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Captive Portal Software
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Captive Portal Software
8:13 PM EDT 9/18/07
Hello,

I'm a little new to this so please forgive any mistakes. Our library currently offers free wi-fi access to any individual with a lap-top whether they are a patron or not. It's a great service we're happy to provide, however we have been looking into implementing a captive portal so that our wi-fi users are aware of and will have to comply with our Internet Policy. It would also be nice to get usage statistics and we are also toying with the idea of asking for an email address to send a short survey about patron satisfaction with our wi-fi service. Of course we don't want to make the process too complicated and possibly turn away users.

My question is this: Does anyone know of any Captive Portal software that is easy to implement and affordable (preferably free) or does anyone have any experience trying to use this in their library or both?

Thanks for the help.

Bobby
Musser Public Library
www.muscatinelibrary.us
Re: Captive Portal Software
9:26 PM EDT 9/18/07 as a reply to Robert A. Fiedler III.
Welcome to WebJunction!

One place you can look is this other thread on WJ -
http://webjunction.org/forums/click.jspa?messageID=37852#37852

It contains responses from the LibWireless news group that has lots of great resources and is hosted here at WJ also. Here is a link to the newsgroup with a focus on the discussion of the splash pages:
http://search.gmane.org/?query=splash+page&group=gmane.network.wireless.libwireless.general

I would say that the most common free product that I have heard of being used is the ZoneCD product.

http://www.publicip.net/zonecd/what.php

There are so many options here it is often hard to answer this type of question. Much of it depends on your budget, if you or someone else wants to do a little mucking around, you can usually get something set up for free or no cost. And there are also lots of hosted services like Sputnik Express (http://www.sputnik.com/products/snet/sputniknet_express.html) that offer some additional options for free depending on the model of your access point.

Hope this helps, but let us know if you have other questions or specific constraints and people will chime in with further suggestions.
Re: Captive Portal Software
9:07 AM EDT 9/19/07 as a reply to Chris Jowaisas.
Hi Chrisabo,

Thanks for the reply! I will bring this up with my tech guy and go from there.

-Bobby
RE: Re: Captive Portal Software
11:55 AM EDT 8/27/09 as a reply to Robert A. Fiedler III.
anyone have more recent information?
-jackie
RE: Re: Captive Portal Software
7:04 PM EDT 10/10/09 as a reply to Jacqueline Frye.
Hi
We at the are looking at setting up a captive portal at the IPL, which would also integrate with Evergreen so that users would also be required to authenticate with their library card, or purchased temporary password.

I can probably create the integration piece with Evergreen, however this is all housed off site, and i've only found basic help with evergreen.

I know the Calgary public library has an excellent system which authenticates against the library card limits the session to a specific period.

If anyone has any leads please let me know as currently our Wireless acccess point is a free for all, unsecured gateway.

Rob