EasyHotspot Blog

Thank you EasyHotspot Community!

rafeequl — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 16:17:43 +0000

This is what makes us smile and eager to continue to be better!!

We have more than 900 fans, and counting on facebook!

Facebook Fans

#1 in SourceForge.net, keyword “hotspot” ordered by download rate

EasyHotspot @ SourceForge.net

And in just less than a month of releasing EasyHotspot nano (private beta), we are already serving thousands of vouchers around the globe!

EasyHotspot nano

Thank you everyone who have made this possible!! and also everyone of the from EasyHotspot forum that has posted great tips and tricks for EasyHotspot community. See our facebook page and also follow @easyhotspot

How a hotspot billing system works – simple explanation

rafeequl — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 06:17:35 +0000

Recently I’ve got a lot of questions about how exactly EasyHotspot works ? What happens behind the system ? and how FreeRadius, Captive Portal etc works and talks to each other ?

In this post I will try to answer that question in a simple way.

In order to make a hotspot billing system, we need this following stuff :

Web server + Server side script engine

Web server and server side script (cgi/php) is used for user authentication and database management. In this case we can use Apache and PHP, or if you want, you can use Ruby on Rails. In EasyHotspot nano, we’re using Ruby on Rails for our web front end. It gives us more power and flexibility to adapt and the develop the system.

Database

As you may already know, the database will store all of your users / settings infomation. In this case we can use MySQL.

AAA Server

AAA stands for “authentication, authorization and accounting”. This guy will handle the authentication + authorization. It can also be used to log requests.

In this case, we will use FreeRadius + MySQL duo. FreeRadius will act as the AAA server and MySQL will be the database for FreeRadius. FreeRadius will store all of the accounting information to MySQL, and it will check for the authentication and authorization information from MySQL.

Captive Portal

A Captive portal is like a gateway, it will connect users to the internet. But before it allows users to access the internet, it will first ask the AAA server if its ok to forward the request (to let the users access the internet) ?

The Captive portal is also responsible to perform the authorization/authentication activity. But don’t get me wrong, captive portal only ask and accept what the AAA server says. We can use Chillispot CoovaChilli as a captive portal.

Real life example

ok, heres the “real life” example on how the system works :

Assume Mr. Van Persie is our WiFi customer.

Mr. Van Persie connects to your wireless network with a laptop.
He open his browser and then tries browse to the internet.
Before he can connect to the internet, the Captive Portal checks if Mr. Van Persie’s laptop is authenticated.
Since his laptop is unauthenticated, the Captive Portal then redirects him to the Login Page.
Now he must enter the username and password to authenticate himself.
The Username/Password can be found on the FreeRadius database table.
After he has entered the login info (username/password), the Captive Portal will create an authentication request to FreeRadius.
FreeRadius then checks if the request is valid by checking the login information, which is stored in MySQL Database.
If the information is correct (found it the MySQL table), FreeRadius will continue to the next step, otherwise FreeRadius will simply “reject” the request.
The next step is checking whether this account is still valid., again if it has expired then FreeRadius will send a reject signal to the Captive Portal.
If it’s valid, FreeRadius then checks the “attributes” for this account, such as connection speed, valid time, bandwidth limit, idle time out etc!
If everything going fine, FreeRadius then says “OK this user is valid and this is his attributes” to the Captive Portal.
After sending the access accept signal, FreeRadius then records the usage to the database!
Captive Portal then allows Mr. Van Persie to connect to the internet WITH all the authentication attributes from FreeRadius.
The Captive Portal will remember the attributes for him, if for example one of the attributes is time limit, the captive portal will remember the time limit for the user to access the internet.
Once Mr. Van Persie has accessed the internet according to the given time limit, the Captive Portal will automatically disconnect him, then when he tries to browse the internet again the Captive Portal will request a Username and Password again to allow him to access the internet.
DONE!

That’s a simple explanation on how a Hotspot Billing System works., i hope you found it useful

Cant wait to build your own hotspot ? check this out :

If you want a solution that EASIER to use => you can try this. Or if you want an setup you own hotspot, this post will shows to you how easy to setup a hotspot billing system.

Replace Chillispot with Coova Chilli

EasyHotspot Dev Team — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 03:48:37 +0000

Recently we have posted a guide for replacing your chillispot with coova-chilli. As you might already know, Chillispot is no longer supported and being replaced by CoovaChilli. To view our guide, please visit http://easyhotspot.inov.asia/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=343.

We need your opinion

rafeequl — Tue, 25 May 2010 19:30:16 +0000

image: google

Hi guys, we’re preparing something special for you. We need your help, please take a little survey here. It takes no more than 10 question, we promise !

Thanks!!

Hello Mr. Onno

EasyHotspot Dev Team — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 11:34:14 +0000

Checkout this link: http://bit.ly/aT9NEV and this one: http://bit.ly/cIPDtf we’re thrilled that EasyHotspot was mentioned by ‘the’ network guru in Indonesia.

Mr. Onno W. Purbo profile:

http://id.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onno_W._Purbo

EasyHotspot Quick Start Tutorial

panduhartanto — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 05:05:33 +0000

It seems like many people are having a hard time getting EasyHotspot up and running quickly. I’ll try to post an easy step by step tutorial which hopefully can used to get you on your way to a Easy to use Hotspot billing system.

Step 1

Requirements

before you can get easyhotspot up and running, you need these things:

- PC (for EHS server) that has 2 Network Interfaces (2 Ethernet Port)

- Internet Connection via Lan

- Access Point

- Get EasyHotspot Distro

From our download page or direct link here

Step 2

- Burn EasyHotspot distro to CD

- Install EasyHotspot to PC (similar to ubuntu installation process)

Step 3

- Connect the Internet Lan cable to the Eth0 PORT on your Server

Make sure you have internet connection by surfing the internet on the server.

- Connect the access point Lan cable to the Eth1 PORT on your Server

YOU DON’T HAVE TO DO ANYTHING with Eth1 , DISABLE DHCP FEATURE from your AP (if present)

If your using a Wireless Router please Disable the DHCP feature and connect Eth1 to LAN port , NOT WAN port!

Step 4

- Manage your Hotspot!

From your EasyHotspot server, open firefox and go to http://localhost/easyhotspot you can create billing and voucher plans from admin account, generate vouchers and invoice customers from cashier account.

Step 5

- Connect Clients / Customers

A client or customer can join your wireless Hotspot as usual by choosing your Network / AP name (SSID)

- Login on the Client to browse the Web

Once a customer has join your network, they will be redirected to a login page before they can browse the web. Login with the voucher or postpaid account that you have created in step 4.

- Enjoy your EasyHotspot system!

Need more information or something isn’t working: visit the documentation page and the troubleshooting section and be sure to check out our forum!

new home page and forum

panduhartanto — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 09:24:32 +0000

EasyHotspot has a new home page and also a new forum! . The forum is to accommodate all of our loyal users and fans to discuss anything about EasyHotspot, post tutorials, customizations or just discuss hotspots in general. We hope this forum can be helpful to everyone including us the developers so that EasyHotspot can continue to become an Easy solution to your Hotspot billing system.

How to Update EasyHotspot

rafeequl — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 05:05:56 +0000

EasyHospot 0.2 comes with git repository, which means it gives us an easy way to update the code. This is how to update your current installation with the lastest release :

Go to EasyHotspot directory

cd /opt/local/web/easyhotspot
git pull

Pull new patches

Its very handy if you we want to update (bug fixes/ new features).

EasyHotspot CD Order

rafeequl — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 09:59:58 +0000

Berhubung kita sedang kesulitan untuk mengupload versi 0.2 nya, dan memang ada banyak request dari user untuk dikirimkan via paket karena juga mungkin filenya terlalu besar.

Maka kami siap membantu mengirimkan CD EasyHotspot 0.2 via POS/Paket/Tiki dengan cukup mengganti ongkos kirim dan biaya produksi saja. Caranya sbb :

Kirim Email dengan judul EasyHotspot CD disertai Alamat Lengkap dan no. telepon
Biaya Rp. 50.000 tidak termasuk ongkos kirim, bisa dengan Bank Transfer
Kirim ke pandu.hartanto@gmail.com
Lakukan konfirmasi, setelah itu CD akan kami kirimkan

No Rekening :
BCA
5270855051 a/n M. Pandu Wicaksono Hartanto

Uploading EasyHotspot iso @ 4 KB/sec

rafeequl — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 09:36:43 +0000

We’re having a hard time down here, our internet upload speed is not good enough. So be patient guys, by the time im writing this post, Cyberduck tells us its 37 hours to go (exclude disconnect, downtime, RTO or even power failure, thx to PLN).

To be honest, this is not our first time to upload this iso. We hope everything is gonna be okay right now. We are planning to upgrade our internet connection, so we can get a better connection to upgrade this iso. You guys can help us to make it happen, donation will be used for upgrade our connection.