billing system for wlan

15 Mar 2005 5:24 PM

Erich Wanker

Hello,

i search a billing software for my Hot-Spot

My Dream:
I want to enter in a Database Username,Password, Usage-Time and price,
In Word i print Labels with the Database as Datasource -> my Logo,
Username and Password ,Usage-Time and price.

When a user uses my Hotspot the windows Network authentication
(or something else) pops up and the user enters the Username and
password of the label. at this time the timer is ticking on the
server-side Database, and when his time is over- the next Internet
Request should show a "Page not found" or "your time is over" Page.

Is where a simple Software (Radius Server Software or something else) out
where

For free ? (or cheap shareware)
if it´s possible - for Windows ( I have no knowleg about linuX ...)

TIA Erich Wanker (yes i know - a terrible Name)

15 Mar 2005 7:49 PM

Airhead

What you may be looking for is a hotspot controller or "hotspot in a
box". Finding anything free for windows is a challenge. There are
services that will handle the authentication
and billing but not free either.

15 Mar 2005 10:46 PM

Eric

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"Erich Wanker" <erich_wan***@aon.at> wrote in message
news:42371915$0$22536$91cee783@newsreader02.highway.telekom.at...
> Hello,
>
> i search a billing software for my Hot-Spot
>
> My Dream:
> I want to enter in a Database Username,Password, Usage-Time and price,
> In Word i print Labels with the Database as Datasource -> my Logo,
> Username and Password ,Usage-Time and price.
>
> When a user uses my Hotspot the windows Network authentication
> (or something else) pops up and the user enters the Username and
> password of the label. at this time the timer is ticking on the
> server-side Database, and when his time is over- the next Internet
> Request should show a "Page not found" or "your time is over" Page.
>
> Is where a simple Software (Radius Server Software or something else) out
> where
>
> For free ? (or cheap shareware)
> if it´s possible - for Windows ( I have no knowleg about linuX ...)
>
> TIA Erich Wanker (yes i know - a terrible Name)

You are looking for a captive portal. Quite a few captive portals have
emerged, both hardware and software based. I'm using one myself called
"ZoneCD", which is free (cost and open source), and can run from a live CD.
Unfortunetly, it doesn't do anything billing related nor do I know of any
free captive portals offhand that do billing.

One commercial captive portal that caught my eye not too long ago is
"FirstSpot". It seems to be pretty well integrated and has seamless (Paypal
based) approach to billing. "Customers" purchase time in blocks and the
remaining time is displayed while they have access. The online demo looked
really good (Windows based), but they have a very steep pricetag for it.
http://www.patronsoft.com/firstspot/index.html

While I'm not aware of any free portals that do billing, I wouldn't be
surprised if there are quite a few out there. My interest with a portal was
simply to have some control over a completetly open SSID that my neighbors,
friends, family, ect use.

Check out the following website to see what else is out there.
http://nocat.net/

Cheers,
-Eric