Hey all, Hopefully this is in the right spot. I'm not really sure if it belongs here or in the User Manager area.

I'm trying to set up RouterOS as a router and hotspot manager for a Hotel in a rural town in Australia. The internet access is limited, and the best we can get is Mobile Broadband with a 15GB cap. However, We want to supply free WiFi for hotel patrons. Basically, The system I want to set up would involve vouchers/temporary accounts being handed out on request, With over-the-bar accounts with a 100MB limit/expiring 3 hours from first use, And guests staying in the accommodation having 200-300MB expiring 3 days after first use. This way, Users can get free internet access and I don't have to worry about charges for excessive data usage.

I am able to set up RouterOS (x86) on a PC, I've bought a Level 4 licence, and I have it working with internet access through the Router. It's set up like this:

3G router on WAN side connected to a 10/100 port on the PC running RouterOS, With a static IP address (192.168.1.5)

Asus RT-N55U in Access Point mode on LAN side connected to a 1Gbit port, With IP address coming from the DHCP server on RouterOS. LAN network is on the 10.0.0.X address range, With the router being 10.0.0.1.

This all works fine. Any devices that connect (I have a multitude of devices, being fairly tech-savvy) are able to access the internet without issue, are assigned the correct address, and show up in RouterOS (DHCP leases, etc). However, Whenever I try to set up a hotspot management system my troubles begin. I can configure the hotspot server and profile without issues. Users can log in with an account if I make one in the hotspot section of WinBox or WebFig, Limits apply correctly and usage is tracked OK. The issue is, whenever I use RADIUS to manage the accounts (I wish to automatically create 100's of accounts at once so vouchers can be printed, and also to have users expire X amount of time after login, etc from a profile) it becomes unreliable. I have tried the following:

MikroTik User Manager. I thought this would be the best choice as it is bundled with RouterOS and can all be run on the same machine. However, After setting it up I have found it very buggy. Logged in users often do not update on the web interface, Users do not show time-left or will only sometimes show it, and it doesn't show active users or sessions for a considerable period after they have been logged in. However, The most important issue is that usage limits do not apply. I set a 200MB limit on a profile, and then applied it to an account, and then used 300MB on that account (~280MB download and ~20MB upload) which showed up under the user's statistics in the User Manager, And it had still not cut off (Even after waiting several hours). I am fairly confident that the RADIUS configuration is correct. It does allow users created in user manager to connect to the hotspot, and it will sometimes show their session information.

Having tried that and suspected that the built in RADIUS server/User manager was unreliable, I decided to use FreeRadius instead, And settled on RADIUSDesk to manage it with (I found information on using FreeRadius standalone but don't know how to set this up to do what I want, so I needed a manager that had configuration for setting up vouchers and limiting them). This was a little better, However I ran in to a lot of issues as well. The session time and usage would show up instantly and without issue, however I couldn't create new users or profiles to apply limits to users, so therefore it made it useless.

If anyone could help me out here, It would be great. I would really like to get it working reliably with the built in User-Manager, So that it's all combined into one PC. If you need any information let me know, I'll provide it ASAP.

If I could get feedback on whether the user manager is usually reliable for managing a hotspot, that would be a good start, as then atleast I know it's my configuration that is incorrect, then I can work on getting it set up correctly.

Thanks in advance.

Try FreeRadius with Daloradius web interface. It will enable you create users and set limit for each users with session-time and data limit.
http://blog.cygnaltech.net/2013/04/inst ... -2110.html

Hey all, Hopefully this is in the right spot. I'm not really sure if it belongs here or in the User Manager area.

I'm trying to set up RouterOS as a router and hotspot manager for a Hotel in a rural town in Australia. The internet access is limited, and the best we can get is Mobile Broadband with a 15GB cap. However, We want to supply free WiFi for hotel patrons. Basically, The system I want to set up would involve vouchers/temporary accounts being handed out on request, With over-the-bar accounts with a 100MB limit/expiring 3 hours from first use, And guests staying in the accommodation having 200-300MB expiring 3 days after first use. This way, Users can get free internet access and I don't have to worry about charges for excessive data usage.

I am able to set up RouterOS (x86) on a PC, I've bought a Level 4 licence, and I have it working with internet access through the Router. It's set up like this:

3G router on WAN side connected to a 10/100 port on the PC running RouterOS, With a static IP address (192.168.1.5)

Asus RT-N55U in Access Point mode on LAN side connected to a 1Gbit port, With IP address coming from the DHCP server on RouterOS. LAN network is on the 10.0.0.X address range, With the router being 10.0.0.1.

This all works fine. Any devices that connect (I have a multitude of devices, being fairly tech-savvy) are able to access the internet without issue, are assigned the correct address, and show up in RouterOS (DHCP leases, etc). However, Whenever I try to set up a hotspot management system my troubles begin. I can configure the hotspot server and profile without issues. Users can log in with an account if I make one in the hotspot section of WinBox or WebFig, Limits apply correctly and usage is tracked OK. The issue is, whenever I use RADIUS to manage the accounts (I wish to automatically create 100's of accounts at once so vouchers can be printed, and also to have users expire X amount of time after login, etc from a profile) it becomes unreliable. I have tried the following:

MikroTik User Manager. I thought this would be the best choice as it is bundled with RouterOS and can all be run on the same machine. However, After setting it up I have found it very buggy. Logged in users often do not update on the web interface, Users do not show time-left or will only sometimes show it, and it doesn't show active users or sessions for a considerable period after they have been logged in. However, The most important issue is that usage limits do not apply. I set a 200MB limit on a profile, and then applied it to an account, and then used 300MB on that account (~280MB download and ~20MB upload) which showed up under the user's statistics in the User Manager, And it had still not cut off (Even after waiting several hours). I am fairly confident that the RADIUS configuration is correct. It does allow users created in user manager to connect to the hotspot, and it will sometimes show their session information.

Having tried that and suspected that the built in RADIUS server/User manager was unreliable, I decided to use FreeRadius instead, And settled on RADIUSDesk to manage it with (I found information on using FreeRadius standalone but don't know how to set this up to do what I want, so I needed a manager that had configuration for setting up vouchers and limiting them). This was a little better, However I ran in to a lot of issues as well. The session time and usage would show up instantly and without issue, however I couldn't create new users or profiles to apply limits to users, so therefore it made it useless.

If anyone could help me out here, It would be great. I would really like to get it working reliably with the built in User-Manager, So that it's all combined into one PC. If you need any information let me know, I'll provide it ASAP.

If I could get feedback on whether the user manager is usually reliable for managing a hotspot, that would be a good start, as then atleast I know it's my configuration that is incorrect, then I can work on getting it set up correctly.

Thanks in advance.

I think you should checkout http://accessmanager.in. Though it needs to be installed on different machine than routeros, but it suits your requirement very well.

Thank you.