We use Servers Alive to monitor all of our BH, CMM, AP, SM, UPS and other network components. It works very well for uptime notifications.
We currently have a W2K3 Standard Server running Softperfect Bandwidth Manager application that we use to regulate up/down speeds on our customers. We have created individual rules for each client’s routable IP and then we can observe usage and set speeds on customers individually. Furthermore, we also have created groups and then added customers to specific groups based on the plans we sell them. We can set the up/down bandwidth on the group and then it automatically changes it for everyone in that group in realtime.
A couple other nice things you can do with Softperfect product are that you can give http access to individual clients so they can see their usage history in a web page. We try to throttle our customers after 2gb/day of transfer, so if we have a heavy user we give them a link to look at their transfer so they can self regulate. You can also create a group that will do a port 80 redirect and then you can setup IIS on the box and then create a landing page in IIS to redirect your “non-paying” or “declined” customers to that says something like “We have had a problem processing your payment. Please call our office to update your payment information on file.” This really saves a ton of time each month not having to call a client if their payment declines (we have auto recurring billing for our clients). You just go into bandwidth mgr and put them in the payment decline group and then all their web (port 80) traffic is redirected to your landing page, so they are unable to surf the web until they update their payment info.
We got setup as a “reseller” with softperfect and paid like $75 for a single server license and we have over 300 customers running through it for $75. It takes a little while to setup on the front end, but is very easy to maintain afterward and has an awesome pricepoint.
Feel free to hit me back if you have any other questions about either of the two.
Custcomp