WiFiDog Captive Portal

Last updated

WiFiDog was an open source embeddable captive portal solution used to build wireless hotspots. It is no longer an active project after not being updated for several years. [1]

Contents

WiFiDog consists of two components: the gateway and the authentication server. It was written by the technical team of Île Sans Fil and is included in the software package repository [2] of OpenWrt.

Gateway

The WiFiDog gateway is written in C with no dependencies beyond the Linux kernel. This structure enables it to be embedded in devices such as the WRT54G router running OpenWrt, FreeWRT or DD-WRT or most PCs running Linux. Linux Journal reports that a working gateway install can be packaged in less than 15kB on an i386 platform. [3]

Authentication server

The WiFiDog authentication server is a PHP and PostgreSQL or MySQL server based solution written to authenticate clients in a captive portal environment. WiFiDog Auth provides portal specific content management, allows users to create wireless internet access accounts using email access, provides gateway uptime statistics and connection specific and user log statistics.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wireless LAN</span> Computer network that links devices using wireless communication within a limited area

A wireless LAN (WLAN) is a wireless computer network that links two or more devices using wireless communication to form a local area network (LAN) within a limited area such as a home, school, computer laboratory, campus, or office building. This gives users the ability to move around within the area and remain connected to the network. Through a gateway, a WLAN can also provide a connection to the wider Internet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wireless community network</span>

Wireless community networks or wireless community projects or simply community networks, are non-centralized, self-managed and collaborative networks organized in a grassroots fashion by communities, non-governmental organizations and cooperatives in order to provide a viable alternative to municipal wireless networks for consumers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Captive portal</span> Web page displayed to new users of a network

A captive portal is a web page accessed with a web browser that is displayed to newly connected users of a Wi-Fi or wired network before they are granted broader access to network resources. Captive portals are commonly used to present a landing or log-in page which may require authentication, payment, acceptance of an end-user license agreement, acceptable use policy, survey completion, or other valid credentials that both the host and user agree to adhere by. Captive portals are used for a broad range of mobile and pedestrian broadband services – including cable and commercially provided Wi-Fi and home hotspots. A captive portal can also be used to provide access to enterprise or residential wired networks, such as apartment houses, hotel rooms, and business centers.

OpenVPN is a virtual private network (VPN) system that implements techniques to create secure point-to-point or site-to-site connections in routed or bridged configurations and remote access facilities. It implements both client and server applications.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wi-Fi hotspot</span> Wi-Fi access point

A hotspot is a physical location where people can obtain Internet access, typically using Wi-Fi technology, via a wireless local-area network (WLAN) using a router connected to an Internet service provider.

Computer operating systems based on the Linux kernel are used in embedded systems such as consumer electronics, in-vehicle infotainment (IVI), networking equipment, machine control, industrial automation, navigation equipment, spacecraft flight software, and medical instruments in general.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Linksys WRT54G series</span> Series of wireless routers manufacturered by Linksys

The Linksys WRT54G Wi-Fi series is a series of Wi-Fi–capable residential gateways marketed by Linksys, a subsidiary of Cisco, from 2003 until acquired by Belkin in 2013. A residential gateway connects a local area network to a wide area network.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wireless router</span> Computer networking device

A wireless router or Wi-Fi router is a device that performs the functions of a router and also includes the functions of a wireless access point. It is used to provide access to the Internet or a private computer network. Depending on the manufacturer and model, it can function in a wired local area network, in a wireless-only LAN, or in a mixed wired and wireless network.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wireless security</span> Aspect of wireless networks

Wireless security is the prevention of unauthorized access or damage to computers or data using wireless networks, which include Wi-Fi networks. The term may also refer to the protection of the wireless network itself from adversaries seeking to damage the confidentiality, integrity, or availability of the network. The most common type is Wi-Fi security, which includes Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) and Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA). WEP is an old IEEE 802.11 standard from 1997. It is a notoriously weak security standard: the password it uses can often be cracked in a few minutes with a basic laptop computer and widely available software tools. WEP was superseded in 2003 by WPA, a quick alternative at the time to improve security over WEP. The current standard is WPA2; some hardware cannot support WPA2 without firmware upgrade or replacement. WPA2 uses an encryption device that encrypts the network with a 256-bit key; the longer key length improves security over WEP. Enterprises often enforce security using a certificate-based system to authenticate the connecting device, following the standard 802.11X.

hostapd is a user space daemon software enabling a network interface card to act as an access point and authentication server. There are three implementations: Jouni Malinen's hostapd, OpenBSD's hostapd and Devicescape's hostapd.

WISPr or Wireless Internet Service Provider roaming is a draft protocol submitted to the Wi-Fi Alliance that allows users to roam between wireless internet service providers in a fashion similar to that which allows cellphone users to roam between carriers. A RADIUS server is used to authenticate the subscriber's credentials.

WilmaGate is a collection of open-source tools for Authentication, Authorization and Accounting on an Open Access Network. It has been initially developed by the Computer Networks and Mobility Group at the University of Trento (Italy).

The DG834 series are popular ADSL modem router products from Netgear. The devices can be directly connected to the phone line and establish an ADSL broadband Internet connection to the ISP and share it among several computers via 802.3 Ethernet and 802.11b/g wireless data links.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Zeroshell</span> Linux distribution

Zeroshell is a small open-source Linux distribution for servers and embedded systems which aims to provide network services. Its administration relies on a web-based graphical interface; no shell is needed to administer and configure it. Zeroshell is available as Live CD and CompactFlash images, and VMware virtual machines.

The WGR614L is an 802.11b/g wireless network router created by Netgear. It was officially launched on June 30, 2008. The WGR614L runs an open source linux firmware and supports the installation of third party packages such as DD-WRT, Tomato, and OpenWrt.

Linksys manufactures a series of network routers. Many models are shipped with Linux-based firmware and can run third-party firmware. The first model to support third-party firmware was the very popular Linksys WRT54G series.

IEEE 802.11s is a wireless local area network (WLAN) standard and an IEEE 802.11 amendment for mesh networking, defining how wireless devices can interconnect to create a wireless LAN mesh network, which may be used for relatively fixed topologies and wireless ad hoc networks. The IEEE 802.11s task group drew upon volunteers from university and industry to provide specifications and possible design solutions for wireless mesh networking. As a standard, the document was iterated and revised many times prior to finalization.

OpenWrt is an open-source project for embedded operating systems based on Linux, primarily used on embedded devices to route network traffic. The main components are Linux, util-linux, musl, and BusyBox. All components have been optimized to be small enough to fit into the limited storage and memory available in home routers.

DebWrt is a discontinued, niche Linux distribution mainly installed on embedded systems. It was built on top of an OpenWrt base which was used to load a fully functional version of Debian from the RootFS stored on the attached USB storage device. For easy installation and deinstallation of packages it relied on the dpkg Package management system. DebWrt used the command-line interface of Bash. There was no web-based GUI interface.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ZeroTier</span> Software company based in California

ZeroTier, Inc. is a software company with a freemium business model based in Irvine, California. ZeroTier provides proprietary software, SDKs and commercial products and services to create and manage virtual software-defined networks. The company's flagship end-user product ZeroTier One is a client application that enables devices such as PCs, phones, servers and embedded devices to securely connect to peer-to-peer virtual networks.

References

  1. "WiFiDog captive portal (defunct)". OpenWrt Wiki. 2014-11-06. Retrieved 2023-06-07.
  2. "WiFiDog [Old OpenWrt Wiki]".
  3. Lenczner, Michael. "Wireless Portals with Wifidog". Linux Journal.