Getting Started
First Time Setup
Getting Started With Jobs
Getting Started with Ticketing
Setting Sonar up for Billing
Getting Started with Accounts
Getting Started with Inventory
Baseline Configuration
User Specific Resources
How To: Using Sonar's Customer Portal
Accounts
Account Types: Overview & Example Use Cases
Account Statuses: Overview & Example Use Cases
Account Management View: Overview
Scheduled Events: Overview & Use Cases
Notes & Tasks: Best Practices & Use Cases
Child Accounts: Best Practices & How Tos
Disconnecting an Account
FCC Broadband Data Collection (BDC) Filings: How Sonar Can Help
Account List View: Overview
Specify Account ID upon Creation
Lead Intake Form Processing
Account Groups: Overview & Example Use Cases
CPUC Fixed Broadband Deployment by Address
Serviceable Addresses: Overview and Usage
FCC Data Exports: General Overview and Usage
Creating a New Account
Billing
Setting up Bank Account & Credit Card Processors
Billing Settings
Billing Defaults
Taxes Setup
General Ledger Codes: Overview
Services: Overview
Building a Data Service
Building Packages
Delinquency Billing Best Practices
Accounts in Vacation Mode
Batch Payments & Deposit Slips: Overview
Creating Discounts for Services and Packages
Setting Up Payment Methods and Taking Payments
Canadian ACH tool
Printed Invoice Batches: Overview
Delinquency Exclusions: Overview and Use Cases
Multi-Month Billing & Multi-Month Services
How to Take Bank Account Payments
Email Invoice Batch: Overview
Manual Transactions
ACH Batching: Overview
Billing Calculator
General Transactions: Best Practices
Usage Based Billing Policies: Overview and Usage
How to: Adding a Service to an Account
Usage Based Billing Policy Free Periods: Overview and Usage
Using Tax Exemptions - How To
Avalara: Overview & Setup
Print to Mail
Communication
Setting up an Outbound Email Domain
Triggered Messages: Setup
Call Logs: General Best Practices
Using the Mass Message Tool
Saved Messages: Overview
Message Categories: Overview & Use Cases
Phone Number Types: Overview and Use Cases
Email Variables & Conditions
Communication Tools: Overview
Trigger Explanations
Companies
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 Integration: Overview
GPS Tracking Providers: Overview
Webhooks in Sonar: Basic PHP Example
How to Connect Cambium to your Sonar Instance
iCalendar Integration
External Marketing Providers
The Sonar Field Tech App
How to Connect Preseem to your Sonar System
Tower Coverage Integration: Overview
GoCardless Integration: Overview & Setup
Vetro FiberMap Integration: Overview
How to: Using Webhooks in Sonar
Inventory
Setup of Inventory: Manufacturers, Categories, and Assignees
Inventory List View: Overview
Inventory Model Management: General Overview
Tracking and Using Consumable Inventory
Jobs
Job Types: Best Practices
Setting Up Schedules General Overview
Applying Task Templates to Jobs
Scheduling Week View: Overview
Example Jobs & Templates
Scheduling How-to: Creating and Booking a Job
Geofences: Overview
Edit Job Options
Jobs and Scheduling: Overview
Mapping
Misc.
Monitoring
Building a Monitoring Template
Pollers: General Overview, Deployment Strategy, Build Out & Setup
Building Alerting Rotations
Poller Troubleshooting
Networking
IP Assignments & Sonar
MikroTik: Setting Up a Sonar Controlled DHCP Server
IPAM: Basic Setup
MikroTik as an Inline Device: Integration With Sonar
MikroTik: Controlling Speeds
MikroTik: Controlling Access
Setting Up CoA Proxy
RADIUS: Building Reply Attributes
Data Usage Available Methods
Pulse, Polling, and PHP
Using Multiple Network Devices in Sonar
IPAM: Overview
Cable Modem Provisioning
LTE Integration
Assigning RADIUS Addresses
Controlling Customer Speeds with Sonar: General Overview
Sonar Flow
RADIUS: Build-Out & Integration with Sonar
Network Dashboard: Overview
Being Cloud Native
Netflow Integration: Overview
Building a Device Mapper
Sonar IP Addressing
Automating IP Assignments, Data Rates, and Network Access in Sonar
DHCP Delivery
Assigning an IP Address Using Sonar's IPAM: How to
Network Sites: Management View Overview
Building RADIUS Groups
Building Address Lists
Finding your OIDs
Purchase Orders
Security
User Role Creation & Best Practices
Removing a Terminated Employee In Sonar
Password Policy In Depth
Application Firewall: General Overview and Best Practices
Users: Overview
Role Creation using GraphiQL
System
How to Best Use Global Search
How Your Data is Backed Up
How To Use GraphiQL to Understand the Sonar API
Frequently Used Terms
Sonar's Rich Text Editor
Mutations in the Sonar API
Notification Preferences
API Calls Using Third Party Applications: Personal Access Tokens
Auth0: Overview
The New Sonar API
Introducing the New Sidebar
Upgrading your Ubuntu OS - Customer Portal Upgrades
A Deeper Dive into the New Sonar API
Consuming the Sonar API
Filtering: Simple vs Advanced
Browser Compatibility and Minimum Hardware Requirements for Sonar
REST API Wrappers for V1 Compatibility
User Profile: Your Personal User Settings
SMS Notifications
Dynamic Time Zones in Sonar
System Settings: Overview
Troubleshooting the Customer Portal
Controlling Your Landing Page: Personal Preferences
Interacting with Files via the API
Getting Your Data into Sonar
Customizing Your Customer Portal
Release Notes
Reporting
Understanding Sonar Reports
How To Enhance Your Reporting With Custom Field Data
Report Licenses
Sonar's Business Intelligence: Overview
Ticketing
Ticketing: Overview
Canned Replies Examples & Templates
Canned Reply Categories
Inbound Mailboxes Example Build
Ticket Categories Best Practices & Example Build
Exploring Ticket Groups
Using Parent Tickets
How to Integrate Inbound Mailboxes with Slack
Advanced Ticketing Features
Working With the Sonar Team & Additional Resources
Sonar's Security Practices & Certifications
Sonar and General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
Technical Security Overview
CyberSecure Canada Certification
Sonar's Security Strategies
Best Practices for Fast Tracking a Support Request
How Sonar Bills Your Instance
The Sonar Status Page
The Sonar Community Forum
Feedback Portal / Suggest a Feature
Sonar Casts Table of Contents
How to Request Termination of your Sonar Instance
Submitting Bugs vs. Feature Requests
Third Party Customer Support Referrals
Learning with Sonar: Tools and Resources
Voice
Sonar Billing
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- Networking
- Automating IP Assignments, Data Rates, and Network Access in Sonar
Automating IP Assignments, Data Rates, and Network Access in Sonar
Updated
by Morgan Wynnes
Read Time: 5 mins
Whether you’re a new ISP or you’ve been serving customers for some time but want details about exactly what Sonar does for your connection type, this document should clarify the various methods Sonar offers of provisioning your clients & controlling their access to services.
Sonar offers integrations with various hardware manufacturers, support for multiple simultaneous connection methods, historical tracking, and automatic provisioning based on account status or activity.
Managing end-user IP Assignments
When assigning IP addresses in Sonar, there are three possible approaches you can explore:
- Assigning the IP Address in Sonar and having the IP push down to the customer device
- With this approach, the initial IP assignment occurs in Sonar where the IP address is assigned either manually, or by selecting an IP pool and letting Sonar find the next available address in that Pool.
- Once the IP is selected the IP assignment will be sent out as a static lease to either a DHCP server, RADIUS Server, or LTE Core to assign the IP address. Different IP subnets can be used for different methods of IP Address assignment.
- Using your DHCP Server, PPPoE Pool, or LTE Platform to assign an IP Address to the client device and have that server send the IP information to Sonar as a “Soft Assignment”, meaning assigned by the server software.
- Using this approach, a DHCP server would use a script and collect the requests in the DHCP Batcher. Address assignment would then occur by matching the requester MAC address with the client MAC Address in Sonar, based on the inventory item assigned to the account.
Enabling Option 82 on select devices to soft assign IP Addresses to accounts where the router is customer-owned without needing to manually update the MAC Address store on the customer account.- An IP assignment can be made directly from a PPPoE Pool and have the IP address handed off to the RADIUS server, which in turn will send the assignment to Sonar to post an IP address to the account which contains the stored RADIUS Credentials.
- An LTE platform can take an IP assignment from an IMSI/IMEI and forward that IP Address to Sonar as a soft assignment to an account that contains the IMSI/IMEI on one of its inventory items.
- IP assignments can be made through the API. So long as it's possible to trigger a script when an assignment is made, it is possible to automate the IP address entry into Sonar.
Our DHCP Batcher is integrated directly into Sonar, to read more on this option (and learn how to configure it) click here. - If IP addresses are statically assigned, those assignments can be entered into Sonar. While changing these IP addresses in Sonar will have no effect on the devices, when they're entered here, Sonar's IPAM can become your sole source of IP address management.
Controlling Account Data Rates & Network Access
Sonar’s approach to controlling account data rates and network access typically involves grouping IP addresses assigned to accounts based on account traits, followed by forwarding those groupings to a device that can affect changes directly in the network.
Account Data Rates and Network Access can be controlled by Sonar through several methods, listed below:
- MikroTik as an inline device
- FreeRADIUS as a RADIUS Server
- LTE
- Telrad
- Baicells
- Preseem as a native integration
- API and Webhooks
Getting Data Usage from Customer Devices into Sonar
When it comes to bringing Usage Data into Sonar there are a variety of methods that may be applied. More than one method may be applied at the same time to aggregate all data. A brief summary of each method, as well as links to that methods setup, are available below:
Netflow
Netflow data from any inline device capable of producing this data is added into Sonar accounts based on the Src. IPs and Dst. IPs are assigned to a device on an account or to the account itself.
RADIUS
When a RADIUS session is terminated, usage data from the radacct tables in your RADIUS server is transferred to any accounts where that RADIUS username is stored.
Preseem
Usage data is collected by the Preseem appliance and gets associated with accounts in Sonar based on IPs being assigned to a device on an account or to the account itself.
API
Data gets driven back to an account based on API endpoints that reference the account ID. Typically a middleware server aggregates this usage from one or more sources, then writes it into Sonar periodically.
PacketLogic
Usage data is collected by the PacketLogic appliance and gets associated with accounts in Sonar based on IPs being assigned to a device on an account or to the account itself.
SaiSei
Usage data is collected by the SaiSei appliance and gets associated with accounts in Sonar based on IPs being assigned to a device on an account or to the account itself.