General Questions

Hello,

New to m0n0wall, we're searching a captive portal solution (and only this). I made some test and m0n0wall works really fine for our needs. Before deploying it, I will be sure that the correct product for us.

We need only a captive portal for vouchers on a special SSID in our University. These vouchers can be used by 200-300 users at the same time. I deployed the VMware version on our ESXi servers (I can expand the memory if needed).

Someone has experience with this kind of use ?

Regards,
FTBZ

I have not scaled Captive Portal up to that level, but I have had 140 concurrent users before.  I see no reason it should not work.

As for the firewall itself, I am running it at one location with 1100 nodes behind it.

I have not scaled Captive Portal up to that level, but I have had 140 concurrent users before.  I see no reason it should not work.

Thank you for the information. I need to be sure, because we have this number of users when we use some amphitheater for seminars and I can only try in "live" if it's working

There's some good practice before deploying ? I added more RAM to the VM, need I to add more drive space for logs or other temp files ?

m0n0wall will use only a limited amount or RAM and adding more is pointless. I'm not sure of the maximum amount used, but I'll venture a guess that any beyond 256MB is ignored and it could very well be less.

m0n0wall runs entirely in memory. Only it system image and the configuration file are stored to disk. In particular, the logs are stored in memory. If you want to store logs in a more permanent manner, then enable and use remote syslogging.

The answer on memory is not a one liner...

First, the file system is loaded into memory.  It is a fixed size, 15meg, and logs rotate.  If you want to keep logs, you will need a syslog server...  There have been people who needed more space, but that is a totally custom image.  It can be done, but it is not trivial...

The rest is system memory.  I have a gig or two in all my systems, mainly because that is how it comes to me.  Some things are cached in ram, but I never see more than 10% or so used...

It will also not use multiprocessors...  So, do not throw a lot of resources at it.

Thank you for all the information. The only good way is to test in live and to have a plan B if needed. I noticed some problem with https website and Mac OS X but I need to investigate first and I will open a new topic if needed.

In the last days I tested a lot of Captive Portal and m0n0wall is probably the better, but I need to find two mandatory solutions :
- allow https redirect to the portal page (thread here)
- allow multiple sessions on Vouchers (thread here)

Thank you very much for your help.