Manual Firstspot

FirstSpot® Guide

Date : September 30, 2009 Version : 6

FirstSpot® Guide
Copyright © 2002-2009 PATRONSOFT LIMITED All rights reserved.

Every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of this guide. PATRONSOFT LIMITED makes no warranties with respect to this documentation and disclaims any implied warranties. In no event shall PATRONSOFT LIMITED be liable to you or any other person orentity for any indirect, incidental or consequential damages in connection with the use of this guide or FirstSpot®. This documentation is subject to change without notice. FirstSpot is a registered trademark of PATRONSOFT LIMITED. All other trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

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Table of Contents
1. Terminologies 2. Running FirstSpot® forthe first time 3. Parameters in the Configuration Manager 4. Network Topologies of FirstSpot® 5. Other Deployment Issues 6. FirstSpot® Architecture 7. Credit Card Support 8. Using External Datasource as User Database 9. Setting up RADIUS server 10. FirstSpot® API 4 6 10 30 34 44 45 58 68 74

Chapter 1: Terminologies

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1. Terminologies
Access Minutes (i.e. timeleft, also called airtime credit in the past) - When the user is online, FirstSpot will keep decrementing this value. When this value reaches zero, the user account will be frozen until this value is increased again. Administrator - The “superuser” (user with the highest authority) of FirstSpot administration Authentication Server - the FirstSpot component that serves login page and other web page to the client device.It also handles username/password lookup and other authentication services.

Technically, FirstHop driver is a proprietary Windows-based NDIS intermediate driver (tied to the Visitor Network Interface only). It provides crucial service to the rest of the FirstSpot program to maintain session data, redirect web page and provide security control. InfoBox - The browser pop-up that generated byFirstSpot after the end-user logins (you can also get open InfoBox using Instant Keyword “infobox”). It contains a logout button as well as other login information.

Instant Keywords™ - the FirstSpot technology that allow a Client PC to enter a keyword such as “logout” in the web browser to perform a certain pre-defined action. Note that the client PC needs to use FirstSpot DHCP Server to takeadvantage of Captive Portal - the technology FirstSpot utilizes for this feature. authenticating users. The term Captive Portal (sometimes also known as “catch and release”) Internet Network Interface - formerly called Public comes from the fact that it forces unauthenticated Network Interface, the network interface card (NIC) users to a web portal (“capture” the users and that connects to the publicInternet side. redirect them to a “portal”). Also, known as webbased authentication. ODBC datasource - source of data and the Client Device (or Client PC) - term to describe the client side machine in a Wi-Fi Hotspot or visitorbased network. Normally a Notebook PC, PDA or Internet-enabled mobile phone in a Wi-Fi Hotspot. Can be a normal Desktop PC in a MTU (MultiTenant Units) or EnterpriseIntranet environment. Configuration Manager - web-based tools to configure FirstSpot (Windows shortcut located in the FirstSpot program group). Dispatcher - the lightweight FirstSpot process that dispatches the client device request to Authentication Server. Exception free website - A FirstSpot feature that allows some web site to be “free” (i.e. without forced login page). Note that FirstSpot makespatronsoft.com a free web site by default. FirstHop driver - Part of the FirstSpot program. connection information needed to access that data. You can define the ODBC datasource through ODBC Data Source Administrator. Operator - created by FirstSpot Administrator, this account will have partial administrative rights Passive Login - for this type of username, the client device does not need to go...