Managing, Controlling and Measuring the bandwidth is a huge task to anyone administrating corporate networks. Measuring the bandwidth used is a priority before managing it. NetFlow Analyzer helps you measure bandwidth usage for your enterprise with which you can crosscheck your bandwidth usage as given by your service provider. The IP grouping, interface grouping helps in creation of virtual departments for ease of bandwidth monitoring and accounting.
This blog we have come with very different scenario of IP group, which is about IP accounting and Billing or Charge back.
Scenario:
Consider a Corporate services network which has lot of projects hosted and group of people are working in each project. The network has a 3 Mbps leased line which is shared among each project. Since the company also includes bandwidth costs occurred in cost of a project, the enterprise management team is asked to measure the bandwidth used by each project and provide a billing solution based on the usage.
Creating IP Groups for each Project:-
IP Group feature in NetFlow Analyzer lets you create a group based on IP Address, Network or Range and associate them with an interface. This feature lets you see the ‘IP’ factor associated in the group as a separate entity for bandwidth monitoring purposes. The administrator creates an IP group in NetFlow Analyzer based on IP network of each project. Next step is to create Bill plans for each IP group or Projects to measure their bandwidth and bill them based upon their usage.
An overview about Billing:
Billing is one of the major features available in ManageEngine NetFlow Analyzer Professional Plus edition and Enterprise Edition. With real time information on bandwidth consumption using NetFlow data giving enterprises and ISPs ability to plan and manage its network infrastructure better, the billing feature in NetFlow Analyzer takes you to the next level by addressing the company’s business needs. With this, NetFlow Analyzer acts as an all in one solution for your multiple business requirements.
NetFlow based billing provides a number of advantages when compared with other typical billing mechanisms:
1. The major advantage with NetFlow is that you can leverage on an existing technology already available on your routing or switching devices.
2. NetFlow feature is supported on a wide range of Cisco devices and is just not Cisco devices, but many major vendors have similar flow formats like sFlow, NetStream, jFlow and etc.
3. No additional hardware and software purchase – you get the ability to do traffic analysis, bandwidth monitoring and billing too in a single software
Creating Bill plan for measuring the bandwidth usage:-
Billing plans may vary according to each customer and according to the enterprise’s requirement. You may want to bill your customers based on the traffic volume or speed. The bill plan may also involve a base cost and incremental cost for additional usage. Customers or departments can be based on IP network, range or even a dedicated interface. All these varied requirements can be met using the single solution of NetFlow Analyzer.
Bill plans in NetFlow Analyzer can be associated with either IP Groups or interfaces. Our need is to Bill based on IP groups. Once the bill plan is created, the bill will be generated and emailed on the set billing date. A user can also create the bill when needed using the on-demand billing which is useful when a plan is terminated before the end of the bill period or when you need an intermediate bill before the bill generation date. Creation of on-demand bill and viewing of previously generated bills can be done.
IP group and Billing in NetFlow Analyzer provide ISPs the ability to bill customers with in-depth information and enterprises customers to have departmental charge back or cost allocation along with detailed bandwidth reports. This is achieved through NetFlow Analyzer with an easy to use user interface and a simple design, making the creation and maintenance of bill plans an easy task.
Thus billing report and IP group in depth analysis helps in Measuring, Controlling and Managing the network with appropriate bandwidth usage.
Thanks and Regards
Praveen Kumar
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