nOOb Question number 2 for this week: Hotspots, how to pay?

MHD · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 18 Jun 2003 Posts: 88

Ok while I am on a roll (and waiting for the wireless card to arrive) I was thinking about these payed for (as against free) hotspots...

Anyone had experences with them (for example in Australia, Optus offeres a service, and I think it was T-spot or something like that in the US)...

Do they generaly use a browser to log in (ie you log on, open browser, get log on and only then the AP will let packets pass) or do many require software to be installed (and have people got them working through wine??)

What are people's experiences in general??

Oh, mods, if this is in the wrong place feel free to move it

brucebertrand · Posted: Thu Jul 08, 2004 7:45 am Post subject:

I've seen a setup like this at a university, though it wasn't paid. You had to enter your student number and your internet access code to get onto their wlan.
It was authenticated through the browser.
Almost like logging into some PHP script (like this forum, for instance)
If you didn't log in, all you got was that one page.
I've always wondered how they did that.

Guezz-Who · Posted: Thu Jul 08, 2004 10:49 am Post subject:

It's not that hard to set ut, all you need is a transparent proxy like squid and some scripts. You set it up so that before you have registered, squid only show you one page (the registration page) and all other ports are blocked. Once they have payed you make some scripts open the ports you want to allow for that IP (you should do some MAC checking as well, in case someone tries to steal paying peoples' IPs).
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