Open Source HotSpot Software

111 views
Skip to first unread message

Philip McGaw

unread,
Nov 6, 2012, 6:27:33 AM11/6/12
to
I am looking to try and sell a better way of managing the wi-fi where I live (in a marina) to the marina manager,

Currently he has a standard wi-fi hotspot sat just on the inside of his office wall.

I have been looking at http://www.antamedia.com/hotspot/ however it is prohibitively expensive (an most of the interesting feathers are in the "enterprise" package)

I would be looking for something I can install on a micro ITX with two NIC cards (such as http://www.mini-itx.com/store/?c=47#JNF99-525).

Ideally the software solution would have the following specification
Ability to block everything on this list: https://easylist.adblockplus.org/en/
Ability to traffic shape (ie throttle/drop torrents)
Transparent Proxy and Caching port 80.
most of the features from the hotspot software
payment via paypal

I would like to be able to run the membership database off site, so multiple sites can be linked together, allowing for roaming between sites.

Does any one have any thoughts, or ideas relating to this?

Regards

Skippy


-- 

07969 502 077 | phi...@mcgaw.eu | http://philipmcgaw.com | http://skippy.org.uk
Twitter: http://twitter.com/skippyuk | LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/philipmcgaw

“Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.” — Hermann Goering (Hitler's Reichsmarschall)

Elliot Duffy

unread,
Nov 6, 2012, 6:44:40 AM11/6/12
to london-h...@googlegroups.com
Hi,

Chillispot and openwrt immediately spring to mind...

http://www.chillispot.info/
https://openwrt.org/

For the proxy/cache you could either go down the router with an USB port and USB HDD or augment with a small hackable NAS running Squid.

This is likely (with a bit of tweaking) to meet most of your requirements and should consume less power too.

Happy hacking!

Elliot

Philip McGaw

unread,
Nov 6, 2012, 7:11:42 AM11/6/12
to london-h...@googlegroups.com
will it have the processing power to manage 50 / 60 concurrent devices?

Kind Regards

Philip McGaw

-- 

07969 502 077 || phi...@mcgaw.eu || CV: http://philipmcgaw.co.uk/cv/ || LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/philipmcgaw

Bacon Zombie

unread,
Nov 6, 2012, 7:18:38 AM11/6/12
to london-h...@googlegroups.com
Have a look at pfsense[1] it has a nice GUI interface that the marina manager should be able to use.
It includes a pre-built Capture Portal added as well as allot more.
--
ฤ ฮ ฦ

BaconZombie

LOAD "*",8,1

Bacon Zombie

unread,
Nov 6, 2012, 7:22:44 AM11/6/12
to london-h...@googlegroups.com
Also have a look at the recent discussion on the HackerSpaces General list about Wifi setups in different Hackerspace for hardware option:  

Nick Johnson

unread,
Nov 6, 2012, 9:45:54 AM11/6/12
to london-h...@googlegroups.com
You want to implement adblocking as part of a commercial hotspot? Isn't that a bit unethical? And a violation of your presumed common carrier obligations?

Yiannis Costopoulos

unread,
Nov 6, 2012, 9:59:56 AM11/6/12
to london-h...@googlegroups.com
Hi Skippy,

I am not so sure about the ad-blocking part, but for the rest you can use this: http://www.ubuntubuzz.com/2012/04/easyhotspot-open-source-hotspot.html

As for the multi-site with central management, I assume that you could install it on a public facing server to do all the user administration and authentication and on each site's setup you enter the public IP address of the main server to do the radius authentication.

Cheap and cheerful(?)


Regards,
Yiannis


On 6 November 2012 11:27, Philip McGaw <Phi...@mcgaw.eu> wrote:

Jasper Wallace

unread,
Nov 6, 2012, 2:27:52 PM11/6/12
to london-h...@googlegroups.com
On Tue, 6 Nov 2012, Philip McGaw wrote:

> I am looking to try and sell a better way of managing the wi-fi where I live (in a marina) to the marina manager,
> Currently he has a standard wi-fi hotspot sat just on the inside of his office wall.
>
> I have been looking at http://www.antamedia.com/hotspot/ however it is prohibitively expensive (an most of the interesting feathers are
> in the "enterprise" package)
>
> I would be looking for something I can install on a micro ITX with two NIC cards (such
> as http://www.mini-itx.com/store/?c=47#JNF99-525).
>
> Ideally the software solution would have the following specification
> Ability to block everything on this list: https://easylist.adblockplus.org/en/

As someone else mentioned don't fiddle around with the internet like this,
i know your trying to be "helpful" but if it becomes common place to much
about with the web like this you make it more likely that people will
start to have "bright" ideas like replacing all the ads with there own, or
placing ads in pages that didn't previously have them.

> Ability to traffic shape (ie throttle/drop torrents)
> Transparent Proxy and Caching port 80.
> most of the features from the hotspot software
> payment via paypal
>
> I would like to be able to run the membership database off site, so
> multiple sites can be linked together, allowing for roaming between
> sites.
>
> Does any one have any thoughts, or ideas relating to this?

If you're comfterbale with fiddling around with open source stuff it can
be done with the other things people have mentioned on this thread, but if
you want something that is easy to setup and manage then the unifi stuff
looks good:

http://wiki.ubnt.com/UniFi_and_Paypal_Integration

I don't know how you'd do a hostspot + roaming between sites with the
unifi stuff, you might have to right some custom web code to glue the
sites together. Aternativly you could link the sites with a VPN and manage
all the AP's from one controller (at which point they would effectivly be
one site).

--
[http://pointless.net/] [0x2ECA0975]
Reply all
Reply to author
Forward
0 new messages