Thu Aug 14, 2014 10:27 pm
I originally used the radius settings in my Mikrotik APs to permit what MAC address (clients) could connect. It did work, however there was a secondary problem - I would have customers call in thinking the network was broken.
I have since switch to something else - here is what I use...
- None of my Mikrotiks use any radius settings
- All of my customer Mikrotiks connect up and gateway to one of my PfSense servers.
- My PfSense servers use Captive Portal (Walled Garden) which is configured to check my FreeRadius servers running on Ubuntu Linux.
What I now have is the following:
- Customers who have a MAC address in the FreeRadius servers connect up and can access anything
- PfSense via the CaptivePortal settings also rate limit what speeds each client may upload and download at. Each client may have different different setting for up/down rates in my PfSense Captive Portal.
- When a client customer MAC address is NOT in my FreeRadus server, then PfSense CaptivePortal will block the customer traffic and also redirect any http traffic to a specific URL one of my web servers. In my case, the redirected web page states the customer is connected but service has been suspended and they need to call our office and make arangements to pay their bill.
Also, with CaptivePortal in PfSense, you can do other things such as simply show rules to use the Internet and force the customer to click an "I Agree" button. You can also set up a temporary credit where a suspended customer can mouse click a credit and get a temporay extension to continue using the Internet.
Also, PfSense has a great selection of optional features such as firewall, router, traffic shaper, nat, packet inspection protocol analyzer bandwidth hog locator.
And the best thing is that Ubuntu & FreeRadius and PfSense are all free.
I run thousands of customer connections through only 5 PfSense servers and it has worked well for many years now.
North Idaho Tom Jones