Devices and Speed
The Devices tab lists everything on the cafe network right now: the stations, the consoles, the phones on the guest Wi-Fi, and the printer nobody remembers plugging in. The Bandwidth tab decides how much of the line each of them gets.
The device list
Each device shows up by name where the gateway can work one out, and by address where it cannot. Give the ones you care about a name of your own: a device you cannot recognise is a device you will not dare to limit.
A device the Server knows as a station is matched to it, so the list reads in the same names as the rest of HandyCafe.
Groups
A group is a set of devices that share a setting. The usual shapes:
- The stations, one group.
- The consoles, another, because they behave differently under a limit.
- The guest Wi-Fi, a third, capped hardest.
A setting on a device always beats the group it belongs to. Removing a group does not touch the devices in it: they fall back to the cafe default.
Speed limits
A limit is a ceiling, not a reservation. It says how much a device may take, not how much it is promised.
- A device can carry its own limit, or take one from its group.
- A limit set on the device applies whether or not the general traffic switch is on.
- A Wi-Fi ticket's own limit comes first while that ticket is in use. See Wi-Fi Vouchers.
Where a cap earns its keep
One station pulling a 90 GB game update can take the evening away from everyone else. Capping that station does not slow the download much in the end, and it keeps the other twenty playable. The same goes for the guest Wi-Fi, where a phone syncing photos costs the cafe nothing but costs the paying customers their latency.
Sharing one limit across several devices
A limit class is one ceiling shared by a set of devices together, on top of each device's own limit. It answers "the guest Wi-Fi as a whole may not take more than this", which a per-device cap cannot say.
Classes are checked from top to bottom and the first match wins. Put a class that matches everything at the bottom, so it catches what the ones above did not.
Blocking a device
Blocking stops that device's traffic at the gateway. HandyCafe's own services stay reachable on purpose: a blocked station can still be managed from Server, which is the difference between cutting off a customer and losing a machine.
Blocking is a payment and policy tool, not network isolation. Somebody who sets their own address by hand can take the address of a device that is allowed. It stops a customer who is not paying, not somebody who is deliberately getting around you.
Connection log
Which device reached which site, and when. It has a page of its own: Connection log.