[TriLUG] Hotel style wireless

[jonc at nc.rr.com]

I'm sure there are ways to do this directly on the wireless devices, but
when I've set this up for corporations I've done it at the firewall. All
folks wanting to use the internet for basic services had to login to an
authentication page. After that they had free or restricted use based on
their login.

The firewall passed out the requests to a server cluster using Squid in
"active" mode. Squid checked that the user was authorized and if not
authorized displayed a local web page that asked the user to login. 

This worked quite well. I used a standalone password database and
several stock users like: Library, Admin, Service, Peon, etc.... Some
individual users were also in the database (mainly for tracking
purposes). I believe there is now a module that allows Squid to
authenticate users against an Active Directory.

In anycase, that's one easy way to force users to login - or to see
local Marketing (and replace web site ads with your own advertising).

Jon

----- Original Message -----
From: Steve Hoffman <srhoffman at gmail.com>
Date: Wednesday, May 4, 2005 9:40 am
Subject: [TriLUG] Hotel style wireless

> Right now, my company has two wireless access points (a WAP11 and a
> WRT54G), one at each end of the buildling.  We're currently doing MAC
> filtering only, since the only ones who use the wireless are company
> guests.  Every time one shows up they have to come to me to give me
> their MAC so I can punch it in to both AP's and if I'm not here then
> they have to plug into the wall (gasp).  So I was recently on a trip
> and the hotel I stayed at had free wireless.  In order to use it, I
> connected to the AP, surfed to ANY webpage and was taken to their
> "login" page that asked for my room number and the code printed on my
> key.  As soon as I did that I was able to surf the internet with no
> problems for the duration of my stay.
> 
> I'd like to set something similar up, perhaps only slightly less
> sophisticated, but when someone comes here they can only get to the
> login webpage until they provide valid credentials and then are able
> to surf the net freely.  My problem is I don't know where to start
> looking.  The network is about 75% linux so I'd prefer a linux based
> solution, but if there's a better way to do it on <the OS that shall
> remain nameless> then please pass it along also.
> 
> Thanks for any suggestions,
> 
> Steve
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