I've been working on a hotspot backend system for the last three months and its been in production for almost two months now. Since it has been working so well they want me to adapt it for use in hotels.
The currently installed hotels use a Colubris CN-3200 or a MSC-3200 Access Controller. These units can interact with a backend service in a number of ways. Currently they use a "NOC" method where they simply pass everything to a remote server and then the remote server authenticates the user so the user never actually uses anything on the access controller itself.
The method which I use is that the access controller makes the initial connection and then passes the user through to a remote server. The remote server then passes the user back to the access controller which then authenticates against the remote server. This might sound like more effort/waste but it offers far more flexibility - for example I can have a remote web server and a separate authentication server. This is identical to how the Mikrotik RouterOS systems work.
Given this tweaking my application isn't too difficult. Just a case of either setting or detecting which access controller is in use and make the necessary adjustments to the templates and database. I should have this done in a few weeks since I have to revamp some bits to optimise the process.
It would be interesting to try some more access controller brands and see if I can achieve some across market compatibility. Although I'm happy with the RouterOS and Colubris units - together they cover pretty much every purpose I can think of.
Wednesday, August 23, 2006
Tuesday, August 15, 2006
Mooloolaba Beach WiFi
Completed the installation of the fourth Maroochy Hotspot site. Located at the Mooloolaba Beach caravan park it provides coverage to a large chunk of what is one of Australia's favourite tourist destinations. Google Maps link
Installation is the same as the others, however it receives its backhaul signal from us via a repeater located on top of the Raffles Resort Hotel just east of its location. Not the best situation to be in as I hate relying upon untrusted third parties for a mission critical feed. However the alternatives are limited - to run a phone line would be next to impossible and setting up a repeater point elsewhere would take time and money.
Now we have reasonable Hotspot coverage of the Mooloolaba/Maroochydore beach front. We also cover a large part of the northern Coolum beach frontage.
Mudjimba Caravan Park is still pending installation. We are talking with the owners of a few residential blocks nearby - we might be able to gain a feed from one of these locations into the park.
I have also updated the software versions running on the Mikrotik routers - they're now running 2.9.28. This new version introduces a new licensing scheme where the update period is now version based, not time based. Meaning that I can continue updating the routers up to the end of RouterOS v3 which could be 10 years from now. The old method was that you had 1 or 3 years to do updates.
Installation is the same as the others, however it receives its backhaul signal from us via a repeater located on top of the Raffles Resort Hotel just east of its location. Not the best situation to be in as I hate relying upon untrusted third parties for a mission critical feed. However the alternatives are limited - to run a phone line would be next to impossible and setting up a repeater point elsewhere would take time and money.
Now we have reasonable Hotspot coverage of the Mooloolaba/Maroochydore beach front. We also cover a large part of the northern Coolum beach frontage.
Mudjimba Caravan Park is still pending installation. We are talking with the owners of a few residential blocks nearby - we might be able to gain a feed from one of these locations into the park.
I have also updated the software versions running on the Mikrotik routers - they're now running 2.9.28. This new version introduces a new licensing scheme where the update period is now version based, not time based. Meaning that I can continue updating the routers up to the end of RouterOS v3 which could be 10 years from now. The old method was that you had 1 or 3 years to do updates.
Sunday, August 06, 2006
Coolum Beach Caravan Park WiFi
I can safely say that the Maroochy Council Coolum Beach Caravan Park now has wireless Internet access. Making a total of four Maroochy Parks enabled, two more to go.
The install was a bit involved as it required a separate Internet feed. We brought ADSL in to a phone point near the intended Hotspot location, set it up with a router and Access Point which transmits it to the actual Hotspot router located on the roof of a nearby building (the high point of the site). The DSL router and Access Point are located on the outside of a demountable building in a weather proof enclosure.
This saves everyone the hassle of digging trenches and running conduit and cables.
The equipment used is as follows:
Netgear DG834 ADSL Modem/Router
Senao NL-2611CB3 PLUS (Deluxe) Access Point w/5dBi antenna
WRAP2 w/8dBi planar directional and 10dBi Waveguide omni-directional antennas
The install was a bit involved as it required a separate Internet feed. We brought ADSL in to a phone point near the intended Hotspot location, set it up with a router and Access Point which transmits it to the actual Hotspot router located on the roof of a nearby building (the high point of the site). The DSL router and Access Point are located on the outside of a demountable building in a weather proof enclosure.
This saves everyone the hassle of digging trenches and running conduit and cables.
The equipment used is as follows:
Netgear DG834 ADSL Modem/Router
Senao NL-2611CB3 PLUS (Deluxe) Access Point w/5dBi antenna
WRAP2 w/8dBi planar directional and 10dBi Waveguide omni-directional antennas
Monday, July 31, 2006
The limited abilities of the Prism chipset
I've come to the conclusion that the Intersil Prism chipset is only good for the purposes it was originally manufactured for. That is a simple wireless client and maybe a very basic wireless access point. Use it for anything else and it 'might' work but generally it won't.
But even then it has its issues as I have discovered. When used within a Mikrotik RouterOS system it has issues with connecting to Access Points with WEP enabled. For example I attempted to connect to a Netgear DSL modem/router/AP and it would work fine for about 10min and then just stop responding even tho it is still associated. I managed to overcome this issue by using a seperate Senao Access Point, even then it didn't work 100% as it didn't want to talk to its wireless client neighbours, only the AP and the router behind it.
For now on I will be using CM9's and SR5/9 miniPCI cards, which are all Atheros based.
I wish there were more wireless chipset vendors that catered for this particular market - but I guess we can't have everything and consolidation was bound to occur.
But even then it has its issues as I have discovered. When used within a Mikrotik RouterOS system it has issues with connecting to Access Points with WEP enabled. For example I attempted to connect to a Netgear DSL modem/router/AP and it would work fine for about 10min and then just stop responding even tho it is still associated. I managed to overcome this issue by using a seperate Senao Access Point, even then it didn't work 100% as it didn't want to talk to its wireless client neighbours, only the AP and the router behind it.
For now on I will be using CM9's and SR5/9 miniPCI cards, which are all Atheros based.
I wish there were more wireless chipset vendors that catered for this particular market - but I guess we can't have everything and consolidation was bound to occur.
Monday, July 17, 2006
Thursday, July 13, 2006
Mikrotik RouterOS + Netgear WG102AU
A good combination for a hotspot + repeater setup on a reasonable budget.
As you know I have been working on setting up hotspots in a bunch of local caravan parks. A couple of these parks are spread over a large area with quite a few trees in and around potential client locations. Therefore a repeater will be necessary for full coverage of these locations.
Wireless Distribution System is a method for allowing APs to repeat of one another. Its not certified by the WiFi Alliance so it can be 'hit and miss' when getting two different Access Points talking to each other using this system. The Netgear WG102 works with the Mikrotik RouterOS 2.9.27 using a Senao 2511 (200mW) card.
The configurations are as follows.
RouterOS:
/ interface wireless set hotspot name="hotspot" ssid="hotspot" wds-mode=dynamic wds-default-bridge=wds_bridge
/ interface bridge add name="wds_bridge"
/ interface bridge port add interface=hotspot bridge=wds_bridge priority=128 path-cost=10 comment="" disabled=no
The mac address of the RouterOS hotspot interface is: 00:02:6F:39:58:4E
This is using the dynamic WDS mode - meaning that RouterOS will automatically add APs that wish to participate in a WDS style connection. It will also automatically add the dynamic WDS interfaces to a bridge interface to share with the physical wireless interface.
Netgear:
Under Security click Security Profile Settings. Select the first profile and click edit.
Set the Profile Name to repeater or whatever you like and then set the SSID to hotspot.
You can opt to have Wireless client Security Seperation if you do not wish to have clients talking to each other.
Within the Advanced group in the main menu on the left side, click Access Point Settings.
Check the box for Enable Wireless Bridging and Repeating on Security Profile 1.
Choose Repeater with Wireless Client Association and enter the above 'hotspot' mac address in the Parent AP MAC Address fields.
As you know I have been working on setting up hotspots in a bunch of local caravan parks. A couple of these parks are spread over a large area with quite a few trees in and around potential client locations. Therefore a repeater will be necessary for full coverage of these locations.
Wireless Distribution System is a method for allowing APs to repeat of one another. Its not certified by the WiFi Alliance so it can be 'hit and miss' when getting two different Access Points talking to each other using this system. The Netgear WG102 works with the Mikrotik RouterOS 2.9.27 using a Senao 2511 (200mW) card.
The configurations are as follows.
RouterOS:
/ interface wireless set hotspot name="hotspot" ssid="hotspot" wds-mode=dynamic wds-default-bridge=wds_bridge
/ interface bridge add name="wds_bridge"
/ interface bridge port add interface=hotspot bridge=wds_bridge priority=128 path-cost=10 comment="" disabled=no
The mac address of the RouterOS hotspot interface is: 00:02:6F:39:58:4E
This is using the dynamic WDS mode - meaning that RouterOS will automatically add APs that wish to participate in a WDS style connection. It will also automatically add the dynamic WDS interfaces to a bridge interface to share with the physical wireless interface.
Netgear:
Under Security click Security Profile Settings. Select the first profile and click edit.
Set the Profile Name to repeater or whatever you like and then set the SSID to hotspot.
You can opt to have Wireless client Security Seperation if you do not wish to have clients talking to each other.
Within the Advanced group in the main menu on the left side, click Access Point Settings.
Check the box for Enable Wireless Bridging and Repeating on Security Profile 1.
Choose Repeater with Wireless Client Association and enter the above 'hotspot' mac address in the Parent AP MAC Address fields.
Monday, July 10, 2006
Three sites up, three to go
So far the Mooloolaba (Parkyn Pde), Sea Breeze and Cotton Tree parks are up and going. Five people have actually signed up and paid for the service. Ten others have signed up and not paid. So 5 out of 15 signups isn't bad considering the service has only been in existence for a matter of weeks and NO promotion has been done.
Support overheads seem quite good in these early stages. I expected at least one call for each signup to get people connected, basically teaching them how to use wireless and the particulars of the service and the Internet. However I was pleasantly surprised to see people connecting and signing up without having to contact us, which is fantastic!
I definitely need marketing materials for each site. The park manages do find it difficult to explain the service to people on top of the rest of what they have to tell guests. The council should have met us halfway with this and worked with us on some material that was deemed suitable by their standards. I think I will take an active role in this side of things and get something out the door.
The wireless coverage of the Cotton Tree park is less than I had originally hoped. It is the largest park and I am only covering the western half. Its bad only partially covering a given location - it creates disparity and people in the non-covered areas become hostile towards the service. I will push forward our plans to install a repeater within the western side of the park. This means rapidly sourcing and testing a compatible Access Point.
Mudjimba and Coolum Parks are troublesome. Coolum requires a bit of fancy wireless work to get DSL distributed to the Hotspot. Mudjimba has a problem where getting DSL to the site is difficult - it may need to be sourced outside the park and beamed in wirelessly.
Support overheads seem quite good in these early stages. I expected at least one call for each signup to get people connected, basically teaching them how to use wireless and the particulars of the service and the Internet. However I was pleasantly surprised to see people connecting and signing up without having to contact us, which is fantastic!
I definitely need marketing materials for each site. The park manages do find it difficult to explain the service to people on top of the rest of what they have to tell guests. The council should have met us halfway with this and worked with us on some material that was deemed suitable by their standards. I think I will take an active role in this side of things and get something out the door.
The wireless coverage of the Cotton Tree park is less than I had originally hoped. It is the largest park and I am only covering the western half. Its bad only partially covering a given location - it creates disparity and people in the non-covered areas become hostile towards the service. I will push forward our plans to install a repeater within the western side of the park. This means rapidly sourcing and testing a compatible Access Point.
Mudjimba and Coolum Parks are troublesome. Coolum requires a bit of fancy wireless work to get DSL distributed to the Hotspot. Mudjimba has a problem where getting DSL to the site is difficult - it may need to be sourced outside the park and beamed in wirelessly.
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