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Think about it this way: if you could do it with a random computer on the network without special cooperation from the router, what would stop someone from conn
by johncolanduoni 10y ago
Think about it this way: if you could do it with a random computer on the network without special cooperation from the router, what would stop someone from connecting to your network with this software you propose and doing the same? As I explained, telling your router to instruct your clients to use a particular DNS server isn't nearly enough.
The closest you could get would be to use another computer with 2 network cards as the actual router (running something like PFSense), and set up a consumer WiFi router as an access point instead of a router. This would only work as long as you don't mind the clients being able to connect to the rest of you local network; if that's an issue you really need something like a captive portal aware AP/switch or a VLAN.
However this solution doesn't make much sense in the end, as it would be much cheaper to buy one of the cheaper commercial-grade APs (UniFi's are around $80) and use your "regular router" with WiFi disabled than it is to buy a computer for that purpose. Those APs are also better quality than any consumer router you could find, and scale up much better for larger venues.
Also TBH if you're not aware of how captive portals work and why it can't be done by a random computer on your network, this is probably not a good business venture for you. This isn't an unsolved (or expensive to solve) problem to begin with.
- EGreg 10y agoI know it isn't an unsolved problem. That's my point. I have the software to run on a local area network and now I just want to explore the right ways to actually set up our own captive portals on those networks. Consider a building or cruise ship with an existing network. It's a much harder sell to say "replace all your routers" or "flush all your routers and install our firmware" than to say "use your existing router and just set up our DNS server on a computer".
- johncolanduoni 10y agoWhat networks have you seen that have more than one router and use consumer routers? Even medium sized networks often have only one router and multiple switches. You can get a router that can handle a captive portal and push a million packets per second for around $100. How little are you going to charge for your solution that it's going to be cheaper than that?