorn_Strider
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Joined: Fri Mar 18, 2016 5:47 pm
Location: south of Paris area, France

Re: Daily Quota usage based on overal time

Post by Aragorn_Strider »

Lantis wrote:So an unexpected update on this.
I've started working on it.

I've finished writing the module, now I'm just integrating everything into the firewall and UI.
Hope to have some things to test in a few weeks. :)
Hi Lantis !

It's a very good news :D !
THANKS A LOT for your work on this project 8-) .

I can test this feature when it will be available.

Few questions :
- ultimately, which event did you choose to detect when to start and finish the timer ?
- does it will work with Wifi connections only or with any connection (wireless and cable) ?
- and does it will work with an IP range of addresses, like the Access Restrictions ?

Thanks again,
Frederic
Netgear WNDR4300v1 with Gargoyle v1.9.2 (formerly 1.8.1)

Lantis
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Re: Daily Quota usage based on overal time

Post by Lantis »

I'll be sure to let you know when it is ready.

To answer your questions so far:
- When a packet is sent or received from a device governed by a time limit quota, an accounting window is started with duration 5 seconds (call this the minimum resolution of the module). Any traffic for the next 5 seconds is free.
After this 5 second window, sending or receiving another packet starts a new window.
Essentially, the timer counts in intervals of 5 seconds.

- it will work with all traffic going in or out of the WAN interface, local interface doesn't matter. This is the same as regular bandwidth restrictions.

- like the current bandwidth quotas, you can apply it to an individual, or to a group. If you can do it with the current quotas, you can do it with time quotas


The advantages of this method of measuring time is that we can minimise wasted unfair time.
The disadvantage is that devices can frequently do background things like checking mail or twitter etc etc.
users will need to manage this themselves
https://lantisproject.com/downloads/gargoylebuilds for the latest releases
Please be respectful when posting. I do this in my free time on a volunteer basis.

Aragorn_Strider
Posts: 16
Joined: Fri Mar 18, 2016 5:47 pm
Location: south of Paris area, France

Re: Daily Quota usage based on overal time

Post by Aragorn_Strider »

OK, thanks for your answers.
I was afraid that LAN Ethernet traffic would be taken into account.

If I understand well, an in/out packet give a "ticket" for 5 seconds of WAN use (and so the quota is decreased of 5 seconds).
After 5 seconds, if no new packets, the time is not count.

It looks great :) .

For the disadvantages, it's a part of Internet use, after all...
At home, our kids use wireless clients or laptop with cable to access the Internet, so if they do'nt use it, they can easily disconnect.
Or they can learn to shutdown applications which use regularly Internet, or to disable the automatic update of applications : update only when needed ;) .

Nota : if 5 seconds uses too much router CPU time, perhaps 30sec even 1min coud be sufficient...

Frederic
Netgear WNDR4300v1 with Gargoyle v1.9.2 (formerly 1.8.1)

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