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FAQ of Smart Guard

FAQ of Smart Guard

What is a Bandwidth Manager?

The first problem is that the term "bandwidth" is deceiving, because there are no "bands" and it doesn't have any width. Internet "bandwidth" is not a spectrum; traffic streams are one bit at a time. Bandwidth on the internet can only be conceptualized over time, and the amount of time that you talk about can greatly change the user experience. For example, if you say that a user gets 256Kb/second, does that mean every second? Can he get 512Kb/s in one second and none the next? Thats 256Kb/s. Or a megabit one second and then no bandwidth for the next 3 seconds? What about slices of a second?

Luckily, end users don't know what bandwidth is either, so you can usually trick them into thinking you're giving them something good. But as a provider, or someone involved with the management of bandwidth, you have to understand whats really happening. When you talk about "allocating" bandwidth, you have to realize that its not like setting aside a lane on a highway, because there is only one lane on the internet. All of the bits travel up the same pipe. So you are really only allocating a time slot, which can have a variety of properties, and things will work quite differently depending on the amount of time you use as your baseline.

The goal may be to share available bandwidth equally among devices, or to allocate more bandwidth to users in higher service level classes by enforcing service level agreements, allowing them to get a higher quality of service (QoS).

What is Qos?

QoS is a term that can refer to several aspects of bandwidth management, and also is a term that describes the end result of bandwidth management. By controlling users and traffic, reducing flows and the dropped packets and retransmissions that result from an overloaded network, a higher quality of service is delivered to your users and clients.

What Features are available?

The Smart Guard Bandwidth Management lots of features and competes well with the highest end bandwidth management solutions. Some main features are given below, for detail please see the features page.

    Bandwidth Management
    Pool Management
    Policy Management
    Package Management
    DHCP Support
    Real IP support
    Content filtering (database)
    Firewall
    Payment gateway / SMS gateway
    Server Logs / Graphs
    SNet Management
    Reseller Billing
    PPC Module

What is Bursting?

Bursting is a powerful feature of the Smart Guard that allows for a higher quality of service at a given service level, by adding a higher "burst" bandwidth limit. When resources are available, short periods of traffic at the burst limit are allowed. The flexible configuration allows setting of the burst, and defining exactly under which conditions bursting is allowed, allowing virtually unlimited flexibility in developing tiered service levels and dynamic control of traffic flows that respond to network conditions.

Why do I need a Bandwidth Management Project?

Virtually everyone with an internet connection and multiple users can benefit from bandwidth management. Unless you have much more bandwidth than you need all of the time, a bandwidth manager can provide significant improvement in bandwidth utilization, and in effect can yield increased productivity with less bandwidth.

Doing more with less Bandwidth

The most important reason to use a bandwidth management is to be able to get more out of less bandwidth. What's the value of being able to double the number of clients that you can service with a particular amount of bandwidth? What's the value of being able to offer services that appear similar to those provided by larger competitors? What's the value of being able to charge more for a higher quality of service? All of these are made possible with the addition of bandwidth management to your network.

ISPs - The Illusion of Unmitigated Bandwidth

In today's environment, it's necessary to provide customers with high-speed connections (via cable, wireless, etc.,) but also there is pressure to provide these services at a competitive cost. Smart Guard allows you to control your customer's usage so that you can manage your critical backbone bandwidth. In today's world where the "appearance" of unmitigated bandwidth is critical, having a product that can deliver a subjectively high quality of service while limiting overall usage and bandwidth costs is of the utmost importance if you want to remain competitive.

Universities - Get in control

Colleges and universities provide a challenging environment for network operators. Unlike most ISPs whose customer base is not home and logged in continuously, educational institutions might get 20 hours a day of high and randomly distributed usage. The ability to control thousands of simultaneous users at high throughput is a challenging task that most softwares on the market simply can't handle. With our implementation, Smart Guard can do what you need it to do.

Can I control traffic in both directions?

Yes. The Smart Guard controls traffic bi-directionally, allowing you to completely control traffic in either or both directions through an interface with a single policy, using either symmetric or asymmetric limits. You can also completely control a virtual host on the same machine as the bandwidth manager or control traffic for your entire intranet with a single unit.

How much traffic can I manage?

Till now thorugh Smart Guard maximum tested traffic is 500 MBPS.MS_CS scenario it can goes upto indefinite. 

How many Limits or Policies can I define?

There is virtually no limit to the number of rules or policies that you can define with the Smart Guard. You can control thousands of hosts and devices individually or create groups with almost unlimited flexibility. There are many factors that determine the capacity of a particular system, and they are difficult to quantify. The software is optimized to use IP addresses, which allows an ISP or university to manage every IP in their domain space. 30-50K addressess is quite possible without sacrificing much performance.

Is Smart Guard also a Firewall?

The Smart Guard has some useful firewalling capabilities; however, it is not a full-featured firewall product, nor is it intended to be a primary firewall for a substantial network. You can block services and hosts with the firewall capabilities and it is suitable as a general firewall. If you need extensive firewall features its recommended that you front-end the bandwidth management device with a standalone, firewall product.

Is Smart Guard software or hardware?

The answer is, it's both. At the core, Smart Guard is a software product; however, when sold as a complete turn-key appliance, it is a hardware product as well. The Software Appliance can be installed on a customer's own hardware, or a completely tested and well-supported Hardware Appliance can be purchased directly from us.

What Licenses are available?

In Smart Guard we have user licenses started from 25 users,50 users,100 users and it goes up to client requirement.

What happens if I exceeds my License limit?

When we are talking about users license, it can be extended on any point of time the only effect is on commercials.

What Operating System can I use?

Our system images run on Centos 6.0 We have 32-bit version available. Installation for the Software Appliance is done by an automated program via data encrypted DVD. Apart from that no other OS is required. We need a dedicated blank HDD for installing Smart Guard.

What's the advantage of Software Solution?

When you purchase one of our software version, you are buying a well-tested, well-supported complete solution that is ready to go with minimal set-up — just assign the IP address and passwords. Theres no need to worry about an incompatible motherboard chipset, drive controller, or an unsupported or inefficient NIC. We have tested and qualified the software to perform at an optimum level.

How much does it cost?

The Smart Guard software requires a software authorization key that has a cost that ranges starts from USD 200. Please contact us at info@xsinfosol.com for more information on licensing costs.

How can I evaluate Smart Guard?

We have .iso image which you can download from our web site (www.xsinfosol.com). The demo is completely self-contained. You simply boot from the DVD and a mini version of our concept will run on your hardware, provided you have compatible hardware. After that our support team will help you further for licensing process.

The Demo provides exposure to all the features so that you can evaluate our concept to other products. Demo max. Can be 7 days.

What is a License request?

In order to use the Smart Guard, you need a license. Before we issue a license, we need some info about your system, which is delivered by the support team. To generate a license request, just mail to support@xsinfosol.com.

Installing your License?

Once you receive your license, it needs to be saved to given GUI..

Starting the System

Once the license is installed, you can start the system with default username password on given url

URL : http;//PublicIP/admin.php

Username - admin

Password - admin

What if I have a Software License and my system fails?

Licenses will active, you just need to replace your hardware after that you can reactivate the whole concept by yourself.

What about support structure?

Some of our competitors charge more for support than we do for our product. Some customers seem to think that "support" means that we now work for you, and are somehow obligated to walk you through every aspect of setting up the system. This, however, is not the case.

We support the software in terms of functioning, and we answer questions about how the features work. We may point you at a section of the manual, or make a suggestion of what feature to use. Basic support only includes this kind of support. Premium support, which is an additional charge, will get you more complicated explanations and suggestions. We may suggest strategies or methods for achieving certain goals.

Under no circumstances will we debug your network or a complicated ruleset for you. Its simply impossible for us to find a problem in some big mess created by a customer who has never read the manual. If you have a specific problem, set up a small set of rules and a controlled test and present us with the results.

We also can't debug problems interfacing with other equipment. We'll certainly tell you what settings are available, but if your system can't communicate with your ABC model switch, you'll have to figure it out yourself. We don't provide network consulting, Typically such problems will be resolved while running the demo, so if they come up later it usually has little to do with our product.

One thing we ask is that you don't call us on the telephone. All support is provided via an online ticketing system. Although impersonal, this documents all corresponce which avoids he said - she said problems in the future, allows multiple people to review the problems without redundancy, and avoids the time wasted by people who speak different languages trying to understand each other. We want to provide the best support we can for as many customers as we can, and in order to achieve this, you might have to wait an hour or 2 for your answer. During business hours, you'll find us to be quite prompt. Our system has worked for many years and it allows us to do a very good job supporting many 100s of customers at a time..

How much does support cost?

Support is 20% of software price per/year, first year support is included in software price, which includes unlimited support via our ticket system and same version upgrades. We've just released V6 so we don't expect a major release in the foreseeable future. You have 30 days to renew your license after expiration before there is a penalty. If your license is expired for more than 30 days, the cost to re-instate it is prorated at 75% of the value of the license.

In order to get a replacement or an upgrade you need to have current support.

What about Cache server how it works on this and How much space we can allowed from our hard disk like 20gb or 30gb, will it cache videos too ?

Well, In Smart guard cache server space depend on your web traffic e.g 100 users= 20GB & Smart guard Cache support onle web traffic.

What about using different subnets & IP ranges?

Well, In Smart guard You can add multiple subnets & Ip series via Virtual network Option in Smart guard.

How users are define like every computer or till the router which we connect and after that they will take further with their switches ?

If you are using dhcp then every user got there username/passwordd or if users are without authentication then user defined by ip address which is created in Smart guard also there will be one l3/l2 switch after Smart guard.

Will this server work as DNS server local domain and does this support port forwarding?

Yes Smart guard work as DNS Server/ also Port Forwarding option is available. (Note:- here DNS means you can use at client end as preferred DNS and Secondary DNS eth1 ip address)

Can we do content filtering to some of the clients on the basis of IP's?

Yes, Content filtering Module is active in Smart guard,by this you can block sites with keywords,IP's,URL's.

Do Smart Guard have database for the every clients for their usage and logs?

Yes,In Smart guard there are logs for users activity as well as activities on server also.

Can we get the logs for the server when DOT will ask for and we can download that?

Yes, but you have to confirm us the details you want example (date of issue and time). We will provide you the logs.

Can we backup the server online somewhere or can we do that on the external hard drive?

you can take the backup online manually or you can schedule the backup.if you want automated backup can done on web space.

Can this server do the online billing for the clients and their usage?

Yes, invoice option also prepaid option is in Smart guard.

Can we create the different plans for the clients depending on the price and plan?

Yes,you can create the plan & packages according to client requirement. e.g data limit plans,unlimited plans,monthly plans,weekly plans, time limit plans,speed limit plans etc.