IleSansFil & WiFiDog By Mina Naguib For BSDCan 2005 Presented Saturday, May 14th, 2005

About IleSansFil Montreal “Island Without Wires” Registered non-profit organization 100% volunteer-based Started with 3 people >2 years ago, now volunteers

IleSansFil: Mission statement Île Sans Fil is a non-profit community group devoted to providing free public wireless internet access to mobile users in public spaces throughout Montreal, Canada. We use open source software and inexpensive commercial WIFI equipment to share broadband internet connections.

IleSansFil Statistics Larger than a mom & pop ISP 5,000 active users, ~ 7,000 total Approximately 40 active hotspots, transient Only a handful of active volunteers supporting all this

IleSansFil’s 40+ hotspots Cafés, bars, restaurants Art galleries Municipal parks, libraries Laundromats, bookstores, community centers, markets Anywhere comfortable enough to be online Commercial or residential

IleSansFil: “Scoring” commercial hotspots Standard sales pitch works: Increases customers, customer ‘stickiness’ The “altruism” pitch works even better “Free” is rare nowadays. Sharing your internet for free makes people like you! Merchants like people liking them. As people’s jobs demand more computer and internet use, the hotspots provide a nice physical alternative to an office desk Consumers are now demanding internet access to “stay connected”. This is especially true of the early adopter crowds including bloggers, photobloggers, audiobloggers, “soft” DJs, and instant messenger junkies Tables turning: Business owners now solicit IleSansFil to set them up

IleSansFil Partners Mutual agreements are struck with community-centered companies to better the community, IleSansFil, or both Partners currently include a VOIP provider and a web hosting provider

IleSansFil: Beyond the free internet “Clever” local content Pertinent and interesting local content Encouraging sharing between users Offers “that warm fuzzy feeling” the BBS’s had. Undoes some of the anonymity the internet created

IleSansFil: Clever content Any type of static file (document/photo/audio) Dynamic RSS blog/data/news feeds Custom code, experiments, art, surveys Flickr photos feeds with API integration Anything that can be formatted for the web. This is especially clever for dynamic web services or anything with a realtime API Soon: Smart geographically-pertinent information

IleSansFil’s initial captive portal Used NoCat Perl script, needed several modules installed Relied on several heavy packages Often ended up in a 2-box setup Logs difficult to parse to conclude any useful stats from Central server difficult to extend Was nothing more than a “free wireless semi-ISP”

IleSansFil’s hackers produce:

WiFiDog Similar to NoCat’s architecture: A client process per hotspot A central web-based server That’s where the similarities end

Cat client vs. Dog client Perl Needed Perl, GnuPG Large memory footprint Difficult to manage and debug C Needs nothing except a libc implementation Negligible compiled size and memory usage, embeddable! Configurable syslog- classified logging, as well as 2 control interfaces

WiFiDog client Works in embedded linux environments such as the Linksys WRT54G WiFi routers (special OpenWRT firmware needed) Could run alongside an existing firewall Threaded, lightweight Controllable with the “wdctl” utility, or via a web browser

WiFiDog client interrogated and administered via the ‘wdctl’ utility

WiFiDog client features a built-in web server that offers several admin tools

Cat server vs. Dog server Perl CGI.htpasswd-style user db Quirky text file logging No admin interface Hard to tweak look Job done after auth PHP CGI PostgreSQL db, also supports remote radius auth Database logging with full accounting Extensive admin, monitoring & reporting interface Template skinnable All the goodies are after auth

WiFiDog server’s main page

WiFiDog server’s simple hotspots page

WiFiDog server’s technical hotspots page

WiFiDog server’s login page

WiFiDog server’s portal page

WiFiDog server’s admin page

WiFiDog: “Coming soon” Smart bandwidth throttling and capping, abusing abusive users Geographically-based content More modularized plugin architecture for the central server Worldwide free internet, free ipods for everyone, and honest car salesmen!

WiFiDog under *BSD ? Central server runs on any PHP5- enabled web server, so no problem there Client needs someone to fill-in stubs for pf/ipfw/your favourite firewalling and packet mangling framework - Apply Now!

Addresses

Thank you!