Captive Portal Support

Suggest improvements and new features for Gargoyle.

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looxonline
Posts: 2
Joined: Wed Aug 15, 2018 11:48 am

Captive Portal Support

Post by looxonline »

Searching through the forums I can see that this is not a new request at all. Nevertheless, I do feel that it is something that really lends itself to the Gargoyle use case so I am raising it again.

Essentially it would be very useful if one could install a captive portal and have it work alongside the Gargoyle quota system. Currently when nodogsplash is installed it ruins the Gargoyle quota system and is not able to redirect requests to port 2050. It seems as if the iptables rules are conflicting with whatever the Gargoyle system are doing.

By doing this one could first display a splash screen to the user as they log in and let them know their quota limits and when they will expire. The splash could also show them their currently used quota which could help users budget. Since nodogsplash supports binary authentication Gargoyle could implement a custom splash and then invoke the binary auth via a script.

As a start though it would be good to just support a captive portal with authorisation and then expand on that with splash screen details. I would fork nodogsplash and try to work on it myself but TBH that's beyond my current abilities.

ispyisail
Moderator
Posts: 5180
Joined: Mon Apr 06, 2009 3:15 am
Location: New Zealand

Re: Captive Portal Support

Post by ispyisail »

yes

Its been asked for many times since the beginning of Gargoyle.

looxonline
Posts: 2
Joined: Wed Aug 15, 2018 11:48 am

Re: Captive Portal Support

Post by looxonline »

ispyisail wrote:yes

Its been asked for many times since the beginning of Gargoyle.
So is the implementation complexity just too much to warrant doing it or are there other reasons why nobody has yet made an attempt to incorporate such a highly requested feature?

ispyisail
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Posts: 5180
Joined: Mon Apr 06, 2009 3:15 am
Location: New Zealand

Re: Captive Portal Support

Post by ispyisail »

looxonline wrote:
ispyisail wrote:yes

Its been asked for many times since the beginning of Gargoyle.
So is the implementation complexity just too much to warrant doing it or are there other reasons why nobody has yet made an attempt to incorporate such a highly requested feature?
as a rule.....

With opensource developers build what they are interested in.

With a commercial project they build what they think the customer wants.

In my opinion the value of this feature is diminishing over time as cell phone data becomes cheaper and faster.

Lantis
Moderator
Posts: 6735
Joined: Mon Jan 05, 2015 5:33 am
Location: Australia

Re: Captive Portal Support

Post by Lantis »

It's complex, and I haven't had the interest.
If anyone else wanted to develop it, I would do my best to support their effort and give them appropriate guidance and feedback.

On the other side of the coin, I was approached privately to develop the STA Manager plugin. They made a compelling argument and managed to make it technically interesting to do, so I did.
http://lantisproject.com/downloads/gargoyle_ispyisail.php for the latest releases
Please be respectful when posting. I do this in my free time on a volunteer basis.

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