Zeroshell Linux: Captive Portal, Internet Gateway and Router

“Last month we discovered ZeroShell (part 1, part 2), a
multi-purpose LAN server that you can run from an open source Live
CD on a old PC. After doing the initial setup in Part 1, we
configured the RADIUS server for 802.1X/PEAP authentication in Part
2. This way we could configure our wireless access points (APs) to
run enterprise-level Wi-Fi encryption. We played around with the AP
features of ZeroShell in the second part as well.

“Now we’re going to experiment with the captive portal
functions, in case you want to offer public Internet access. Plus
we’ll figure out how to get ZeroShell to take over the routing and
DHCP functions of your network, so you can get rid of your
off-the-shelf router. Let’s get started!

“Setting up the Captive Portal
As briefly mentioned, you might want to use ZeroShell’s captive
portal feature if you want to offer managed Internet access to the
public. Thus we’ll go through the steps of setting this up, for a
simple system. In simple, I mean you’d have to manually input the
usernames and passwords of the hotspot users into ZeroShell; but
you can give people the same details if desired. Additionally, you
can’t completely customize the portal or login page user’s will
see, but you can customize portions of it. Figure 1 shows an
example.”

Complete
Story