Captive Portal Systems

Posted: Thu Oct 16, 2008 2:22 pm Post subject: Captive Portal Systems

Does anyone here have any experience using captive portal systems (ie: coffee shop, university style login for hotpots)

Some questions:

1) Can/should captive portals be used also with radio encryption (WPA)? Since captive portals only provide secure login, but not radio encryption, they can be vounerable to attackers. However, giving people 2 passwords (1 for portal login, and one WPA key) may play a factor in the "ease of use"?

2) What is a good (and preferably free) captive portal software? How about: http://www.patronsoft.com/firstspot/

3) Does a captive portal provide any type of encryption? (Like VPN)? if not, should a VPN be used on top? But then with 3 passwords things may get crazy: 1 captive portal login, 1 WPA key and 1 VPN login :eyeroll:

What's the best or most common compromise between ease-of-use and security?

Author	Message
RadioRaiders Site Admin Joined: Mon Sep 29, 2008 6:40 am Posts: 85	Posted: Thu Oct 16, 2008 2:22 pm Post subject: Captive Portal Systems
	Does anyone here have any experience using captive portal systems (ie: coffee shop, university style login for hotpots) Some questions: 1) Can/should captive portals be used also with radio encryption (WPA)? Since captive portals only provide secure login, but not radio encryption, they can be vounerable to attackers. However, giving people 2 passwords (1 for portal login, and one WPA key) may play a factor in the "ease of use"? 2) What is a good (and preferably free) captive portal software? How about: http://www.patronsoft.com/firstspot/ 3) Does a captive portal provide any type of encryption? (Like VPN)? if not, should a VPN be used on top? But then with 3 passwords things may get crazy: 1 captive portal login, 1 WPA key and 1 VPN login What's the best or most common compromise between ease-of-use and security?
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Ddeere2 Joined: Thu Oct 16, 2008 3:27 am Posts: 11	Posted: Thu Nov 06, 2008 6:39 am Post subject: Re: Captive Portal Systems
	I have no personal experience or anything, but I saw on my old WRT54G you can use Chilispot. Here's a link to a wikipedia page describing it in more detail. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chillispot Here's a small snippet of the article: Quote: ChilliSpot is an open source captive portal or wireless LAN access point controller. It is used for authenticating users of a wireless LAN. It supports web based login, which is today's standard for public HotSpots, WISP "smart-client" authentication, and it supports Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA and WPA2). Authentication, authorization and accounting (AAA protocol) is handled via RADIUS (on board or remote).
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