Review of the billing system BGBilling

Prehistory

About a year and a half ago, we encountered a problem, namely, that our billing system (someone who once wrote, supported by a local counter, in which the author was no longer there) didn’t cope with the tasks assigned to it.

Ordering the development of a new system for your tasks is too expensive and too long. Therefore, the challenge was to find a suitable solution. The choice eventually fell on BGBilling. As a result, we have been working with this system for a year now and, on the whole, are satisfied with everything. Why we chose the system and why it is good (I will also try to highlight the minuses) I will try to explain in detail below.

Introduction

So, for whom is the first post intended? For people like me, half a year ago, perplexed by management, searching for a suitable solution and looking for descriptions of various systems to start testing (yes, there is a wonderful resource for Nag.Ru, but personally it doesn’t impress me, it’s all too chaotic I believe more). I also think it will be interesting to those who are experiencing / experiencing rapid growth / access to a new niche and feel the need to upgrade / move to a new platform.
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Perhaps we will begin.

About the system

The system is Russian. Site - bgbilling.ru
As I understand it, the system was written for the UfaNet network, and then it grew into a separate product. Development has been going on since 2003. The current version is 5.0 (we have 4.6, there are practically no differences from the current one, the new version was caused by the expiration of the certificate), version 5.1 is in development, in which the developers promise a lot of new things, but I can’t say anything about it yet.

System architecture - the server part is written in Java. The first time was disturbed by the performance and stability of such a system. After a year, I can say that there is no problem with performance and stability. But there is one BUT. The server requires the latest Java, and there are some problems with it on FreeBSD. Therefore, this system is not in the list of supported. But there is - Windows, Linux. Specifically, we stand on Fedora 10. Mac as a supported platform is not announced, but in general, nothing prevented me from starting the server and client on my laptop. DBMS - MySQL.

The database documentation is amazing . We go to the site dbinfo.bitel.ru and look around, see what and how is connected with what, what parameters can be. Frankly, for me, the documentation of the database was one of the decisive factors. It was clear that the functionality specific only for us would have to be finished by myself, so such help as adequate documentation, I was both pleased, more and more pleased.

Client for billing operator is a separate GUI application.

What should be noted - the client has a built-in sql editor, which from the client itself allows you to perform salaries to the database and get results in a digestible form.

Cost, licenses and other

The system is modular. Each module has a number of licenses with which it can work (or an infinite number). The more licenses, the more expensive the module. Maximum price - for an infinite number of licenses.

What modules are worth highlighting - subscription fee cancellation module, diap up module, ipn module, voiceip. You can calculate the cost of the license on the website - bgbilling.ru/price_count.shtml

What modules will be needed? Without the module subscription fees - nowhere. We take it, the maximum price for an infinite number of licenses (the infinite begins with 10,000 licenses) - ~ 100tr.
And now we look what we do? The KTV operator is essentially nothing more. The provider would also have a network module. This is either IPN or DialUP - both of which cost up to 100tr as much as possible.
Telephony module is one of the most expensive. About 240tr.
The rest of the modules - voice, digital TV module - in my opinion are not so popular, we will not consider them. If interested - you can count on the site.

Technical support, community

A controversial issue on technical support. She paid. When purchasing a license, it is proposed to conclude a contract for technical support and purchase a package of applications. For 25tr you can get 50 hits per year. For 9TR - 15 hits, also for a year. Is it a lot or a little? We used for the year - 5 hits. Error messages for requests are not counted, but for their messages you still need a package with at least one request.

Free support is provided by the developers on the forum, but in non-guaranteed terms. If through a personal account the answer will be given on average in a couple of hours, then through the forum you will have to wait a day or two. But on the forum there are a lot of users like you, who sometimes prompt and help more quickly.

Which leads us to the issue of the community and wiki base. I really liked the community. On the forum you can find help on almost any issue. Recently, they also began to contact me in ICQ with questions, I gladly tell you if I know what and how.

Performance and Packages

Official data is presented on the corresponding page of the site - bgbilling.ru/program/speed.shtml . In general, they can be trusted. AP written off quite quickly. The radius (we use the DiapUP module to access the network) keeps the load while authorizing 1000-1500 users at the same time (loss of light in the area, and then on) is quite normal. The radius is engaged in counting netflow statistics. Copes with a stream from 6 tsisok with a gigabit of traffic on each.

Apart from fakaps caused by their crooked hands, there was one rather unpleasant fakap on January 1, 2010. For each month, new balance sheets are automatically created. Due to some flaws in logic in 2010, new tables were not created. Therefore, at the time of writing off the PA, everyone had 0 in the account. The benefit of the database is very well documented and there are functions of group operations - this was very quickly eliminated (before most of the subscribers got away from the hangover and got into the Internet).

Starting, transferring existing databases

Setting up and launching the system is quite simple, there is nothing to highlight. Unpack the archive, add the .sh executables to autorun, load the table structure from the dump file and perhaps everything will already work =).

Interesting moment. The main components of the system - server, radius, sheduler - can be spread to different servers, specify IPs in the settings and everything will work fine, cling to the server and distribute the load.

By the way about the load distribution. All tasks are dumped into the queue, which handles the scheduler. Moreover, it has practically no connection with the server. Those. the task of uploading statistics, re-betting the traffic - the shear load will not affect the performance of the billing server itself - it will work in normal mode, adding tasks to the queue will give access to the database radius and other modules.

Conclusion, comparison with other systems

In general, I am satisfied with the billing. Now I am adding my own interface (again I am happy with the documentation of the database - it is very easy to write the necessary queries to the database)

Compare with other systems, and especially not. According to the reviews of those who move from UTM - the sky and the earth - the documentation and openness of the database, the ability to add their scripts, implement their own business logic.

PS If you have any questions - ask, I will try to answer.