No, you are counting it wrong. Yes, transaction and sessions are two different things. Transaction is when a user gets a package (whether its free or paid). Session is when a user logs in successfully. Every time a user logs in with a correct username and password, a new session is created. The amount of downloaded and uploaded megabytes are recorded and also the logged in time. It seems that coova is sending these to our servers even though the user is counted as ‘local’ user. When someone is just “catching your signal” and connects to your signal, that doesn’t count. What counted is when a user logs in with a valid username and password and a new session is sent to our servers. Coova is sending local user’s sessions to our servers incorrectly as local users shouldn’t be reported.
“there is no real load on your services” – that’s not true as our servers are receiving and recording sessions with real time usage updates.
The reason is why we are counting sessions rather than transactions is that sessions are the real measurement of using our resources.
Let’s see an example: someone is giving out monthly accesses for residents (lets say 100 monthly accesses per month). These people use the internet regularly, and logging in multiple times a day. Our system handles their logins, and their usage (and usage is reported to our servers in every minute, not just when the user logs out). These people can create hundreds of sessions every day and our servers have to work heavily.
An other operator gives out 30 minutes of accesses, 100 per month. Users usually use up 30 minutes with only 1 session.
Both are 100 transactions, but the number of sessions and usage of our resources are very different, in the first case it can be multiple thousands, in the second case it can be as less as 100. What a difference.
And to be honest, usage of local users should be counted if we want to give you usage statistics. Otherwise you should see false statistics about sessions and usage.
In my opinion you should change the free package to a bigger package, like 24 hours as your current setting (1 hour) kicks out users after 1 hour and generate a new session in every hour.