wi-fi network control

[=ST=MaJoR]

I have looked through your entire forum looking for a solution for our wireless nework. I also have downloaded your firstspot program and played with it the last few days. Currently we use access control on all of our access points to contol access to our wireless network. We want to be able to control access as well as incorporate self signup of accounts from a central NOC. Our wireless system is one large network with a single feed. We do not have separate connections to each access point. About every post I have seen deals with a single feed to each access point which then goes through the internet back to a central location for control. The question I will ask is this: can firstspot be used to control multiple access points on the same network segment with a single firstspot server.? Can we also use an external DHCP server instead of the built in DHCP server in firstspot?
To give a better idea of how our network is put together I will try to illustrate for you:

Router--->firstspot--->switch--->wireless bakhaul--->wireless access point--->wireless backhaul--->wireless access point--->wireless backhaul--->wireless access point---continues to other access points connected by wireless backhaul for a total of about 15 access points. Hope you get the idea.

We have a billing system in place already along with radius control.

thanks in advance

[=ST=MaJoR]

The above post I think should fall into senrio #1, but not sure.

[alan]

FirstSpot is a pure TCP/IP-based solution and it is AP and hardware neutral. You don't have to use FirstSpot DHCP server and there is an option to disable it within Configuration Manager.

I am not too sure about your setup, looks like some kind of mesh environment? Again, FirstSpot needs to sit between the client machine and the Internet in order to function.

Hope I answer your question. It will be great if you can provide a bit more background information if you have further questions.
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~ Patronsoft Limited ~

[=ST=MaJoR]

It looks like a mess network but its not. What we have done is setup our wireless network to be controlled from a central point. It's more like a star configuration. We have a 5.8GHZ backhaul that starts at our office aand goes to the first tower. That tower has a backhaul to another some distance away, and also has an access point. It acts more like a very large ethernet network, only wireless. We are running a DHCP sever that is configured with 2 subnets and 2 scopes for a total of 300 addresses that can be assigned.

For our testing we have an access point at our office that is hard wired to the firstspot server (private interface) and the firstspot server is connected to an ethernet switch (public interface). If we use the private ip addresses on the firstspot DHCP server everything works correctly. But we want to use public ip's on the private interface. We just want it to do a pass through or just bridge between the interfaces. We have several clients that run static ip's and we need to be able to pass that traffic. The majority of our clients use a cable/dsl router. We also have several clients that use VPN.

We have not been successful at setting up the private interface with public ip's. We cannot get it to route.

Hope this helps.

[alan]

Sorry for the late reply.

If you want to use Public IP in the Private Network Interface side (i.e. the hotspot side), you need to turn off the NAT within FirstSpot. Also, make sure you setup the correct return route in the next hop router so that it routes the return traffic back correctly.

Refer to chapter 3 of firstspot_guide.pdf for more information on the NAT setting.
_________________
~ Patronsoft Limited ~