Radius Accounting

[william]

I missed the bus altogether on this. When asked for an Internet Cafe Hotspot solution I recommended Star. Licence, install and set-up were a pleasure. "Debugging" and browsing the forum for a couple hours was not so great. Is my understanding correct?

There is no accounting or any means to limit a customer? Limiting a customer by applying an hour time restriction is useless if he just reuses the name and password.

I can see the obvious use for this feature as a WISP, but the name Hotspot is grossly misused. Unless there is a bus still passing me by :lol:

[szern]

You'd need an Accounting System (Billing system) using an external RADIUS server (FreeRADIUS will do nicely).
There should be an extra field (in the database) for keeping track of un-used time, which then updates the max session timeout on the RADIUS server's DB and gets it to send the updated timeleft to your Star-OS server, when the user logs in.

Hope this helps...

- Szern

[lonnie]

Our Hotspot is the frontend. It talks with radius and radius has two functions - authentication and accounting.

When you get into accounting it becomes a lifetime, retirement job. We specialize in hardware and low level networking, so we will leave the accounting to those who make it their life. Some people actually like accounting.

At any rate you are wanting the financial backend controls and that would have to come from some billing program. We do not have this and we most likely will not.

I will leave the door open for other users to step in here and offer their services since I know a few of you guys are building your own backend systems. I think you have an opportunity here, so if you are interested, this is the forum to announce your intentions.

[weasel]

If Free radius works fine then why not just integrate it into the hotspot package and make it a better product and best of all its free....... :shock:

[szern]

There already is freeradius in Star-OS, however its using a flatfile db and only support the first two AA portions of AAA (namely Authentication & Authorization).
For the last portion Accounting, its best you do it on a external separate server (maybe running freeradius).

Hope this helps...

- Szern

[william]

Thanks Szern. I understand completely what you are saying. There are many simple products which work well as Hotspots that do "Accounting". By accounting I mean keep track of time used and expire passwords automatically. I am not looking for an accounting package to tally up my gross profits. All I want is the facility for it to act as a stand alone unit. Which are readily available with till slip printers etc. But they will not allow CBQ and other nice extras which are in Star already.

This is a simple example of what could be in Star RADIUS:

Star - RADIUS

Access-Request
Attributes:
1.User-Name
2.NAS-Identifier
3.CHAP-Challenge
4.CHAP-Password
5.NAS-IP Address

RADIUS - Star

Access-Accept
Attributes:
1.Session-Timeout

Star - RADIUS

Accounting-Request
Attributes:
1.User-Name
2.Acct-Status-Type (Start)
3.Acct-Delay-Time
4.Acct-Session-Id
5.NAS-IP-Address

RADIUS - Star

Accounting-Response

Star - RADIUS

Accounting-Request
Attributes:
1.User-Name
2.Acct-Status-Type (Stop)
3.Acct-Session-ID
4.Acct-Terminate-Cause
5.Acct-Session-Time

RADIUS - Star

Accounting-Response

[szern]

You're thinking along the lines of:
- Handlink WSG-5000
- Zyxel ZyAIR B-4000 (which is an OEM version of Handlink)

Which has the built-in printer functionality, however doesn't have Star-OS goodies :)
I know, we sell the Handlink units too, but have recently switched to deploying more Star-OS units.

As for the attributes you mentioned, IINM Star-OS does send thos attributes during the handshake phase.

Hope this helps...

- Szern