[OPLINTECH] Counting Wireless Patrons

[Ken Butler]

Check out https://www.sputnik.com/. The subscription to Sputniknet costs
about $200 per year per location. They just got set up to start doing
E-Rate, so the next E-Rate funding cycle would be a good time to switch to
them, although that is close to a year away. What they offer:


   - Cloud managed routers. You can reboot them, check them for
   connectivity, look at the number of active sessions, or look up detailed
   reports on usage.
   - Stats: total bandwidth up and down, # of unique users, total # of
   uses, total sessions, total duration of all sessions, average session
   length, etc. All sorted by day, week, or months. By default it keeps data
   for up to 6 months.
   - Captive portal - force anyone connecting to your wifi to agree to your
   terms and conditions. Able to add your own branding.
   - Lots of settings and policies.

I believe they have a firmware version that you can install for free onto
most standard wifi routers, although it does not have the cloud management
aspects and I'm not sure what the reporting level is.

There are other services that do the same thing, but cost a lot more. I
suppose better reliability and additional features are present in the more
expensive packages, but for our basic needs, this seems to work just fine.
Meraki comes to mind, but from talking to them it really seemed like they
are more for big business, very large hotels etc. They didn't seem very
interested in selling just one or two APs.

I've also heard of other people using Aruba, MegaPath and Ruckus. Just
glancing over the prices on Ruckus though, I see that the cheapest wireless
controllers that they offer are $400, and that does not include the
subscription to their cloud management services.


On Wed, May 27, 2015 at 7:53 AM, Jordan Cooper <jcooper at myacpl.org> wrote:

> Hi, guys.  I was wondering what methodology you use at your libraries to
> count the number of patrons that connect to your wireless networks for the
> state audit.
>
> At present, the only idea I have is to count DHCP leases, but I feel like
> there has to be a more elegant (though hopefully still affordable) method
> out there.
>
> Thanks,
>
> *Jordan Cooper*
> *Technology Associate*
> Athens County Public Libraries
> jcooper at myacpl.org
> (740) 590-1643
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> OPLINTECH mailing list
> OPLINTECH at lists.oplin.org
> http://lists.oplin.org/mailman/listinfo/oplintech
>
>
>


-- 
Ken Butler
hcotech at holmeslib.org
Head of Information Technology
Holmes County District Public Library
3102 Glen Drive
Millersburg, OH 44654
PH: 330-674-5972 ext 224
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