internet in hotels etc

[carl_townshend]

Hi all

can anyone tell me how internet in hotel works, ie I cant ping anyone else on the wired lan, how does that work, and also how they make you get a default webpage, is that through some dhcp option?

[Rick Morris]

For this access you get what is called a splash screen. You can do this through a cisco device called NAC, network access controller. This is a policy based appliance that allows access through controlled policies. This can be enforced to everyone and depending on your access role you can get different access. For instance some hotels you pay for faster speed, this would be an example of getting a different profile based on you paying for a service.

[jimmysands73_2]

It can also be done through a gateway, such ones made by Nomadix and IP3 (I am sure there are more, those are the only boxes I have worked on).

[carl_townshend]

what are these gateways, how do they work? and how do they make it so noone can ping each other etc in the hotel ?

[jimmysands73_2]

The technical arena I am unsure of, but you can check out their docs at

www.nomadix.com

and www.ip3.com (but IP3 was just using a Linux kernel)...they are out of business per their website I just checked.

[Kevin Brennan]

Hi Carl,

You could use Private VLANs to stop communication between hosts.

Personally, I haven't used Cisco NAC, but I have used M0N0Wall (www.m0n0.ch) to provide a Captive Portal (Splash Screen) where the user can provide billing information for internet access. The CP page uses RADIUS for authentication.

HTH

Kevin

[paulc]

At our hospital, we just rolled out Motorola's 802.11n w/less and included guest access to the internet.

The Moto controller acts as a dhcp and also serves up the initial web page and after the user agrees to the terms of service, loads our hospital web page. From there, the user can go anywhere.

The guest w/less is on a separate vlan and has it's own internet pipe.

As to ping, they probably block icmp. that's just a guess, though.