How the WiFi network billing system handles student account management and differential accounting in campus settings

WiFi’s web-based billing system is very complex in the campus landscape. The user of a business setting is an adult, and the willingness to pay and usage habits are certain, but the school scene is for students or parents, using a learning, entertainment, social mix, account management, package design and calculation accuracy that must be considered from the perspective of the student.

The first thing to solve the WiFi network billing system at campus is account management. Every September, thousands of new accounts are opened; several thousand accounts are out of service every June.

A way to do this is to match the school teaching system or a cartoon system. After students have registered in the teaching system, the WiFi network billing system automatically synchronizes the basic information on the number, name, faculty, and year of entry, automatically opens the Internet account. No student needs to travel to an information centre alone, nor fills out a whole bunch of forms."Graduated"The billing system will then automatically disabling accounts, clearing balances and processing refunds.

There is one detail that many people can not imagine: drop-outs, drop outs, transitions, and exchange of students. For example, a student is off for a year, so should the account number be stopped? How can he/she resume his/her studies after he/she has been suspended?

The WiFi network billing system in the dormitory area is designed to be the most sensitive part of the entire campus fee system. Students are extremely sensitive to the price of the net, and any abnormal charge will quickly be scaled up into group events. I have seen a school that has been re-counted for one bug in the billing system, which has caused dozens of students to move through the dormitory area to be double-counted, although they were rehabilitated the following day, but several pages have already been abused at student forums.

The design of the boarding strategy for dormitories balances several contradictions: on the one hand, schools need to control costs and cannot provide completely free, speed-free and unlimited network services; on the other, students need a predictable and reasonable way of charging fees that do not want to be cut off with sudden arrears."Basic free plus overpayment": a certain base flow or bandwidth per person per month, exceeding the amount by which it is measured or on time.

The model itself is not problematic, but there are many details to consider at the implementation level."Basic free"Are there free traffic or free hours? Shouldn't the early hours be uneconomical? Do you want a flow gift for holidays? The flexibility of these strategies is an important criterion to judge whether a WiFi network billing system is qualified in the school landscape.

The need for a system of fees in the educational and library areas is very different from that in the dormitories. These networks are mainly used for study and research, and schools usually want students to use it free or at least significantly.

Technically, it's not complicated.——The AP broadcasts different SSIDs in different regions, WiFi network billing systems, which determine the user’s current location based on the user’s access to SSID. But when it is achieved, consideration should be given to the smoothness of switching: the students’ journey from dormitories to the teaching building automatically switch equipment from one SSID to another, a process costing strategy that must be instantaneous and do not create a charge gap or duplicate charges.

In this case, the system needs a parent-to-parent transparent management interface.——Parents can see the use of their children ' s networks, traffic consumption, charging records and the possibility to set limits on how long they are used and how much they consume.

The mechanism is technically a system of access, but it is very interesting to be able to learn from the design of products. Parents don't need to understand what RADIUS or CoA are."How much traffic, how much money is left, if you want to fill it?"The simplest information is presented, and the technical details are hidden in the back. The most difficult part of the design of the WiFi network system on campus is not technology but understanding students’ real use of the scenes and needs. Whether the Internet strategy for late-night breakout of student dormitories can be adjusted to the dynamics of the curriculum and how the balance refund before graduates leave school will be done to keep students out of the way.