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The Hotspot Menu

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The Hotspot Menu

Hotspot

The GD eSeries Hotspot application is a captive portal solution that can be run over a wireless (or wired) connection that provides for web-based authentication prior to granting network access. This is similar to solutions that may be found at coffee shops, hotels, airports and other public wireless access venues.

GD eSeries Hotspot is composed primarily of user accounts and tickets with each serving a specific role:

User Account: This is the unique factor of an individual that allows he/she to be identified. These contain general information about the user including account bandwidth (upload/download) rate.

Tickets: This is the authentication mechanism that must be obtained (i.e. associated) to a user account before that user is granted network access. These also contain the pricing and session information for a given user account.

It is possible to customize the look of the Hotspot default landing page.

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The Hotspot Menu

Hotspot User Process

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The Hotspot Menu

Hotspot

There are 3 types of Hotspot accounts:

- Manual: This method requires the Hotspot admin to pre-configure every account with its own settings prior to the user being able to login. It is also possible to batch the generation of accounts or import them from an external file.

- MAC Address: This method allows for devices to identified in advance to “bypass” the Hotspot authentication and be granted permanent network access (e.g. point of sale, internal PCs and other dedicated systems).

- SmartConnect: This method that allows users to self-provision their own accounts without any pre-configuration and receive access details via email or SMS. It includes PayPal™ support for complete payment integration.

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Hotspot Deployment It’s only necessary to uplink the “main” access point to the GD Blue interface.

You can connect additional access points to the main one to expand the wireless coverage using technologies like WDS or meshing (or even hard-wired).

The Hotspot Menu

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Hotspot Network Architecture

The Hotspot Menu

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The Hotspot Menu

In the GD eSeries appliance, the BLUE zone is dedicated to the wireless devices, therefore the hotspot does not work if the BLUE zone is disabled.

The connections from the BLUE zone to the RED zone (uplink, i.e., the Internet) are managed by the outgoing firewall, hence to selectively allow access to the Internet the appropriate rules will have to be defined there.

Upon entering the Hotspot, a page will open that contains three items in the left-hand side sub-menu, an Enable hotspot switch, and the first configuration option: The operating role of the hotspot.

Hotspot Settings is the starting hotspot’s page, e.g., the you are currently in, and allows to choose the modality of the hotspot.Administration Interface is the main part of the hotspot, where all the administrative tasks can be accomplished.Hotspot User allows the management of hotspot super users (for administrative tasks).

The Hotspot Menu

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The Hotspot Menu

The Hotspot Menu

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The Hotspot Menu – Create an account by MAC Address ExampleThe first thing you need to do is to create the tickets that will manually be

associated to users or selected by them during registration. These can be time-based or usage-based (bandwidth) and you can have as many or as few as you need. From the hotspot administration interface, select Tickets > Rates > Add Rate and you will be presented with a ticket creation form.

The Hotspot Menu

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The Hotspot Menu – Create an account by MAC Address ExampleFrom the GD eSeries UI access the Hotspot menu select the Administration

Interface, and then select Add MAC-based Account, associate the new account with the Generic ticket created.

The Hotspot Menu