Re: BillMax questions -- Billmax and Switch Port Billing

[Reece Anderson <reece@prodigy.net.au>]

HI Ted,

I've found billmax to do most stuff fine, any billing issues i've had  
were easy fixed by deleting the stats database. :)
billmax would really take off as a billing system if the stuff it  
said it did on the billmax site it actually did.
Though it would be nice if when i asked for some code no help with it  
just something they've already written months ago for someone else  
they gave without asking for a credit card number.
The work was already done before someone else payed for it, like  
yourself im stuck as well between management not wanting to spend the  
money and my own technical limitation im not a programmer.
At the end of the day though, if i cant integrate netflow or some  
kind of switch transit fetching script i cant put the 2000 customers  
into the system which means i wont need to buy an additional 2000  
user license from billmax.

We are still running off our in house billing system but are making  
slow progress on our own though this mail list seems to have data  
missing, i swear i did a search for netflow here a few months ago and  
setup instructions were here now they've been deleted from the archive.
Though billmax seems to be the only Provisioning/Billing/Data  
collection system in existence its really to bad it not as open  
source for modules, if it was im sure they'd make all their money on  
user licenses if it did everything talking to most unix applications  
it would be "the" billing system everyone would switch over to it  
will little hassle.

It just would be nice if someone from billmax posted on their own  
mailing list saying here are some perl scripts to help you, i'd at  
least have something to work with i know it wont happy but oh well.


On 16/10/2006, at 9:38 PM, Internet Partners, Inc. Tech Support wrote:

>
> The reason you can't find anything is because billmax makes
> money off of writing custom scripts, and they obviously don't
> allow people to post mods they have supplied to the mailing
> list.
>
> There's been a few fragments of things that have been posted
> on the mailing list in the past, for old, defunct billmax versions.
> Nothing that can be dropped into a running system and do anything.
> My take on it is that everyone who needs work of this kind
> done, just pays Billmax for doing it.
>
> Also, let me point one other thing out for you - all our feeds
> state they bill for overages.  However, we've exceeded our
> utilization many times, although our average is below what our
> contract states is the overage point - and yet never got
> charged for it.  I think that this is because other people have
> found that it's not easy from a technical perspective to
> implement this kind of a billing, at least, not in the United
> States where there's lots of competition, and it's impossible
> from a political standpoint.
>
> The point is, before spending a lot of money on having a custom
> transit billing system built for you, check with your sales
> people and ask them what they would do if an irate customer
> called in, claiming that their own graphing showed differently
> than what your billing, and demanding a bill adjustment or they
> will quit service.  You might find that all the additional money
> you can extract out of a metered plan, will just go right back
> out the door in the form of credits, etc.
>
> Ted
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: owner-questions@billmax.com [mailto:owner- 
>> questions@billmax.com]On
>> Behalf Of Reece Anderson
>> Sent: Sunday, October 15, 2006 8:01 AM
>> To: questions@billmax.com
>> Subject: BillMax questions -- Billmax and Switch Port Billing
>>
>>
>> I've been looking around for a way of using Billmax to bill for
>> transit on a cisco switch, it appears that perl scripts ect are
>> rather limited.
>> An FTP site that is referred to for script files to help in Billmax
>> has been taken down.
>>
>> I dont mind MRTG or SNMP though i have done some scripting in the
>> past to load data into the "enter_stat" system which creates failures
>> within the billmax account if 0 is passed.
>> I was looking at a way of tying each port on the switch to a service
>> number and then loading the data even in via mrtg logs.
>>
>> At this stage i'll take anything that has proven to work, if anyone
>> can help me out it would be greatly appreciated.
>>
>> I've even looked at other method's such as netflow but nothing on
>> that as well.
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Reece
>>
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------
>> ----------
>> To unsubscribe from the "BillMax Questions" mailing list, please
>> send a message to "majordomo@billmax.com" with "unsubscribe  
>> questions"
>> in the message body. The message must be sent from the exact email
>> address on the list.
>>

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe from the "BillMax Questions" mailing list, please
send a message to "majordomo@billmax.com" with "unsubscribe questions"
in the message body. The message must be sent from the exact email
address on the list.