On Wed, 2004-03-17 at 15:39, John Voigt wrote:
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "David Rodgers" <david dot rodgers at kdsi dot net>
> 
> > > Well, for you it's a firewall.  A lot of people are using it with the
> > > Soekris box as a wireless router in their SOHO environment
> >
> > Yes but this is still not a server it's an access device that traffic
> > goes THROUGH... see also below
> 
> Perhaps you don't understand what a hotspot is.  There is no "server" just a
> static web page where the user agrees with some acceptable use policy
> protecting the operator.  Agreeing simply adds a rule to the firewall
> allowing limited access to the user who just agreed.

yes but (and I am arguing on principle here) that static page is running
on a web "server" just like any other web page you have ever been to. 

I do agree though that if this device is not a primary firewall this
would not be a problem functionality could be cool. ... ok there I said
it.

I know you want everything to be integrated but I think it might be
cooler to add a backend plugin interface to m0n0wall so that this sort
of thing doesn't need to be part of the actual package. 

Like something meant to interact with an external machine that does the
authentication. 

Say you go to a page and hit the hot spot button and type in an ip
address and it forwards all requests that are trying to go to the
internet to a certain ip address that serves the pages and handles the
auth. 

They could authenticate there and could activate the changes in the
firewall via a php script on m0n0 that accepts input from the ip you
have specified as the hot spot authenticator device.

or even better to keep the bloat down completely maybe fork of mono that
is JUST a wireless/hotspot device. like maybe M0n0Spot :-)


This is a really cool idea but I don't want to see the CF image for
regular M0n0 go from 4 megs to 20, 50, 100 by adding a bunch of stuff
either.

A device that could operate as either a free hotspot or have an option
to authenticate to a radius server would be great. 


David Rodgers