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Baseline Configuration
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User Specific Resources
Accounts
Account Groups: Overview & Example Use Cases
Account List View: Overview
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Account Overview Customization
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Account Types: Overview & Example Use Cases
Anchor & Linked Serviceable Addresses: Overview and Best Practices
CPUC Fixed Broadband Deployment by Address
Child Accounts: Best Practices & How Tos
Creating a New Account
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FCC Broadband Data Collection (BDC) Filings: How Sonar Can Help
FCC Data Exports: General Overview and Usage
Future Serviceable Addresses: Overview
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Notes & Tasks: Best Practices & Use Cases
Scheduled Events: Overview & Use Cases
Serviceable Addresses: Overview and Usage
Specify Account ID upon Creation
Understanding the Affordable Connectivity Program
Using Sonar's FCC Broadband Label Generation Tool
Billing
ACH Batching: Overview
Accounts in Vacation Mode
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Canadian ACH tool
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Delinquency Exclusions: Overview and Use Cases
Email Invoice Batch: Overview
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How Sonar Prorates Billing
How to Take Bank Account Payments
How to: Adding a Service to an Account
Invoice Templates: Overview
Leveraging PayPal as a Payment Method in Sonar
Manual Transactions
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Print to Mail
Printed Invoice Batches: Overview
Services: Overview
Setting Up Payment Methods and Taking Payments
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Usage Based Billing Policies: Overview and Usage
Usage Based Billing Policy Free Periods: Overview and Usage
Using Tax Exemptions - How To
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Call Logs: General Best Practices
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Triggered Messages: Setup
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How to: Setting Up a Company in Sonar
Managing Multiple Companies in Sonar: Best Practices
Rebranding your Sonar Instance
Financial
Contract Templates
Invoice Attachment Use Cases & PDF Examples
Invoice Messages: Overview & Use Cases
Invoices in Sonar: Examples, Creation & Contents
Integrations
Calix SMx Integration: Overview
CrowdFiber Integration
External Marketing Providers
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How to Connect Cambium to your Sonar Instance
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How to: Using Webhooks in Sonar
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The Sonar Field Tech App
Tower Coverage Integration: Overview
Vetro FiberMap Integration: Overview
Webhooks in Sonar: Basic PHP Example
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Inventory
Inventory List View: Overview
Inventory Model Management: General Overview
Setup of Inventory: Manufacturers, Categories, and Assignees
Tracking and Using Consumable Inventory
Jobs
Applying Task Templates to Jobs
Edit Job Options
Example Jobs & Templates
Geofences: Overview
Job Types: Best Practices
Jobs and Scheduling: Overview
Scheduling How-to: Creating and Booking a Job
Scheduling Week View: Overview
Setting Up Schedules General Overview
Mapping
Misc.
Combining Custom Fields & Task Templates for Information Storage
Custom Fields Overview & Use Cases
Custom Links: Overview
Task Templates Overview & Use Cases
Monitoring
Building Alerting Rotations
Building a Monitoring Template
Poller Troubleshooting
Pollers: General Overview, Deployment Strategy, Build Out & Setup
Networking
Assigning RADIUS Addresses
Assigning an IP Address Using Sonar's IPAM: How to
Automating IP Assignments, Data Rates, and Network Access in Sonar
Building Address Lists
Building RADIUS Groups
Building a Device Mapper
Cable Modem Provisioning
Controlling Customer Speeds with Sonar: General Overview
DHCP Delivery
Data Usage Available Methods
Finding your OIDs
How Sonar Communicates - Egress IPs Explained
IP Assignments & Sonar
IPAM: Basic Setup
IPAM: Overview
LTE Integration
MikroTik as an Inline Device: Integration With Sonar
MikroTik: Controlling Access
MikroTik: Controlling Speeds
MikroTik: Setting Up a Sonar Controlled DHCP Server
Netflow Integration: Overview
Network Dashboard: Overview
Network Sites: Management View Overview
PacketLogic: Integration With Sonar
Pulse, Polling, and PHP
RADIUS: Build-Out & Integration with Sonar
RADIUS: Building Reply Attributes
Setting Up CoA Proxy
Sonar Flow
Sonar IP Addressing
Using Multiple Network Devices in Sonar
Purchase Orders
Release Notes
Reporting
Enhanced Business Intelligence - Tips & Tricks for Advanced Users
How To Enhance Your Reporting With Custom Field Data
Report Licenses
Sonar's Business Intelligence: Overview
Understanding Sonar Reports
Security
Application Firewall: General Overview and Best Practices
Auth0: Overview
Multi-Factor Authentication: Overview
Password Policy In Depth
Removing a Terminated Employee In Sonar
Role Creation using GraphiQL
User Role Creation & Best Practices
Users: Overview
Sonar Billing
sonarPay
sonarPay Chargebacks & Disputes: Overview
sonarPay Disbursements: Overview
sonarPay Overview
sonarPay Reversals, Voids, & Refunds: Overview
sonarPay: Token Migration Process
System
A Deeper Dive into the New Sonar API
API Calls Using Third Party Applications: Personal Access Tokens
Browser Compatibility and Minimum Hardware Requirements for Sonar
Consuming the Sonar API
Controlling Your Landing Page: Personal Preferences
Customizing Your Customer Portal
Date/Time Picker: Overview
Dynamic Time Zones in Sonar
Filtering: Overview
Frequently Used Terms
Getting Your Data into Sonar
How To Use GraphiQL to Understand the Sonar API
How Your Data is Backed Up
How to Best Use Global Search
Interacting with Files via the API
Introducing the New Sidebar
Mutations in the Sonar API
Notification Preferences
REST API Wrappers for V1 Compatibility
SMS Notifications
Sonar's Rich Text Editor
System Settings: Overview
The New Sonar API
Troubleshooting the Customer Portal
Upgrading your Ubuntu OS - Customer Portal Upgrades
User Profile: Your Personal User Settings
Ticketing
Advanced Ticketing Features
Canned Replies Examples & Templates
Canned Reply Categories
Exploring Ticket Groups
How to Integrate Inbound Mailboxes with Slack
Inbound Mailboxes Example Build
Ticket Categories Best Practices & Example Build
Ticketing: Overview
Using Parent Tickets
Voice
API Changes for Voice Billing
Best Practices to Remain CPNI Compliant
Billing Voice Services in Sonar
Deploying Voice Services in Sonar
Working With the Sonar Team & Additional Resources
Sonar's Security Practices & Certifications
CyberSecure Canada Certification
Sonar and General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
Sonar's Security Strategies
Technical Security Overview
Best Practices for Fast Tracking a Support Request
Feedback Portal / Suggest a Feature
Learning with Sonar: Tools and Resources
New Client Training Overview
Sonar Casts Table of Contents
Submitting Bugs vs. Feature Requests
The Sonar Community Forum
The Sonar Status Page
Third Party Customer Support Referrals
Table of Contents
- All Categories
- Monitoring
- Pollers: General Overview, Deployment Strategy, Build Out & Setup
Pollers: General Overview, Deployment Strategy, Build Out & Setup
Updated by Saied Ahadi
Read Time: 5 mins
What is a Poller?
A Poller is a device that typically sits within your network in order to monitor and collect network information on deployed devices and bring that data back into Sonar. Additionally, a poller will be able to determine which deployed devices on accounts are connected to which equipment on network sites.
One poller can monitor about one to two thousand devices if enough resources are given. However, a poller can possibly perform worse depending on your network build-out and what kind of equipment you have deployed.
Hardware Requirements:
Recommended OS: Ubuntu 20.04
Recommended CPU: Dual-Core CPU, released 2011 or newer
Recommended Memory: 4 GB of RAM
Recommended Storage: 20 GB HDD
While having a more powerful machine helps with polling, it is recommended to have 2 or 3 pollers if your network consists of 3000 devices or more.
Deployment Strategy
The poller should be hosted within your network rather than outside (Digital Ocean, AWS or Azure). While you can host your poller on the cloud, it is recommended to be as close to your deployed devices as possible. There are 2 reasons why this is recommended: first, being that you will get a quicker response from the devices you are polling, and second, it is more secure than hosting it on the cloud.
Additionally, if you have a larger network that spans a large area, it is recommended to put the pollers as close as possible to the devices you are polling - this ensures that you have accurate information.
Configuration within Sonar
To create a poller in Sonar, go to:
- Settings
- Monitoring
- Pollers
- Click on "Create Poller"
In the window that appears, name the poller to something recognizable (a good rule of thumb is to name the poller on where it is located or what subnets it is polling) and choose the subnets you want to monitor. This is also where you can also set the priority of that subnet.
By checking off additional boxes, you can add more subnets to be polled by that poller.
Once a poller has been created, you will be taken back to the poller screen with all your pollers - this is also where you can view the associated API key.
From here, we can install the poller on a virtual machine. The virtual machine should have 4 GB of RAM, at least 2 cores, and 20 GB of hard drive space.
Additionally, we need to set how often we will poll information on accounts and tower equipment. This information is set in Poller Settings screen, which can be accessed by navigating to the Settings menu > Monitoring > Poller Settings.
- Account Polling: Determines how often deployed equipment on accounts is polled. This should not be set to anything lower than 5 minutes unless you have a very small network.
- Infrastructure Polling: Determines how often deployed equipment on tower sites is polled. Generally, we want to poll this info every 2 to 5 minutes.
Providing Device Credentials in the Poller GUI
In order to complete the Poller setup process, you need to provide it a means of communicating with both your Sonar instance and with the devices you'd like to monitor. For this example, we'll be using a newly created poller, which was created following the steps described at the beginning of the "Configuration within Sonar" section:
Once you've completed the installation following the GitHub guide linked here, you'll need to access the URL or IP Address the Poller is assigned to and log into the device using your instance credentials:
Once you've logged in, you'll want to make sure the Sonar Instance URL and Poller API Key match the information that was created. Navigate to the Settings section, and review the parameters:
After confirming everything matches, proceed to the "Device Credentials" section, and click on "Create" to add a new device to your Poller:
With the creation window open, fill out the fields you need for your Device Type:
- The Credential Type Dropdown allows you to select from a supported list of devices that can be used by the Poller to access additional information. You can select from the following credential types:
- MikroTik API (SSL)
- Netonix SSH
- Ubiquiti Toughswitch SSH
- The username entered here is for the credentials of the device you're adding. The credentials need to exist on the device prior to being added here.
- The Password prompts have you enter and confirm the same password for the device user.
- The Port configured here is used for communicating with and accessing the device.
Poller Troubleshooting
For assistance troubleshooting the installation or operation of your Poller, an article is available on the knowledge base which highlights common issues and their possible solution: Poller Troubleshooting