Setting up a hotspot ?

Sinizterguy · 28 Mar 2007 at 18:17

I have been asked to set up a hotspot at a cafe. Im doing it for free as its for a mate.

It needs to be able to take payment at the counter at give out logins which work for 30 mins. External billing is not required. It needs to generate these logins in the morning so they can be printed out and handed out to users as they pay at the counter.

I have a PC for server duties as well as an ethernet accesspoint.

Please suggest what software packages I can use for this job. Linux OS is OK - I am not too familiar with it, but I should be able to manage.

I am currently googling Freeradius and some other radius server stuff. But if you could recommend the complete software list I would be grateful.

Thanks.

bigredshark · 28 Mar 2007 at 22:47

freeradius isn't a trivial program to get running just right, I've just upgraded the radius servers that do auth for all our dsl users from an older (proprietry) package and it wasn't a fun week at all...

what you're talking about should be easily doable with free radius, a database and a php frontend but you'll need to be reasonable programmer to tie it together, if they're prepared to pay, there are purpose designed hot spot access points which do it all for you and will be more reliable long term.

you may also be able to find a firmware variation for the linksys boxes that does something like this...

Sinizterguy · 29 Mar 2007 at 23:11

I dont do any PHP programming so thats out. I already have a Belkin access point and would prefer to use that if possible.

I did find more about an option with monowall ... Hopefully it wont all be as complicated as you describe.

bigredshark · 29 Mar 2007 at 23:14

Sinizterguy said:
I dont do any PHP programming so thats out. I already have a Belkin access point and would prefer to use that if possible.

I did find more about an option with monowall ... Hopefully it wont all be as complicated as you describe.

try this...

http://wireless.gumph.org/content/6/10/011-customize-your-wireless-router.html

there's a few options there, if you want to use a cheap access point you really need the linksys box as they've been used for this sort of thing so many times now...