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Wireless Hotspots in a Large Environment?
matth asks: "So here at work we provide wireless internet access to customers all over our city, and into suburbia, via Alvarion radio gear. We have a large number of customers that are places like pubs, libraries, restaurants, etc. We would like to, in conjunction with these locations, setup up a public Wi-Fi network. The problem is getting the mac address back through to a central authorization server. What experience have others had in setting up a Wi-Fi hotspot network over a city, and allowing a user to register at one location and get on at any of the various locales?"
Have you looked into NoCatNet? The group works on a wireless network and the software that makes it possible (NoCatAuth). From what I gather the prefered configuration involves a central authentication server seperate from each gateway.
You could allow everyone to connect regardless but use a VPN client on the customers machine to allow internet access.
The only problem here is that people could connect just to play online games with other connected people or run VOIP style apps but would this be a problem? If you only intend to charge for internet access, allowing people IP access to each other would be a way of getting them to try the system first.
Bob.
With my work, I have hostapd set up with a radius server for authentication. I specifically use x.509 certs, but you could probably use leap, or some other 802.1x.
You may not want to follow folks who can't spell Allegheny, but the leaders of the Cumberland Gap area have set a pretty audacious task. They want people in their remote mountain area to all have access.
http://www.gov.allconet.org/about.htm
Allconet2 seems to be the wifi part:
http://prime.allconet.org/allconet2/
http://gov.allconet.org/tech/welcome.htm
Ed