One Satisfied Customer

At Funk's suggestion, we spoke to Keith Kegley, Chief Executive Officer of Slingshot Communications. Slingshot offers Internet access, but isn't a conventional ISP. Instead of collecting monthly or annual payments by credit card, Slingshot sells prepaid Internet access. A Slingshot CD includes email and 600 minutes of local or 200 minutes of toll-free Internet access for about ten bucks. Recharge cards can be purchased at retail outlets or from Slingshot's Web site.

"We've taken advantage of what telcos did with prepaid calling cards and brought this same concept to the Internet," said Kegley. Slingshot targets students, families, seniors, and travelers seeking portable or backup Internet access. "We provide an opportunity for people who don't have credit or who want privacy to buy prepaid Internet access. Our product is a cost-effective, commitment-free alternative."

Slingshot has been nationally distributed in retail stores like Staples since October last year. "We're bringing another 15,000 outlets on now, and our goal is to reach 30,000 outlets by this summer," said Kegley. "Today, network use is growing at about 100 connections a day, with a 30 percent per week growth rate."

Controlling usage is an operational imperative to Slingshot's business model. "Without concurrency management, users could easily install our software on a couple of PCs and get connected to the Internet from multiple points," explained Kegley. "We need to make sure this doesn't happen."

Slingshot must also monitor connect time and take action when prepaid minutes expire. "Funk's Concurrency Server gets used extensively to manage all of that," Kegley added.

Designing a better mousetrap
"What we've been figuring out with this business model is that the Internet isn't designed as a sip-at-a-straw mechanism. Typically, once you open the access gate, you let users go. It takes work to put a gate in front of people to meter access and sandbox them when needed," explained Kegley.

Slingshot's development team was involved in building the MSN and UUNET networks. "That's where we first came across using Funk's software and tools," said Kegley.

"When we formed Slingshot, choosing Funk made the most sense. Funk had the most robust and highest performance solution we could get our hands on. Their Concurrency Server helps us to manage security better, reduce fraud, and ultimately manage the cost of our network," he added.

With Slingshot, there is no username or password. Each prepaid card is associated with a unique authentication key. "Basically, we create a unique user account, based on the key," explained Kegley. "We also support time increment enhancement for an existing account and creating a child account with a new key for an existing parent account."

Slingshot uses Sprint private and public networks to authenticate each call. "We've defined our own custom security model to encrypt and send different pieces of the key over two different networks. This makes it impossible for someone to camp on one wire and get the information they'd need to get to our back-end servers," explained Kegley.

When the party's over
Slingshot's AAA server uses RADIUS to disconnect the user when a prepaid card runs out. "Funk's Concurrency Server is really important to keep this in check," said Kegley. "But we still want customers to have access to Internet at that point, to get to a recharge page." This is where sandboxing comes in.

"Sandboxing is the ability for us to, based on a key, route a session through a dynamically-generated proxy. For example, we might let the user access only our recharge page. Or perhaps Barnes and Noble is running a promotion where they want to provide prepaid access to their own website. Sandboxing can also be used to provide Internet access to specific sites. With this mechanism, parents have the ability to permit access to domains and impose a time limit on their children's access. This is a simpler model than NetNanny, where you block access," explained Kegley.

While Funk's Concurrency Server plays an integral part in Slingshot's approach, there are still limitations. "One of the issues we have today is that we can't decrement an account from two sources," said Kegley. "Therefore, we enforce a concurrency limit of one active call per key. We're also developing a new product that will allow you to have prepaid access to multiple networks—long distance, wireless, cable, etc.—from the same key, perhaps each with different rates and limits. With this product, we'll need to allow concurrent access up to point, then block access after that point is reached."

The bottom line
Concurrency control clearly reduces double dipping. It can also create new revenue opportunities—from basic multi-user accounts to innovative offerings like Slingshot.

A homegrown extension to your AAA server might yield the same benefit, but at what cost? AAA servers must process connection requests rapidly, under heavy, data-bursting conditions. Any extension must take reliability and scalability into consideration. Funk has engineered its Concurrency Server for large, high-volume networks.

If this description fits your ISPs network, you're probably losing a chunk of revenue to concurrency abuse. Run your own numbers through Funk's ROI calculator—you may be surprised at the result.

< Back to page 1: Defying Double Dippers: Funk Concurrency Server

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