[nlug] Re: Assorted Vendor type people and web access

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From: Brandon D. Valentine (Yeah, right)
Date: 01/17/06

  • Next message: John Chapin: "[nlug] Re: Assorted Vendor type people and web access"

    [ Holy Crap, it's Laster! Where ya been boy? ]

    On Tue, Jan 17, 2006 at 12:13:01PM -0600, Faster-Laster wrote:
    > So, I'm sitting here listening in the next room to a vendor having a
    > miserable time trying to get some web meeting program going. In
    > between my chuckles, however I do wonder about it a bit. What do those
    > of you who have unknown people come into your office environment
    > expecting web access do for this?
    >
    > I can think of a few things I could do, such as just have a separate
    > network just for this, but find myself not wanting to do much for
    > people who just show up expecting to jump on my network with no prior
    > contact. I was curious if anyone else deals with this.

    At the office, anyone who comes into our department needing internet
    access is some sort of academic collaborator, and we generally trust
    those people to act responsibly. I can't really offer much help there,
    but I can tell you what I do at my house.

    At the house I've put in a SonicWall with Wireless Guest Services
    enabled. All of the authorized wireless devices in my house get an
    IPSEC VPN connection that places them on the LAN, and the guests get a
    bandwidth-limited route to the Internet and nothing else. Optionally, I
    can require wireless guests to login with a username and password that I
    supply, and before they can access the net they must open a web browser
    and attempt any connection over port 80, which redirects them to a login
    page, for-pay hotspot-style. I don't bother with the login page though,
    as we have frequent enough wireless guests in the house to make it too
    much trouble.

    You don't need a SonicWall to do all of this, of course, some creative
    Linux firewall rules will provide the same functionality, but I like my
    pretty box with the pretty lights and the fact that I don't have to do
    much to maintain it. You could attempt all of this on one of those
    Linux-powered Linksys paperweights, but I've yet to see one of those
    consumer grade router/firewall/WAP combinations with a CPU powerful
    enough to keep up with more than the most casual "surfing".

    HTH,

    Brandon 

    -- 
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