recently at hotel....

I was recently at a hotel who offered high speed internet. I plugged in and couldn't get anywhere. Whenever I opened a browser window it went to the hotel website telling me to accept there terms of use policy or I couldn't go anywhere. If I accepted the terms than all of a sudden I could go anywhere and use the internet like normal.

Cool Idea. I want to see about implementing this for some guests who come in and use my network. However i have no clue how to.

I don't know what ot search on google either.


Please Assist.

Sounds like you're looking for an "authentication" mechanism for wireless access. A couple of open source options are:

http://www.freeradius.org/

http://www.chillispot.org/

not wireless. I was directly plugged into the hotels lan connection.

Ah. My mistake. Sounds almost like a proxy then. I know what you're talking about. Squid HOWTO might be one way..

could you ping out? perhaps a routing issue at their gateway. the page you got was probably on an internal server so it didnt need to get outbound.

Its done on my uni network using MAC addresses, the MAC address must be validated before its allowed to access the internet and other resources.

Surely this could be implemented simply with iptables? although ive never used them and dunno whether iptables is able of MAC addresses? A script could be created that up dates the iptables file, to allow for access onces the MAC is known??

i2c

edit: yea squid rings a bell from when i was "experimenting" on the network, so think thats the way to go

i2c...

many roters come with mac filters now adays.

Im well aware of that, but if the MAC isnt valid they rarely direct you to a website where you have to say your who you say you are, plus they dont allow a client to add them self to the list of allowed MAC's

iptables can be used to route, so it could be routed to a webserver asking for verification,

its a solution, not a perfect one, but one that could be hacked together in minutes using junk

i2c

ahh, i mis understood what you were trying to say. your method seems pretty good actually.

Check out nocat, (nocat.net)

We use nocat Auth at work for both our wired and wireless public networks. It brings upa splash page that will not let the user go anywhere until clicking a button, you can also set it up to backedn to a mysql db for authentication.

Check out the m0nowall project might work for your needs. BTW try a google search for "Captive Portal" that is the term given to what you described. Good Luck