Hello, i sorta need help with this project i decided to start. All i need is a helpful push in the right direction, as in, stuff i should know about to start it up, i really want to learn stuff along as i do this.

Here's a scenario; students living at a hostel are offered internet at various packages. Basically, what i'm trying to do, is equally divide the bandwidth of a DSL connection to students, but that's just the beginning.
.
To keep track of which student paid for their connection, and which package they're on, i'll assign each student a login ID. Only the login ID's that have been paid for, will be allowed to access the internet.
.
Say a computer logs onto the network and tries to open a website, it's served with a login page, only if the login is successful, is it allowed to go online. After the login is successful, the package type has to be determined.
.
Package types will probably depend on timings, certain users will be allowed online at certain times. If they log on at a time not specified in their package, they'll be charged for data consumption.

Note: I know this is a long thing, and i'm willing to work on it, i have about a month to get this thing in workable condition, and i'm ready to learn stuff if i need to. I don't have much experience with Web Dev apart from a little HTML/CSS, but i understand a bit about how PHP works, and i understand the login page will need to work on PHP with a MySQL backend, i can learn that, it's the rest of the things i'm confused about.

I'm probably going to use Ubuntu Server 10.10.

Thanks in advance.
minigilani

you're looking for freeraduis ,it's free,it's opensource and a very powerfull.

http://wiki.freeradius.org/Main_Page

good luck.

Also try daloradius if you have wireless client side or want to use ppp connections...