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Wireless Networking The Almighty Buck Hardware

Wireless Hotspot Creation? 45

Posted by Cliff from the wireless-packets-into-plowshares dept.
ezodon asks: "I have been tasked by management to submit a plan on creating a wireless hot-spot in several of our locations. Management would like to be able to charge for the wireless access from our customers. Because of the desire to charge, I have not been able to find any Open Source software, and just a few commercial offerings. I have checked out PublicIP and LessNetworks wireless management software, but neither has a direct billing option. We already have a merchant account and credit card machines at all of our locations. Can anyone in Slashdot land give me some recommendations on how to get this done?"
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Wireless Hotspot Creation? More

Wireless Hotspot Creation?

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  • Perfigo's Smart enforcer (Score:4, Informative)

    by Goeland86 ( 741690 ) <goeland86 AT gmail DOT com> on Wednesday December 01, 2004 @12:09AM (#10960208) Homepage
    I'm in college, and recently to prevent anyone from the outside to connecting to the campus' wireless network they decided to use Perfigo's smart enforcer client, which requires one to login... I'm pretty sure the server for that thing can accomodate tracking time and or limiting time based on an account balance... Give it a kick.

  • Colubris + Airpath = Perfection (Score:4, Informative)

    by legend ( 26856 ) on Wednesday December 01, 2004 @12:16AM (#10960241) Homepage
    If you can do without the open source aspect of it, and embrace the world of capitalism, Colubris access controllers, and Airpath backend billing work very well together. The Colurbis even runs Linux.

    www.colubris.com
    www.airpath.com

  • Quid pro quo (Score:5, Insightful)

    by node 3 ( 115640 ) on Wednesday December 01, 2004 @12:32AM (#10960319)
    You're going to charge us to use your system, right?

    There's a reason you're finding it hard to find open source solutions. They do exist, though. I suggest offering free lifetime WiFi access to all helpful slashdot posters or hiring a consultant to set this up.

    Normally, I'd gladly be more helpful, but in this case I won't. It's not that I'm trying to be a jerk, but rather that I don't feel like helping a jerk (not you necessarily, but your boss/management). Tell your boss you'd like to offer WiFi for free. What will he say? Probably something like, "why the hell would we do that?" So you want free help from me? I guess I must ask myself, "why the hell would I do that?"

    • Re:Quid pro quo (Score:3, Informative)

      by JabberWokky ( 19442 )
      Well, he's also asking a large group of people who are more likely to be using a paid service and have experiences with the user end and/or be admins for pay-per-play wifi companies.

      Truckstop.net uses a nice and easy system for the user end. I can't recall the software off the top of my head, but a simple Google will find it - they did several press releases about the software they were using, and the software company has Truckstop.net listed as a success story on their website. Obviously, this means the

      • Re:Quid pro quo (Score:3, Informative)

        by JabberWokky ( 19442 )
        Heh. So I hit Truckstop.net's site, and it appears that I was right for the wrong reason. There's now a "We sued Sprint because the equipment they sold us was faulty, they just shut off our bandwidth" press release linked in the center of the first page on the website.

        Sumbitch. And I just paid for another month. I'd be wary about Sprint if you're looking to partner.

        --
        Evan

      • Re:Quid pro quo (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Creepy Crawler ( 680178 )
        ---Well, he's also asking a large group of people who are more likely to be using a paid service and have experiences with the user end and/or be admins for pay-per-play wifi companies.

        DO you think media companies hand out demographic data for free? Or do consulters give free, and good, advice?

        If you do something for free, many, many people will be willing to help you one way or another. Hence why the GNU and similar licenses get off the ground: Socialism.

        "If you might, even in the most remote sense, hel
        • Open Source and even Free as in Beer software is NOT socialism... the whole point is to develop commodities and then charge for service and administration.

          The idea is free but the experience and knowledge to implement and or profit from that idea is not.

          • Re:Quid pro quo (Score:3, Interesting)

            by node 3 ( 115640 )
            Open Source and even Free as in Beer software is NOT socialism

            Actually, it is. Socialism is (according to your Econ 101 textbook) where the people own the means of production. What is Free Software if not that?

            More accurately (but less in line with first year econ), socialism is gearing society (government, economics, etc) towards enabling everyone (not to make them equal, as many detractors would argue, just to help provide equal opportunity and prevent the few from ruining things for the rest of us, mo
            • good response... I'll get back to you when I have time to put together one.. it will be difficult, you've made a good case and very succinctly.
            • But then again, Econ 101 textbooks never get anything quite right. Of course, socialism means different things to different people, and can vary substantially in the literature. I would argue that socialism requires capital profits to be equally distributed, something that does not exactly happen in GPL software projects.

              When the developer contributes to the project, the user can do with how he likes, perhaps even charge the developer use for his project's implementation. We are specifically talking abo

        • Re:Quid pro quo (Score:4, Insightful)

          by JabberWokky ( 19442 ) <slashdot.com@timewarp.org> on Wednesday December 01, 2004 @06:55AM (#10961752) Homepage Journal
          Funny, you talk quite a bit about "socialism" and "demographic data".

          Me? I see it as a guy asking a question and a bunch of people commenting on it. I'm not sure what you might call it in modern parlance, but I refer to this social activity as... "talking".

          You can do this in person, too. In fact, I and several other people get together on Wednesday nights to construct the highly refined social dynamic known as "chatting over beers". Give me a $50k grant, and I'll start a study.

          Ask yourself this.. Is it worth your time trying to figure out open source if it can do this, or Pay a consultant, or buy commerical hardware/software and hope for the best?

          The first thing I'd do is talk to a bunch of different people and see what they think. There's a new thing called the "Internet" that allows you to do this. You might look into it - it hasn't quite gotten the whole "beer" aspect down yet, but I've heard good things about Hefe Weizen via IPv6.

          --
          Evan "And Tully Dew via Internet2"

  • no .. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by tasinet ( 747465 )
    ..but sure as hell does my sniffer want to know where credit card numbers will be flying around.
  • I'd keep it off my main network and just get speakeasy dsl and use the free billing speakeasy provides for wifi. You can always hand out logins on site also.

  • NoCatAuth (Score:4, Informative)

    by slashjames ( 789070 ) on Wednesday December 01, 2004 @12:56AM (#10960435)
    NoCatAuth [nocat.net] is what you are looking for. Authentication is required before access is granted beyond the local network with all traffic being redirected to a login page that you can specify.

  • Hello Slashdot.org, (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Tim_F ( 12524 ) on Wednesday December 01, 2004 @01:09AM (#10960505)
    My name is Tim_F and my boss just asked me to implement something that I know nothing about. Can you please tell me how to my job? I'm way too lazy to learn something new.

    • Re:Hello Slashdot.org, (Score:4, Insightful)

      by darnok ( 650458 ) on Wednesday December 01, 2004 @02:08AM (#10960801)
      I think you're being a bit tough on the guy - he's just asking for recommendations, not to be led by the hand through a full implementation.

      The useful responses to date have been along the lines of "Check out product X from vendor Y. It's cool because...". The original asker is still going to have to do his due diligence, but at least he's got a few leads now.

      If "Ask Slashdot" isn't for this sort of question, I'm struggling to see what it WOULD be for.
      • Tim F is not just being a bit tough on the guy he's being an absolute prick. Your definition of what 'Ask Slashdot' for is spot on.

        While I've seen dumb questions posted here from time to time, this topic isn't one of them.

  • hmm (Score:2, Interesting)

    by seann ( 307009 )
    Free radius, step 1 [freeradius.org]
    • 1. FreeRadius

      2. MySQL backend to FreeRadius

      3. Use PHP, PERL, etc to modify user database.

      4. Find credit card processing software that interfaces with the above language of your choice.

  • ZyXEL ZyAIR B-4000 (Score:4, Informative)

    by nuxx ( 10153 ) on Wednesday December 01, 2004 @01:49AM (#10960716) Homepage
    I think this might be the kind of thing you are looking for: ZyXEL ZyAIR B-4000 [zyxel.com]. It's basically an AP and receipt printer, with a few buttons on it. Via a web-based interface, you set the device up, and a clerk presses a button, and out pops a receipt you had to the user. They use the information on the receipt to log into the system, allowing their MAC to access the internet for a specified period of time.

    I recommended this to a small shop, and they've been using it since with no problems. It's trivial to get set up, and the clerks selling the access don't need to be technical.

    IIRC, you can also allow certain machines access all the time, use it as a normal NAT box for some devices and pay for others, etc.

    Hope this helps...
    • That looks like it's probably exactly what he needs & the price ain't bad either. Wireless Network Product [wirelessne...oducts.com] has it for $600. Note this isn't an endorsement... They're just the first of the randomly chosen links on Zyxel's reseller page that carried it.
      • Yahoo Shopping [yahoo.com] has them floating around US$500. The device actually does a lot more than I mentioned... When I first happened across it, I read through the manual and was really amazed at what all it would do. To borrow some 80s/90s terms, it's very much a turnkey device for shops wanting to sell wireless access.

        There's something just great about being able to tell a user "here's your receipt, just enter the code on it in your web browser and you'll be all set" and have it just *work*.

        -Steve

  • May I ask (Score:4, Interesting)

    by antifoidulus ( 807088 ) on Wednesday December 01, 2004 @01:51AM (#10960726) Homepage Journal
    what exactly is your business? How much are you planning to charge. In the long run it may cost you more to keep the pay system running than you actually make in revenue from the system. For example, I'm sure if starbucks could force you to buy something in order to use the wireless internet access they would, but they would probably lose more money in wasting employee time and printing receipts and creating a ticket system etc. than they would actually gain from the few people who just mooch off the system. Yeah, there are going to be those people, but if your business offers a good enough product, most people who want to use the internet will probably end up patrons as well.
    I find it ironic that many penny pinchers actually waste more money penny pinching than they would by being a little more free with their money.
    • Does starbucks not charge for its wireless access where you live? Everywhere here it has an authentication page that you have to give a credit card number to before you can get online....
    • what exactly is your business? How much are you planning to charge. In the long run it may cost you more to keep the pay system running than you actually make in revenue from the system. For example, I'm sure if starbucks could force you to buy something in order to use the wireless internet access they would, but they would probably lose more money in wasting employee time and printing receipts and creating a ticket system etc. than they would actually gain from the few people who just mooch off the system
  • Maybe u wanna try http://www.mikrotik.com/2index.html linux based RouterOS. It's near to free, and very powerfull solution...
  • There are perfectly reasonable "Slashdot-friendly" reasons to provide such a setup. For example, say you have a company with different departments and you want to charge the individual departments for wireless access based on their usage. Just set up a system like he is describing but allow for billing based on cost centers or some such instead of charging credit cards. It would provide controlled access, nice security, and let the company distribute costs as needed.

    Another example would be to provide a "l
  • I don't know how relevant or useful it is, but Linksys (groan) [offers a HotSpot in a box] [linksys.com] (more details [here] [linksys.com]).. Since it seems so easy to set-up, you might want to immediately start running this at one of the locations, then do your other custom solution at another, and see which one works better. If you get a lot of customers used to going to many HotSpots, then this solution could work as it is with Boingo [boingo.com]. You could go the T-Mobile route [t-mobile.com] as well.

    Disclaimer: I do not know anything else about HotSpots.
  • Depending on what you are doing, it can be really hard to make the numbers come out profitably selling wifi. Just because you see it all over the place doesn't mean these outfits are making money on it. If you already have internet access, offering it for free to customers is nearly free to you: the price of an inexpensive wifi box and some bandwidth. However, billing and supporting billing, and supporting those who have paid for the service and demand you make it work, will cost you much more than suppl

  • BlueSocket & AirPath (Score:2, Informative)

    by LoaTao ( 826152 )
    I work for a WISP and we use BlueSocket for authentication and security. Combine it with AirPath and it should fit the bill...although of course it's not free.
  • You may stand to make more by offering Wi-Fi for free rather than charging it.

    For example, if I drank coffee (I don't), I would pick a coffee shop with free Wi-Fi over a Starbucks that wanted to charge me. Thus the Wi-Fi becomes a loss leader.

  • WISP (Score:2)

    by rawg ( 23000 )
    I'm running a very small WISP and I have been working on software for years. I just haven't found the right combination of software to fit my wants. But I'm very close.

    What I want is to have a Postgresql database server holding all the user information. I want wireless access, SMTP, POP3, IMAP, and Webmail to get the authentication from the Postgresql server.

    What I have is a Postgresql server holding the billing, account, and RADIUS data. m0n0wall is setup as a captured portal authenticating from the
    • Dovecot [dovecot.org] is a fast POP3/IMAP server that supports Postgresql.

      Greylisting [puremagic.com] is a very powerful spam reduction technique (with no false positives). This can be done at the firewall, and will consume little resources. It will stop much of the e-mails sendt by viruses that has it's own SMTP engine. Your other spam filtering daemons will have less work to do.

      OpenBSD [openbsd.org] has a daemon spamd [openbsd.org] that can do greylisting. Just put an OpenBSD box in front of your mailserver, and you can test it out for yourself.

      • Re:WISP (Score:2)

        by rawg ( 23000 )
        Nice, Dovecot worked perfectly! It was easy to setup and now I finally got my new email server online. Now all I have to do is write a billing / user maintenance system in PHP for it.
  • ZyXEL makes a well-regarded turnkey hotspot device (the ZyAIR B-4000 [zyxel.com]). This one has integrated billing capabilities for you to run your own hotspot network. Other solutions (like the Linksys one) require a specific provider like Boingo, T-Mobile, etc, who do the billing and scrape some of the usage fees.

  • Linksys WRT54G/S + Sveasoft firmware (Score:4, Informative)

    by maggard ( 5579 ) <michael@michaelmaggard.com> on Wednesday December 01, 2004 @09:15PM (#10969776) Homepage Journal
    Check out Sveasoft [sveasoft.com]. They've been making a very well regarded series of alternative firmware images for the popular Linksys WRT54G/GS consumer routers. The current beta, Alchemy, offers a Hotspot if paired with Chillispot and an external Radius server, and is about to go release ('any day now').

    More interestingly the about to be inaugurated new beta series, Talisman, which will offer 1-click Hotspot out of the box. Sveasoft has cut a deal with a billing service (and apparently there will be alternatives possible) so with almost no effort one turn on a hotspot and start recouping some expenses (TOS permitting.)

    Yes, I said beta. So it won't be an appropraite solution unless you've got some folks willing to become reasonably knowledgable on your staff and the business is open to being 'cutting edge'. On the other hand if this project is like many the firmware may well be out of beta well before the project is ever ready to be widely deployed.

    Fair warning: There is a noisy bunch of folks who don't like Sveasoft's beta distribution & support policies. Me, I've no problem with 'em, and apparently the FSF doesn't either, but I figured I'd say it before the barracks-lawyers and tinfoil-hat crowd starts in.

    Anyway, that noise aside their firmwares are excellent and do offer fantastic functionality for a US$40-70 series of boxes. I also find it heartening they offer a bounty system for folks developing with their firmware: If there's a feature you specially want put up some cash and see if any of them take the bait & deliver your dream-code Indeed my only complaint is their lack of a wiki for support (also 'due any day now'.)

  • Linspot [linspot.com] was featured on slashdot [slashdot.org]. It does more or less what you want. It only runs on Mac OS X, but they are Beta-testing a Linux version.

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