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Tarka - The Integrated ISP Management Software for ISPs

Tarka is a customisable management system for Internet Service Providers which has been designed to minimise the workload on network administrators, and reduce the technical expertise required by sales, support and administration staff to perform day to day ISP management tasks.

What does Tarka do?

Tarka integrates with your email, web, authentication and access servers to provide a single point of administration for your entire network. In doing so, it becomes possible to provide an end to end ISP solution which manages the following common ISP services:

Dial-in accounts, including block time, casual, monthly, and permanent accounts.
Web accounts, including webspace and ftp access.
Mail accounts, including mailboxes, aliases, and virtual domain accounts.
IP Port accounts, for users that are directly connected to your network.

Other features include

Tracking of usage and statistics, such as bytes transferred, for use in billing.
Billing by e-mail, in advance, or in arrears for single users and group accounts.
Real-time account payments through a credit card payment gateway.
A web interface for end users to view their statistics, and maintain their user profile.
Low time warnings by e-mail.
Maintenance of an e-mail mailing list for contacting users.
Help-desk job tracking.

Design Philosophies

Tarka has been designed with a number of key philosophies in mind which sets it apart from the competition.

SIMPLICITY - Access to Tarka is provided from any web browser through a single easy-to-use web interface. This makes it possible to administer your ISP from your home, the office or virtually anywhere you can gain Internet access.

RELIABILITY - Tarka is built upon a solid foundation of Open Source software, including: Red Hat Linux, PostgreSQL, PHP and Apache. This base of applications has a proven track record of performance, reliability and security which means you can rest assured that your servers won't let you down.

FLEXIBILITY - Tarka is designed in a modular fashion to allow maximum flexibility. This means that any feature or customisation that you require, can be easily implemented, either during the initial rollout or as an addition at a later date.

TOTAL COST OF OWNERSHIP - Tarka achieves a TCO advantage by removing many of the standard costs associated with ISPs. Through the use of Open Source software, you minimise your expenditure on third party software licencing and upgrades. Combine with this, the fact that Tarka has no client side or per user licencing, means that you are not penalised as your business grows.

Tarka is so much more than your average ISP billing package. It is a complete ISP management solution, which will free you from the day-to-day issues of managing infrastructure and allow you to focus on the long term success of your business.

Benefits

The easy to use, intuitive interface allows everyone within the ISP, from the engineers to the administration staff, to use Tarka to perform their daily duties.

Customisable access levels make it possible to individually restrict access for every staff member to only the functions that they require.

The customer web interface allows customer to view statistics and manage their profile, reducing the load on support staff.

The Helpdesk features empower support staff to track, record and resolve customer problems quickly and efficiently.

Tarka provides a single point of administration for all ISP functions.

A centralised SQL database provides a reliable, authoritative source of all information allowing complex searches and reporting.

Tarka has been designed in close consultation with ISPs and supports almost every function an ISP could require.

A modular design allows features that are not presently available to be added easily.

NetCraft Australia can monitor, support and manage Tarka servers and network infrastructure, reducing the need for systems administrators.

New Features

Agency Support - Agents can now onsell your services and receive commissions. Commissions can be paid in four different ways;

new customer signups,
payments accepted for customers via the agent,
ongoing customer revenue and
purchases of more time.

ABS Reporting - Generate reports specifically tailored to make it easy to fill out the Australian Bureau of Statistics Internet Activity Survey.

Mail Box Limits - Limit email accounts by expiring mail based on size and or age of message.

Alias Searching - Search the user database via email aliases.

Plan Migration - Customers with Email, Web and IP Port plans can automatically move to new plans at the next renewal date.

How Does It Work?

Tarka is designed around a central SQL database, which maintains an authoritative source of information for the ISP including:

Customer and account information.
RADIUS and TACACS logs.
Billing and accounting data.
Server configuration information.

By using a central database server in this way, Tarka eliminates the common administrative headache of maintaining multiple sources of authoritative information. Also with the depth of information stored in the database it becomes possible to provide detailed reports about almost any aspect of the ISP.

Testdrive Tarka now.

Download the Tarka brochure in pdf format

Would you like to know more?

If you'd like more information about Tarka, or how we can help you with any type of Linux, data communications, or internetworking solution, please contact us.