question on captive portal

hi all,

I have been tasked with the start to getting a free wireless hotspot
running. one of my first questions is about captive portals. we would
like a portal with usage agreements and such. i have looked at
FirstSpot along with a few others. they all seem to concentrate on the
billing aspect of the portal with a few "walled garden" sites. we are
not interested in the billing portion, basically just need a site with
an "I Agree" button. Anyone had experience with this?

TIA,

R

(E-Mail Removed) hath wroth:

>I have been tasked with the start to getting a free wireless hotspot
>running. one of my first questions is about captive portals. we would
>like a portal with usage agreements and such. i have looked at
>FirstSpot along with a few others. they all seem to concentrate on the
>billing aspect of the portal with a few "walled garden" sites. we are
>not interested in the billing portion, basically just need a site with
>an "I Agree" button. Anyone had experience with this?

I'll assume that you're not authenticating users. What you're looking
for is called "NoCatSplash" captive portal. It's usually implimented
in the router although it can be done with an external server. All
calls to port 80 go to this page until the user clicks "ok". See:
http://wrt-wiki.bsr-clan.de/index.php?title=NoCatSplash
http://nocat.net/~sderle/README.OpenWRT
http://tinfoilhat.shmoo.com/rogue_squadron/
for example setups. Many of the ready-to-run versions require a login
and password. I've customized these to show "Type in AGREE" into the
user box and blanked out the password to accept anything. Crude but
effective.

--
Jeff Liebermann (E-Mail Removed)
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

Thanks for the reply. I looked at your info, and have a
question/concern. This will be a wireless network for a very large
public space. I am thinking along the lines of cisco aironet devices.
>From what I am seeing these articles are based on the small home
linksys routers. or am i missing something?

TIA,

R

(E-Mail Removed) hath wroth:

>Thanks for the reply. I looked at your info, and have a
>question/concern. This will be a wireless network for a very large
>public space. I am thinking along the lines of cisco aironet devices.
>>From what I am seeing these articles are based on the small home
>linksys routers. or am i missing something?

All the articles are based on alternative firmware for the Linksys
WRT54G and WRT54GS routers. These are open source, run Linux, and can
be modified to add features such as a splash screen for a hot spot.
There are also firmware versions designed specifically to act as a hot
spot that are most commonly based on these hardware platforms. There
are also similar open source firmware for SBC (single board computers)
such as:
http://www.soekris.com
http://www.m0n0.ch/wall/ (latest release adds captive portal)
and many many others that I'm too lazy to dig out the URL's. You have
much to chose from.

Cisco wireless is a different animal. What you see is what you get.
No hacking. It's more powerful, better quality, higher prices, and
more "corporate" than commodity wireless. I really have no clue how
to do a splash screen and captive portal with Cisco hardware. You
might ask in the Cisco forums and lists. Here's the Cisco
instructions for their captive portal software:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/...0801bcae4.html
Methinks this be a very big hammer for a simple problem.
--
Jeff Liebermann (E-Mail Removed)
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

"Methinks this be a very big hammer for a simple problem."

LOL, welcome to the world of Cisco!!

Thanks for all the help. I will investigate a little more with cisco.