Feature Request: User Groups (sort of)

[zygo]

gday eric, unclejohn
sorry if im not explaining myself to well but im not after people logging in or anything like that, in fact, i do not wont that at all. its not high security inside my lan (its a home lan). also i have many pieces of equipment here that are just dumb users of the net & cant log in except possibly as "guest". xboxs, ps3s, popcornhours, other networkmedia players, internet radio players etc. etc. the system will already know their mac address & give them the appropriate ip & hostname when they are turned on/connected. (we dont have differant users for each piece of equipment)

my request is more cosmetic with the ability to add "named" ip ranges/lists & a change to the logging
a) give the quotas a name that is also used in the usage page & shown alphabeticaly ("son1_peak","son1_offpeak", etc)
b) the ability to use & show the host name (if added in the mac/ip table) rather than the ip address
c) the ability to add ip ranges/list that are named (not critical but while your adding names to things?? )
d) the ability to see the data for individual ip/named ips within a range or quota

i wish i had the scripting knowledge to change things myself & show you what i mean (i may yet have a look at it some time as im thinking most of these variables already exist somewhere in the program)

cheers to all... and a happy new year

[uncle john]

gday eric, unclejohn
...
my request is more cosmetic with the ability to add "named" ip ranges/lists & a change to the logging
a) give the quotas a name that is also used in the usage page & shown alphabeticaly ("son1_peak","son1_offpeak", etc)
...

North American friends: An explanatory note on the need for "peak" and "offpeak" quotas.
The majority of bandwidth internationally is used for downloading movies. ISPs in OZ accommodate this usage by offering generous "offpeak" quotas. One example is TPG who restrict the use of this quota to 4 am to 9 am. The result is that people using apps such as facebook during more civilised hours are not adversely affected.

zygo: My comments re captive portals etc. reflect my experience raising 4 kids. At that time the 6 of us shared two PCs. That was a long time ago and they now have kids of their own. I realise kids today are more likely to have their own PC.

Eric: I think zygo's request makes a lot of sense. Adding DHCP hostnames won't really help in addressing this problem.
I suspect many users would really welcome the ability to give each quota a customised name and have the data displayed as requested.
I suggest that users/kids are generally sophisticated enough to figure out what this data means. They just need it so they can act more responsibly.
Wishing you a Happy New Year. Congradulations on the growing popularity of this excellent product and service.

[uncle john]

...
I suggest that users/kids are generally sophisticated enough to figure out what this data means. They just need it so they can act more responsibly.
...

On the other hand many users would not appreciate the difference between DHCP Hostname (e.g. the name of the client PC) and Quota name: The custom name it is suggested we could assign to a quota. In other words users could be misled into believing that they were the only ones using a particular PC.
Perhaps the solution to this is to go with idea of displaying the DHCP Hostname as Eric is suggesting and also including a separate custom Note (e.g. "Son 1 Off-Peak quota") which would be added to the quota when it is created. I would also suggest that in some situations household members may not like to have their usage data on display to others so perhaps this should be made optional.
The DHCP Hostname/s, the custom note/s and usage data would appear at 192.168.1.1
This optional note feature would also better accommodate the captive portal later on when, as Eric says, a lot of the current code would be broken.

[zygo]

gday eric, uncle john

On the other hand many users would not appreciate the difference between DHCP Hostname (e.g. the name of the client PC) and Quota name...

this is correct & i may have been misleading. i am using the term "host name" because in the dhcp section it offers you the choice of adding an optional host name, this is purely for the router (i have no idea what "son1_girlfriend_laptop"'s actual hostname is or even if its been set, i want to use the name i set it so i can understand who/what it is)

...I would also suggest that in some situations household members may not like to have their usage data on display to others so perhaps this should be made optional....

i agree. the ability for me to allow users/machines to "unroll" & view specific ip data would be great if it was optional, but i was thinking this added another layer of complexity to the changes. my thinking was to give it some hard rules as to what each person sees eg.
a) if ip/mac is specificly part of the quota then it gets the unroll btn and has the ability to unroll the quota it is a part of.
b) if ip/mac is part of a "named range" within the quota, it does not get the unroll button and cannot view specific data within that quota, just the rolled up totals.
c) nobody sees any quota they are not a part of.
d) quotas can be marked as "hidden" so nobody sees them at all

i note a couple of things looking at the source of the routers login page.(before ive logged in as root)
a) there is already the use of a quota id
b) i can see all data for all quotas within the source of the page even tho only my data is shown?? is this right or is it just because i have logged in as root from this machine previously??

cheers to all

[uncle john]

I'd distinguish between household and family situations when talking about users viewing each others usage.
If a household consists only of adults I think it would be reasonable to respect a users desire to keep usage habits private.
If on the other hand we are talking about a family situation having the kids keep tabs on each other could ease the pressure on mum and dad as far as quota admin is concerned.

[uncle john]

So far in this discussion we've dealt with usage in terms of quota. I'd suggest similar principles could be applied to usage in terms of where users go. The Recent Web Usage screen shows you this.
The custom text box facility I've suggested for monitoring quotas is not unique. Meraki include such a facility in their dashboard.
If we added a similar facility to the Web Usage screen AFAIK that would be unique.
Why not take this one step further and make this data visible to all family members?
Again this idea is not entirely new. Many corporations monitor sites their employees visit and make this data freely available as a way of keeping users honest (of course individual user names are not included). I'm suggesting that similar practices could also benefit families.
Forum readers who are parents (I suspect these are a large and growing number of you) will know that kids look to you as their example in life. This includes being interested in the things you are interested in.

[uncle john]

...
The custom text box facility I've suggested for monitoring quotas is not unique. Meraki include such a facility in their dashboard.
...

Update: Meraki used to include a general purpose text box that admins could use for the purpose I described. However they upgraded their dashboard a couple of months ago.
In the old dashboard client devices are automatically assigned a description based on what appears to be either the DHCP Hostname, MAC, or some sort of unique combination of both.
What is really neat about the new dashboard is that you can now EDIT this description name to something more meaningful to the administrator.