[isf-wifidog] Re : Re: Re : Re: WifiDog v2 development update?
wlanmac
wlan at mac.com
Dim 5 Avr 01:52:27 EDT 2009
Yes, RADIUS is powerful and ideal for access provisioning. Implementing
your 'business logic' in RADIUS also has the benefit of being usable
with multiple types of access controllers, using some standard (WISPr)
or vendor specific attributes. Though, RADIUS doesn't make any
guarantees about the features of the access controller.
This could be a turning point for the WiFiDog project. As a portal
project, I'm guessing that the WiFiDog community might break up into
smaller projects (already happening, it seems) as it is VERY difficult
to find a web development platform/framework that everyone is happy
with. It also sounds like people are willing to dump the v1 web
framework, which will no doubt further break up the community unless
there is a clean upgrade procedure. This is bad news for any open-source
project that struggles to maintain their community and attract more
contributors (especially developers)...
My two cents for the project:
- To keep WiFiDog an access controller AND portal project, WiFiDog
should be more active in defining the "protocol" and development of the
gateway. The project should encourage and embrace the use of multiple
kinds of portals and web frameworks - don't push away those who break
away from the portal.
- To turn WiFiDog into a portal project, then don't necessarily keep the
gateway portion when there are other options available which can do more
things. Even if it means adding the WiFiDog "protocol" to something like
Chilli, at least you don't have to reinvent the wheel in terms of basic
access controller features.
David
On Sun, 2009-04-05 at 00:20 +0200, Jean-Philippe Menil wrote:
> Gabe is right, working with radius can do the trick.
> I'm working with freeradius for eduroam, and it can do everything
> you want, and very powerfull with mysql database
> (simultaneous use, limit time, bandwith, dynamic vlan assigment, etc ...)
>
> For my part, i've had enormous problem to make working wifidog (gateway
> and auth)
> with apache and prostgres. Only the fastcgi could take the load.
> This was with 1000 users, in paravirtualized environment.
> Now, with a physical machine and cherokee fastci, all is working.
>
> Is it possible to emerge a list of wish and requirements for the
> wifidog v2 auth AND gateway?
>
> Regards.
>
> Richard Lussier a écrit :
> > Dana,
> > I think you are expressing something that looks like almost a consensus
> > for our needs.
> > A set of options we can choose from to integrate or not.
> > We should have a look also at a conversation taking place at
> > freethenet.ca at this very moment.
> > It seems that many communities are looking for a change, and that means
> > lots of ressources to make it happens.
> > Many are looking at the open-mesh / robin project as one of the modules.
> > That would add the possibility to use mesh networking (ROBIN with Batman
> > or OLSR), and also an administrative dashboard (Open-Mesh, or Orangemesh).
> > Richard
> >
> > Dana Spiegel wrote:
> >
> >> Sorry and in (2), by "your CMS" I mean the CMS that's built into
> >> WifiDog. It's been one of the biggest issues for us, since its close
> >> to impossible for our guys to use, and is completely impossible for
> >> our hotspot owners to use. It was very powerful internally, but the UI
> >> needs to completely mask all of the sophisticated technology, and at
> >> this point, its probably not worth any additional work to make it more
> >> usable, since a bunch of other CMSes are available.
> >>
> >>
> >> Dana Spiegel
> >> Executive Director, NYCwireless
> >> dana at nycwireless.net
> >> +1 917 402 0422
> >>
> >> -------------------
> >> NYCwireless is a non-profit organization that advocates for, and
> >> enables the growth of free, public wireless networks
> >> -------------------
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> On Apr 4, 2009, at 5:20 PM, Dana Spiegel wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>> I think its worthwhile to explain what we are looking for:
> >>>
> >>> 1) We don't really care about the gateway software, and would be happy
> >>> to use anything that can run on Pyramid Linux
> >>> 2) We don't want to use any of your CMS software. We either want a
> >>> standard CMS (like Wordpress-I despise drupal, actually), or better
> >>> our own home-assembled one based on Django components
> >>> 3) In the longer term, we need a *more usable* administrative tool,
> >>> especially one that can provide easy to understand reports (which the
> >>> current one doesn't really provide - I'd be happy to spec this out)
> >>> 4) We must continue to have authentication, and we need a way to pass
> >>> the user and their location to our CMS/other software. My
> >>> understanding is that the faceless mechanism that was the original v2
> >>> proposal would actually offload this to the CMS directly, and users
> >>> would really have a login into the wifidog server, but that there'd be
> >>> a way of externally "authenticating" a user using a callback of sorts,
> >>> so that we can restrict access to the internet at large until the user
> >>> actually logs into whatever CMS we run.
> >>>
> >>> Beyond this, we've had a lot of headaches with PostgreSQL, and the PHP
> >>> code is very difficult to adjust without spending a lot of time on the
> >>> documentation.
> >>>
> >>> I think that if we do (4) above, most of my headaches go away, and I
> >>> can live with things as they are. I'd also like to have some form of
> >>> REST interface for getting at the node usage data, and a REST
> >>> interface for querying the real-time activity as well.
> >>>
> >>> If we slim down the WifiDog server to be (4) -- with the REST
> >>> interface we can even get rid of just about any of (3) since this can
> >>> be built externally -- then we would be incredibly pleased.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> Dana Spiegel
> >>> Executive Director, NYCwireless
> >>> dana at nycwireless.net
> >>> +1 917 402 0422
> >>>
> >>> -------------------
> >>> NYCwireless is a non-profit organization that advocates for, and
> >>> enables the growth of free, public wireless networks
> >>> -------------------
> >>>
> >>> On Apr 4, 2009, at 2:25 PM, Gabe Sawhney wrote:
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>> Hi -- I'm from Wireless Toronto.
> >>>>
> >>>> My dream is for us here to be running our network on a platform
> >>>> that'll accommodate the WRT54G investment that our venue partners
> >>>> have
> >>>> already made, as well as allow us to manage the (probably) ROBIN-
> >>>> based
> >>>> routers that we'll start deploying. We're a culture-focused group,
> >>>> so
> >>>> portal pages and content -- and consequently, a server -- are
> >>>> necessary components. I would like a little more intelligence on the
> >>>> gateway side, so that users are still able to get online if the
> >>>> router
> >>>> can't find the server. I'm also interested in stepping away from an
> >>>> authentication model, and move towards one of (bandwidth) accounting.
> >>>> (Whereby users are only required to authenticate if they cross a
> >>>> bandwidth usage threshold.) This approach would improve the
> >>>> usability
> >>>> of our network (giving us a distinct advantage over commercial
> >>>> WISPs),
> >>>> it would reduce support requests, maybe make building out a mesh
> >>>> easier, and make our network finally not-totally-annoying for users
> >>>> on
> >>>> mobile devices.
> >>>>
> >>>> I picture this dream platform being easier to achieve by building on
> >>>> top of the soon-to-be-released (this summer?) open-mesh/orangemesh
> >>>> system, rather than from the existing WifiDog code. There are other
> >>>> options I haven't looked into, but it seems to me that the openmesh
> >>>> project has good momentum, and is a comparatively new system which
> >>>> has
> >>>> been designed with usability on the admin side in mind. I'm totally
> >>>> open to other possibilities. I know others have requirements that
> >>>> are
> >>>> different than ours, but I'd love for us to be collaborating to
> >>>> figure
> >>>> out what are the core features that we could all use and can work
> >>>> together to build.
> >>>>
> >>>> Dana: Are you committed to sticking with wifidog for the festival in
> >>>> the fall, or would you consider using orangemesh, or something else?
> >>>>
> >>>> Gabe
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> On Sat, Apr 4, 2009 at 12:34 PM, Richard Lussier
> >>>> <richard.lussier at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>> bruno.remy at videotron.ca wrote:
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>> I'm not a programmer, as Alexis said, but i'would like to share
> >>>>>> with
> >>>>>> you the mind of every programmers involving around Wifidog's
> >>>>>> development in IleSansFil (Montreal) and ZAP Québec (Quebec city) .
> >>>>>> This sounds like this :
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> "The time of tracking bugs and/or patch actual Php code is over !
> >>>>>> It's time consuming, and fixing bugs is a too-small step.
> >>>>>> The dynamic has changed :
> >>>>>> Wifidog needs to be rewriting from scratch, with buildt-in or
> >>>>>> radius
> >>>>>> or openId or ldap authentification, and with CMS content (like
> >>>>>> Wordpress or Drupal).
> >>>>>> The brainstorming is open ! ;-)"
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Bruno
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> ----- Message d'origine -----
> >>>>>> De: Wichert Akkerman <wichert at wiggy.net>
> >>>>>> Date: Samedi, 4 Avril 2009, 11:28
> >>>>>> Objet: Re: [isf-wifidog] Re : Re: WifiDog v2 development update?
> >>>>>> À: Jean-Philippe Menil <jean-philippe.menil at univ-nantes.fr>
> >>>>>> Cc: WiFiDog Captive Portal <wifidog at listes.ilesansfil.org>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>> Previously Jean-Philippe Menil wrote:
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> I think the idea of a forum would be great,
> >>>>>>>> too many people use the bug tracker in wrong way.
> >>>>>>>> And not so many use the mailing list.
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> FWIW I find forums painful to use. If wifidog development moves
> >>>>>>> away
> >>>>>>> from the mailinglist to a forum most likely I will stop paying
> >>>>>>> attention. There reasonable services that provide a forum
> >>>>>>> interface for
> >>>>>>> mailinglists such as nabble or gmane; perhaps they are
> >>>>>>> interesting.
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> I have no interest in working on the wifidog portal since I use
> >>>>>>> my own
> >>>>>>> portal, but I can help with the gateway if needed.
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> Wichert.
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> --
> >>>>>>> Wichert Akkerman <wichert at wiggy.net> It is
> >>>>>>> simple to make things.
> >>>>>>> http://www.wiggy.net/ It is hard to make things
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>> simple.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>> _______________________________________________
> >>>>>>> WiFiDog mailing list
> >>>>>>> WiFiDog at listes.ilesansfil.org
> >>>>>>> http://listes.ilesansfil.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/wifidog
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> _______________________________________________
> >>>>>> WiFiDog mailing list
> >>>>>> WiFiDog at listes.ilesansfil.org
> >>>>>> http://listes.ilesansfil.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/wifidog
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>> Hi list,
> >>>>> I am involved a lot in operations at ISF.
> >>>>> What Bruno says is what I also understant of the situation in our
> >>>>> area.
> >>>>> We are convinced that the modular approach is the way to go, so
> >>>>> every
> >>>>> need can be covered without imposing it to other.
> >>>>> Also to permit to evolve with more ease.
> >>>>> There are probably (I am not a coder either) lots of things that are
> >>>>> great in what has been made, so let's not throw away the baby with
> >>>>> the
> >>>>> tub water (a french expression :-) ).
> >>>>> Sylvain Carle expressed the desire to lead the project among our
> >>>>> groups
> >>>>> in Québec area, I would like to ear what he has to say.
> >>>>> Richard
> >>>>> _______________________________________________
> >>>>> WiFiDog mailing list
> >>>>> WiFiDog at listes.ilesansfil.org
> >>>>> http://listes.ilesansfil.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/wifidog
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>> _______________________________________________
> >>>> WiFiDog mailing list
> >>>> WiFiDog at listes.ilesansfil.org
> >>>> http://listes.ilesansfil.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/wifidog
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>> _______________________________________________
> >>> WiFiDog mailing list
> >>> WiFiDog at listes.ilesansfil.org
> >>> http://listes.ilesansfil.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/wifidog
> >>>
> >>>
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> WiFiDog mailing list
> >> WiFiDog at listes.ilesansfil.org
> >> http://listes.ilesansfil.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/wifidog
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > WiFiDog mailing list
> > WiFiDog at listes.ilesansfil.org
> > http://listes.ilesansfil.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/wifidog
> >
>
>
Plus d'informations sur la liste de diffusion WiFiDog