setting up an AP with an intercept "splash screen"

Could someone point me to a "how to FAQ" or manual on doing this?

Basically I want to set up an AP which, when people access it, first throws a "terms of service" page requiring an ack.

I looked around and saw lots of mentions, but nothing clearcut.

Thanks.

Reply to
danny burstein
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The technology is a form of "URL redirection". It's a feature of the access point or web server. The closest thing to a general FAQ is the original source code and docs from NoCatSplash and NoCatAuth:

I use the splash page in dd-wrt firmware. See:

which should give you a clue on what's typical.

It's a key component of wireless hotspot software, which may offer additional information.

For additional help, kindly disclose what hardware you're planning to use.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

Thanks. I'm just starting to spec things out...

I'm in a housing complex and we're (yes, I know the arguments for and against) have a semi-open system with pretty much anyone in range clicking on a "yes, we live here" screen...

I'm not yet wedded to any specific equipment nor software, so was hoping someone had put a wishlist manual to save me from reinventing the wheel.

Reply to
danny burstein

ZoneCD. Free and open source. One of many captive portals out there. (Yep, I'm subjective because I use ZoneCD.)

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Reply to
Eric

DHCP to the wireless clients...that gotta be a real nightmare to keep it CALEA compliant.

Reply to
DTC

Ummm... I think you're about to have a big problem. I don't think you realize how much work is required to maintain and operate a wireless internet system. You need more than just a "click here to approve" as you would find in a coffee shop hotspot. You're going to need to maintain logins, passwords, and encryption settings to keep the neighbors and hackers (like me) out of the system. It's not really a "hotspot" system. It's more like a WISP (wireless internet service provider) with all the administrative features that this implies. Apartment complex users are not lightweight users such as you find at coffee shops. They're heavy duty downloaders and gamers that expect telco/cable levels of performance.

I don't want to discourage you, but surprises are considered to a bad thing. Pretend everything is working well, but someone is having a bad day with Windoze. They get a virus, which belches lots of traffic, and ruins everyones browsing experience. So, who gets the midnight phone call? It's not the ISP or the computer support pool. It's you as the operator of the system. What are *YOU* going to say and do?

It usually works the other way around. You decide what you need, which means features, functions, and performance, and then we can guess what might be useful. A huge part of the puzzle depends on what you expect for coverage, number of users, aggregate bandwidth, bandwidth per user, and price range.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

m0n0wall

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on a soekris net4801 is a very good place to start with. it also has a built-in captive portal.

Reply to
outbackwifi

As well as CALEA compliance.

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Reply to
DTC

I couldn't care less about ""CALEA compliance"...

Reply to
Eric

:-) You will when the law enforcement agencies come knocking.... the penalty is of the order of 10K per day for inability to comply.

Reply to
Mark McIntyre

Let them knock all they want. I'm not an internet provider. I'm a private citizen who allows his neighbors on their porch, and occassionaly someone from an adjacent public park, to use his internet pipe through a CP.

CALEA is probably unconstitutional to begin with. Besides, do you really think they are going to go around wasting resources looking for people? Hell, they'd have to go after every person who has an unintentional open WAP as well! (Which is about 40 percent of people running wireless!) Their resources should be spent on finding Osama, not knocking on innocent citizens' doors. Fuck 'em.

Reply to
Eric

| >>>

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| >>

| >> DHCP to the wireless clients...that gotta be a real nightmare to keep it | >> CALEA compliant. | >

| >I couldn't care less about ""CALEA compliance"... | | :-) | You will when the law enforcement agencies come knocking.... the | penalty is of the order of 10K per day for inability to comply.

Reminds me of the $$$$ per day fine the FCC was hammering during the days of

27 MHz CB.
Reply to
NotMe

LOL

The notion that Men In Black will be going around to open WAP's to enforce CALEA is humorous at best.

Reply to
Eric

"Eric" hath wroth:

The FCC still does that and to an alarming degree. What happens is that the FCC has no mechanism to collect the fines they issue other than the Justice Department. The JD is not terribly interested in spending a small fortune collecting a trivial fine for the FCC. So, they tended to ignore trivial fines for many many years. At one point, the FCC simply declared that they weren't going to do any enforcement in specific areas. By a strange coincidence, those were areas where the fines tended to be very low.

About 15 years ago, the FCC changed its tactics and started to issue rediculously inflated fines. Cruel and Unusual Punnishment became a watchword among the victims. However, it served its purpose and the JD started doing it's job and collecting fines for the FCC. When faced with a "notice of apparent liability", which is IMHO the equivalent of a fine without a trial or hearing, the perpetrator (he's not a defendent because there's no trial going on) has the choice of either paying a lower amount, or waiting for the JD to bang on his door at 3AM. By another stange coincidence, the fines were approximately what they would have been before being inflated.

When you read about multi-million dolllar fines being issued, you will rarely see anything about how much was actually paid. In most cases, that fines are negotiated down to about 10% of the inflated price and paid in cash. If you don't believe me, dive into the public P&L statements for the major cellular companies that were allegedly fined millions for dragging their feet in E911 deployment, and fine me the line items that even bother to mention these fines as a business expense.

Don't laugh. You may become the next "test case".

That's not how it works. Many such laws and regulations are never directly enforced. They're used for "backup". I'll explain. The apartment complex might be owned by someone that made the mistake of supporting the wrong politician. Some very real charges are filed for something that really isn't usually worth the effort prosecuting. So, the police do exactly what the FCC did with fines and raise the stakes. Instead of one charge, there may be dozens of charges filed, which include CALEA violations within the apartment network.

You read about it in the papers all the time. Some evil person is charged with 100 assorted charges, but pleads guilty to only one. The other 99 charges are dropped. If they had charged him with the one real crime, then nobody would have bothered to prosecute or plea bargain.

You have CALEA questions, we have answers:

If they wanted to monitor someone on the apartement building wireless LAN, they would probably do it at the upstream wired ISP or telecom carrier where facilities and competence levels tend to be more usable.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

The way CALEA reads, as long as you charge fior the connection, you have to be compliant.

Most likely not, at the most they might just want the providers to sent in a legal statement of compliance. But that means a new set of problems as there is no standard for CALEA compliance, other than the current one which is - if you can't provide the data we want, you aren't compliant.

Reply to
nevtxjustin

Since the CALEA requirement has funding for the providers to comply it would follow that every mom and pop hot spot should get a share.

I reaised the question a long time back in a CTIA/TIA discusson group about this and was informed something to the effect 'the money is only available to be big players'.

No more data than what I remember from years back but like they say in Vagas you 'got to pay to play.'

Reply to
NotMe

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