captive portal without risk of bricking router?
 

After researching this for a while (and running out of time) I am needing to ask this question which probably has been answered before. What is the preferred way to setup a captive portal without flashing the firmware on a actiontec pk5000? I ask this as the answers I'm looking for has been lost into the sea of information. Most of the forums,website,and geeks seem to want to flash with openwrt or dd-wrt. I would love to go this rout (if only I had a linksys) I am using the only router I can spare for my project and can't afford to lose it. Here is my setup 1.server (dns,apache,bind,etc on the same laptop) 2.netgear 5 port switch, and 4. all tied together with an actiontec pk5000 dsl/wifi/router. The router seems to have pretty good firmware to begin with (lots of advanced configurations as compared to other cheap routers) at least actiontec has open firmware and a striped down Linux w/busybox os. The thing even allows one to telnet into ts configuration page. (to bad theres no ssh support) I thought about using iptables,but not sure if thats enough. With this setup I plan to host a "portable" website at conventions and events and not have to worry about getting Internet connections. My audience can just connect to my router and get to my presentation. Thanks for reading this and I appreciate any and all suggestion.

Hello,

I also have an actiontec router, though chances are not the same model as yours. Mine keeps getting its firmware automagically updated by the isp, and I really want to leave it alone. I plan to install a second firewall, and turning up the actiontec's dmz mode to just route all incoming traffic to the second firewall.

I have recently become a pfsense firewall user. www.pfsense.org is the website. It's running on freebsd. You can buy dedicated hardware for it, or use an old pc with >1 network card in it. I can't say enough about it: it is a really good system. Also, there is a book that's worth its weight in gold: "Pfsense, the Definitive guide...". The two authors are Christopher M. Buechler and Jim Pingle.

--jason

You can create a virtual machine and route all traffic to and fro it.

Example of a linux setup. http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?topic=7397.0

I used chilispot with a linksys wrt54gl for some time but now I use cport gatekeeper firmware which is pretty good but doesn't allow me to use passwords for users. Maybe this also works on aktiontec routers? There is other firmware for users with credit card but most people in Holland do not use credit card but maybe for you it is ok.

Thanks for all the responses/ :) I will probably be using chillspot. Would it work with a stock router? Man, I wish I had a Linkys, that would make things so much simpler. One would think that since Actiontec has opensourced their firmware (which is already running on linux) there would be a definite dd-wrt firmware coded up. If I knew enough about firmware coding I would do that myself and posted it here and dd-wrt,but alas I'm just a simple power user.As far as cport I will give that a good looking over,as I don't need credit card support and since my setup will not have internet access anyway why worry about locking down the wifi network with wpa?

I get linksys wrt54gl new for 48 euros, sometimes 2nd hand for less. I don't think chilispot is still in use that's why I use cport gatekeeper firmware. linksys wrt54gl has many different firmware and works very long without any problems. Maybe actiontek has special firmware if you ask them. Good luck!