Net Charging in detail

Important

PaperCut Quota has been superceded by PaperCut NG which has all the features of Quota and much more. Read more ...

PaperCut Net Charging module allows you to monitor, charge, and quota Internet usage in real-time. PaperCut can be setup to perform any of the following functions:

  • Charge your users for their Internet access
  • Place Internet quotas on your users
  • Silently monitor your users' Internet usage (used by many businesses)
  • Disallow Internet access once users run out of credit

PaperCut Net Charging allows you to charge/quota users based to either the time they spend on the Internet or the amount of data they download.

Time Based Charging

  • Stops people wasting time surfing the web
  • Useful when computer resources are scarce
  • Charge for time used time, not data downloaded
  • Easy for your users to understand
  • Choose a time period duration and a cost per period

Data Based Charging

  • Useful when bandwidth is expensive
  • Encourages careful use of bandwidth
  • Stops people downloading large files like MP3s and movies

PaperCut requires a supported proxy server to track and restrict the Internet access. As of PaperCut Quota 5.0 the following proxies are supported.

Supported
Log Format
Can deny access
MS ISA Server 2000/2004/2006 Yes Yes
MS Proxy Server Yes Yes
WinGate Yes Yes
Free Proxy Yes
(using W3C log format)
Yes
Squid Yes Yes

Let's start a short tour of the web tool features ...

Time Based Charging ...

  • Useful when computer resources are scarce, or to discourage extended Internet use
  • Choose a time period duration
  • Decide how much to charge per time period
  • Easy for your users to understand

How it works ...

  1. You choose the duration of each chargeable time period
  2. Each day is split into time periods of this duration
  3. When a user accesses the Internet within a time period, they are charged for using that period
  4. The defined charge for the period will be deducted from the user's account
  5. If the user has no credit, they will be disallowed access to the Internet

 

Data Based Charging ...

  • Useful when bandwidth is expensive
  • Choose a how much to charge per Megabyte
  • Decide if you want to charge for cached data
  • Decide if you want to charge for uploaded data

 

View users' net usage statistics ...

  • Views users' recent net usage
  • See users' average daily usage both in time and data
  • Calculate statistics over different time periods (month, week, etc)

 

 

What you don't see ...

  • Highly efficient log file processing, even across a network share
  • Adds/removes users from a predefined Internet access Windows group to "lock out" users
  • Logs daily internet usage for reporting and tracking
  • Provides users with near real-time reporting of their internet usage

 

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