Server Help

Just Some Guy · Guest Offline

Okay. I don't get it.

1. What is SubBill?
2. What is the Billing Server?
3. What does SubBill do?
4. What does the Billing Server do?
5. Why is SubBill required?
6. Why is SubBill a seperate program and not integrated to the server?
7. Why the name SubBill/the term billing?

Mr Ekted · Movie Geek Gender: Joined: Feb 09 2004 Posts: 1379 Offline

subbill.exe is the name of the program that runs the billing server. It is named "billing server" because the original intent for it was to track user accounts for a pay to play type of system. The biller performs the following functions:

- stores user name, password, squad, banner, usgae info
- stores email for password recovery
- stores player scores
- stores id info for banning purposes
- maintains ban information (who, when, how long, why)
- handles remote messages and chats (cross-zone communication)
- handles ?find ?squad... ?password ?message commands

If each zone performed the functions of the biller, then:

- we couldn't remote message players in another zone
- chats would not work across zones
- you would need a different name/pw per zone
- you'd never know if XYZ was the same person on each zone
- each zone would have to individually maintain bans
- each zone would have to individually manage a DB for user/pw, squad, banner, scores, etc.
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Just Some Guy · Guest Offline

OK..So you mean there's a central billing server holding username/password information, and the SubBill is in an interface between it and the zone server?

Dr Brain · Posted: Sun Jun 13, 2004 3:21 pm Post subject:

No. He's saying subbill is YOUR central billing server. You cannot connect your start up zone to the central one.
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Mr Ekted · Movie Geek Gender: Joined: Feb 09 2004 Posts: 1379 Offline

All SSC zones share a single biller. Other zones share one or use thier own local one.

Just Some Guy · Guest Offline

Then if you connect to a zone using a different biller, how does it authenticate your user/pass?

Mr Ekted · Movie Geek Gender: Joined: Feb 09 2004 Posts: 1379 Offline

You create a unique alias/password for every unique biller. If you use the same password on all billers, then any single untrustworthy billing op could steal your account on other biller domains.

I made this picture several years ago to explain how things are hooked together within SSC, although it's not accurate any more...