BQN Docs

Subscriber Groups

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A subscriber group is a set of subscribers. A subscriber can be associated to a group by the IP address or his subscriber ID. By IP address, a subscriber can belong to up to three different subscriber groups, plus a default group called all-subscribers that all IP addresses belong to. Subscribers can belong to up to four different subscriber groups by their subscriber ID.

The BQN can show network metrics per subscriber group. Depending on how the groups are defined, those metrics allow analysis per access points, network subnets or any customer categorization that can be mapped into groups.

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Create Subscriber Groups

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To create a subscriber group, go to Status->Subscribers->Subscriber Groups. It can also be accessed from Configuration->Subscriber Groups.

Clockon Add Subscriber Group...

A subscriber group is given a name, without spaces.

Subscriber members can be defined:

• By IP address, clicking on Add IP address…
• By subscriber ID, clicking on Add Subscriber ID…

IP addresses and/or IDs can be added loading a textual file with one entry per line. File loading options are in the menu in the upper right. Examples:

• The menu option Merge IP Address from File… will add the IP addresses contained in the file to those already existing in the group.
• The menu option Replace Subscriber IDs with File… will replace current set of subscriber IDs by those contained in the loaded file.

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The table on the right, Current IP Addresses, shows all the IP addresses part of the group, either because directly added or because they are associated to a subscriber ID part of the group. The table also indicates which IP addresses have traffic (Active yes).

The created subscriber groups are listed in Status->Subscribers->Subscriber Groups table and can be edited clicking on the edit icon.

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See Subscriber Group Metrics

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In Status->Subscribers->Subscriber Groups or in Statistics->Subscribers->Subscriber Groups, a table shows the defined subscriber groups and their metrics.

The chart will show by default the first 10 subscriber groups, and a PLOT column in the table indicates the groups included in the chart. Up to 30 subscriber groups can be shown at the same time selecting their plot tick boxes. The chart will be refreshed automatically after a few seconds. Unselecting the plot tick will remove that group from the chart.

Metrics can be for the downlink or uplink directions, and for a time period of up to three months.

The available metrics are:

• Average speed.
• Active flows.
• Flows created per minute.
• Latency.
• Retransmission.
• Congestion.
• % of traffic going at maximum speed.

Those metrics are similar to the ones shown for a subscriber(see the Subscriber Dashboard description in the Network Visibility section for details).

It is possible to use a filter, to select only the groups that have as member an IP address or a subscriber ID:

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Clicking a subscriber group name will show a subscriber group dashboard, with the metrics in separate charts:

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When filtering by IP address, a PERMANENT column tells if the subscriber group has been assigned to this IP address using CLI or REST (permanent) or by RADIUS or Billing (non-permanent). Assignments to a subscriber group by REST or CLI, therefore, takes precedence over RADIUS and Billing, so you can use them to adjust subscriber group membership,

It is also possible to go to this page right-clicking on the subscriber group name in the chart legend or the chart itself.

Subscriber Group Rate Limiting

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It is possible to set a rate limit to the overall subscriber group traffic, to be shared by all subscribers of the group. The rate limiting implements max-min fairness, i.e. the goal is to choose per-subscriber limits that maximize the lowest ones, so the distribution of the group limits is as equal as possible among the group members.

The apply rate limits per subscriber group, check first that is enabled in Configuration->Optimization Settings (it is enabled by default):

The next step is to create a rate policy in Configuration->Subscriber Rates with the uplink and downlink rate limits. In this example, we will set a limit of 500 Mbps in the downlink direction and no limit in uplink (n/a).

Please note that for subscriber groups, only the rate limits are applied (other policy parameters such as burst attributes are ignored).

Finally, go to the subscriber group edit page and select the policy rate.

A dialogue will list the available rate policies. Select the one to be associated to the subscriber group.

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Skipping Subscriber Group Rate Limiting

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It is possible to liberate some traffic from subscriber group rate limits. This is done defining a flow policy which has enabled the switch Skip subscriber-group rate limitations, as in the example below:

Yo can decide what traffic liberate from subscriber group limits by defining rules ate evaluate to this flow policy. In the following example, a VLAN is except from subscriber group limit:

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Manage Subscriber Groups from REST API

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In addition to the GUI, the BQN REST API can be used to manage subscriber groups.

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To add an existing IP 10.0.0.35 to a subscriber group “city-north”:

curl -k -u myuser:mypassword -X PUT https://192.168.0.121:3443/api/v1/subscribers/10.0.0.35 -H "Content-Type: application/json" --data '{"subscriberGroups": ["city-north”]}'

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The subscriber group will be automatically created if it did not exist.

The list of groups should reflect always the full list of membership. For example, to add an existing IP 10.0.0.35 to a subscriber group “vip”:

curl -k -u myuser:mypassword -X PUT https://192.168.0.121:3443/api/v1/subscribers/10.0.0.35 -H "Content-Type: application/json" --data '{"subscriberGroups": ["city-north”, “vip”]}'

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If the IP has group memberships, they will be returned by a GET:

curl -k -u myuser:mypassword -X GET https://192.168.0.121:3443/api/v1/subscribers/10.0.0.35

{
  "subscriberIp" : "10.0.0.35",
  "subscriberId" : "sub-12",
  "subscriberGroups" : [ "city-north", "vips" ],
  "policyRate" : "Plan-200Mbps"
}

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The membership of a specific subscriber group can be obtained as follows:

curl -k -u myuser:mypassword -X GET https://192.168.0.121:3443/api/v1/subscriberGroups/city-north

{
  "subscriberGroupName" : "city-north",
  "memberSubscriberIps" : [ "10.0.0.35", "10.0.0.15", "10.0.0.25", "10.0.0.10" ]
}

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And to get the full list of subscriber groups:

curl -k -u myuser:mypassword -X GET https://192.168.0.121:3443/api/v1/subscriberGroups

{
  "items" : [
    {
      "subscriberGroupName" : "city-north",
      "memberSubscriberIps" : [ "10.0.0.35", "10.0.0.15", "10.0.0.25", "10.0.0.10" ]
    },
    {
      "subscriberGroupName" : "vips",
      "memberSubscriberIps" : [ "10.0.0.35", "10.0.0.15", "10.0.0.25", "10.0.0.20" ]
    }
  ]
}

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You can add members to a group by the subscriber IDs, sending a PORT with the ID list to the subscriber group end point:

curl -k -u myuser:mypassword -X POST https://192.168.0.121:3443/api/v1/subscriberGroups/city-north -H "Content-Type: application/json" --data '{memberSubscriberIds: [“sub-1”, “sub-2”, “sub-3”]}’

You can also set the subscriber group rate limits as follows(1 Gbps downlink and 500 Mbps uplink in the example):

curl -k -u myuser:mypassword -X PUT https://192.168.0.121:3443/api/v1/subscriberGroups/city-north -H "Content-Type: application/json" --data '{“policyRate”: "my-SG-Policy"}’

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See REST API reference for more details.

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Manage Subscriber Groups from RADIUS

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BQN in RADIUS proxy deployment can handle subscriber groups. Go to RADIUS chapter for more details.