WifiDog on Openwrt

WifiDog is a Captive Portal on Openwrt. It utilizes Linux netfilter in order to force a client to log in before granting access to the Internet. Although there is a Wifi in its name, it can work on wired network as well. WifiDog has two components, a gateway and an auth server. The gateway is running on an access point, and redirects unknown clients to the auth server's login page. The auth server is simply a Web server which implements WifiDog's auth protocol.

To install wifidog gateway on openwrt, just type opkg install wifidog in command line. It's config file is at /etc/wifidog.conf. You may want to customize GatewayID, GatewayInterface,  AuthServer, CheckInterval, and TrustedMACList. The comments in the config file explains these options clearly.

The crucial part is the AuthServer section. Upon connection, the client will be redirected to the auth server for authentication. You should have at least one AuthServer section. If you have multiple AuthServer sections, WifiDog will use the first auth server that responses to its ping request. The auth server implements wifidog's auth and ping protocols. An auth server written in php is available at https://github.com/wifidog/wifidog-auth. You may also write an auth server which suits you need. I have written one in python.

You should understand wifidog's protocols before writing an auth server. The protocol is fully describe in http://dev.wifidog.org/wiki/doc/developer/WiFiDogProtocol_V1. I will give a summary below.

Wifidog gateway keeps a list of authorized users' IP, MAC and token. If an unknown user tries to visit a website, it will be redirect to the auth server's login page. If login is successful, the user will be redirected to the gateway's portal with the URL containing the user's IP, MAC and token (a random string). The gateway will verify these information with auth server via auth protocol. Every check interval (default value is 60 seconds), the gateway will contact the auth server and check every user's token by the auth protocol. If the re-authorization for a user fails, the gateway will remove the user from the list and then blocks its internet access. The auth protocol also allow the gateway to send accounting information for a user to the auth server.