We looked at doing a captive portal, but I wasn't thrilled with the choices available, and didn't like the idea of having to couple network management with the more basic task of usage tracking.
What we settled on instead is a simple system that examines the network for DHCP leases and ARP entries and records the comings and goings of our community members. On first use, members are asked to map their hardware MAC address to their email address. This is then visualized with a Gravatar on our network status page. Our network is open and doesn't put any barriers to people walking in, sitting down, and getting work done. Whenever they show up with their devices, we know they were there and can bill accordingly. This also has the side effect of creating a live display of who is in the space (complete with Gravatars). You can see ours at http://hive.beehivebaltimore.org (though no one is there right now). I've written this app as a Rails application which you are free to fork and modify. Ultimately we will run our billing through here but I haven't had time to do that yet. It's called Honeycomb and it's here: http://github.com/davetroy/honeycomb/tree/master We assume that the ISC DHCP server is installed on the box where the app is running, but it would honestly run just as well relying simply on nmap and arp. Ping me if you have questions. I'd love to see this developed further. In my opinion this approach is more in line with the spirit of coworking -- respect, simplicity, ease of use -- than having to require a bunch of passwords, port 80 authentications, etc. YMMV. Dave On Apr 4, 2:15 pm, Will Norris <[email protected]> wrote: > Citizen Space in San Francisco is currently running a captive portal > powered by WifiDog[0]. Previously, the space was just using WPA2 with > the password written up on the whiteboard. Since Citizen Space allows > for free drop-ins, that's worked fairly well. The main problem with > it is that it didn't allow for tracking the amount of usage (for > statistical, not billing, purposes). There was also a desire to have > drop-ins agree to a basic Terms of Service for liability reasons. > (The TOS[1] is a very simplified, plain-english version of IndyHall's, > with some inspiration from 37 signals, and with the confidentiality > clause reversed entirely.) > > So now, the wireless network[2] is powered by two standard Linksys > routers running OpenWRT[3] and the WifiDog gateway. Instead of using > the standard WifiDog authentication server (which was a bit overkill > for what we needed), I wrote a WordPress plugin that implements the > WifiDog authentication protocol[4]. "Authentication" consists of > agreeing to the TOS, and typing in the shared wifi password, which is > still written up on the whiteboard. You can see the login page > here[5]. Right now the plugin is rather crudely written, and doesn't > capture any of the interesting data WifiDog makes available. We've > actually been having some problem with Wifidog lately, so we've had to > turn it off, but I am planning to dig into that over the next couple > of weeks. I'm fairly certain it's because we're running OpenWRT > Kamikaze instead of the more tested White Russian version. > > Other plans for the WordPress plugin include expanding the > "authentication" so that users can actually login with a WordPress > account if they have one, or fill out a simple form which asks for > their name and reason why their using the space (regular drop-in, a > specific event, etc). The idea is to gather a little more data about > who is using the space, but without making it a huge barrier. Wifidog > also provides data to build graphs of how much bandwidth each > individual machine is using, though I don't have immediate plans to > build that into the WordPress plugin. As far as I know, WifiDog does > *not* give you any data about specific protocols being used, so you > can't identify BitTorrent, etc. You'd need something like pfSense for > that. There is talk of a future version of WifiDog having the ability > to throttle bandwidth for specific users. If it ever becomes a > problem, we might using something like that to give paying residents > preferential bandwidth over free drop-ins. > > The code for the WordPress plugin is currently up on github[6], and > will eventually be moved to the WordPress plugin directory[7] once I > get all of the CS specific stuff out of it. Even if the plugin itself > isn't useful to you, it should at least demonstrate how easy it is to > implement a custom WifiDog authentication server for any platform you > want. > > [0]:http://wifidog.org/ > [1]:http://citizenspace.us/policy/terms/ > [2]:http://citizenspace.pbwiki.com/Network(mostly up to date) > [3]:http://openwrt.org/ > [4]:http://dev.wifidog.org/wiki/doc/developer/WiFiDogProtocol_V1 > [5]:http://citizenspace.us/wordpress/wifidog/login > [6]:http://github.com/willnorris/cs-wifidog/ > [7]:http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wifidog/ > > On Apr 1, 2009, at 8:31 AM, lanceball wrote: > > > > > > > Hi all > > > I've just opened up a new coworking space in Asheville (htp:// > > locomotivity.com). Right now I've got a decent wifi setup with both > > an encrypted and unencrypted network. No splash screen or anything > > like that - you just connect and you are good to go. > > > I'm curious about other coworking spaces and whether you are using a > > captive portal so users have to log in. There are a few reasons why I > > think this is an ideal setup. Mainly I want to monitor bandwidth usage > > and lower P2P priority etc; and eventually plug it into some coworking > > software (e.g. my not-yet-even-alphahttp://github.com/lance/planomatic) > > so that I can easily track things like 10-pass cards. > > > I've seen the page of recommendations on the wiki - > >http://coworking.pbwiki.com/WirelessNetworkRecommendations- and > > there's a lot of good info. But I'm curious if any of you space owners > > doing something like this already? If so, what's your setup? --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Coworking" group. 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