Wireless security for a hotspot.

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NEODARK

Gawd
Joined
Aug 10, 2004
Messages
1,002
Hey guys, me buggin you again.

I have a few questions, and hope you can help me find some answers. There is this cafe that offers wireless access by my workplace. They recently started offering free wireless to their customers, however...

Their setup is a simple Linksys router (WRT54GS) which is completely open, heck even the SSID is default.

Some people have started to leech of them and are stealing a lot of their bandwidth.. So I offered to help them secure their network. However being that they only have basic hardware (setting up a captive portal is out of the question probably)

what other options do they have?

I guess setting up WEP/WAP is the first thing, but this would mean that everyone going to the cafe would have to setup the wireless conection and enter the key, and once whoever is stealing it gets the key it would mean they would have to keep changing the key every so often...

so are there any better alternatives?

Thanks..
 
NEODARK said:
However being that they only have basic hardware (setting up a captive portal is out of the question probably)
Click to expand...

What do you consider "basic hardware"?

You can setup a captive portal with any extra PC with two NICs in it.

Net connection - firewall device - ExtraPC - Wireless Access Point
 
With the hardware given, there is not much you do other than what you mentioned, BUT you did say it was a wrt54G.. There are a firmware DD-WRT and Sveasoft that support Chilispot captive protal, but you would need other infrastructure.

You could have a password of the day/week and change it on the radius server. (Note a radius and web server would be needed (yes you can run them on the same box) Stop by the Chilispot and DD-WRT sites and do some research.

This would help. If they are desperate enough for internet access they would have to go into the store and they might even buy something :)
 
Malk-a-mite said:
You'll want to double check to make sure it's a version of the WRT54G that runs Linux.
Click to expand...

Ops ya forgot about that.. I think it's V5 routers that dont like the firmware, but you want read up on that..

If they dont mind making a little more investment they could get WRT54GL (Linux supported), but no matter what your gonna need the web/radius server, with this solution.
 
cool, thanks guys...

as for the extra PC, not sure if they would be able to go that route... Given the limited hardware/resources available I fear it will have to be a password of the week kind of deal.

thanks again.
 
NEODARK said:
cool, thanks guys...

as for the extra PC, not sure if they would be able to go that route... Given the limited hardware/resources available I fear it will have to be a password of the week kind of deal.

thanks again.
Click to expand...

It doesent take much.. You can pick up a PC for under $200 that would be able to run linux to do the Web and Radius.
 
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