Wireless Hotspot

[wij]

I am after some software or some kind of dedicated appliance to run a wireless hotspot from, it should be sufficiently robust to handle up-to several hundred simultaneous users and a high amount of throughput. I'd prefer it not to be based on Windows if possible (although most of the commercial bits of software I've found so far appear to be :S).

In short we are after the following features:

- Totally transparent to the network (proxy gateway?)
- Web managed if possible
- User access control (Tx/Rx bandwidth limits, time restrictions etc.)
- IP range white listing (so certain ranges could just bypas it)
- QoS / Traffic Shaping (not essential but nice feature)
- Billing system (not required initially)
- Monitor each users bandwidth usage, and what they are doing with it

This is more or less the planned network topography at the moment:

WLAN Users -> Access Points -> Managed Switches -> Router -> Load Balancer -> WAN.

Although if someone can make a better suggestion I would be open to change that design. People have suggested to me that the best way to achieve this is by running it as a gateway proxy on the network- is this correct?

If anyone could point me in the direction of some off the shelf offerings that would be suited to the above I'd be very grateful, or if they know anybody who might be interested in building me something bespoke I would also be interested.

 

[Chief Wiggum]

try this:
http://www.publicip.net/control/features.php

Seems to fit the bill, though I have no experiance of it.

Basically you wnat:

Users > AP > Switch > Hotspot Box > Router > Net

Hotspot box has two net cards inside and outside and proxies between the users and the net.

edit: can't remember the name of the one we use at work, but I think it's pretty similar on features. We use it with a load of Cisco AP's and switchs and seems to work fairly well....

 

[wij]

Be interested to know the one you are using at work as our network is built around Cisco Aironet 1200's and 2960 switches

Having difficulty finding out how many clients that publicip thing thinks it can support, it also wouldn't be happy sitting after a router performing NAT on the clients downstream of it which as I specifically do not want the hotspot to run the DHCP on the network is a problem.

Think I'm going to have to start looking at something that is working on RADIUS authentication rather than just a simple inline solution.