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2002 FREENIX Track Technical Program - Abstract
Authorization and charging in public WLANs using FreeBSD and 802.1x
Pekka Nikander, Ericsson Research NomadicLab
Abstract
The IEEE 802.1x standard defines a link-layer level authentication
protocol for local area networks. While originally designed to
authenticate users in a switched Ethernet environment, it looks like
the most important need for 802.1x lies in wireless networks,
especially IEEE 802.11b based Wireless LANs. Furthermore, due to the
flexibility of the Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP), the heart
of 802.1x, it looks like 802.1x could be used for many purposes its
original designers have not foreseen.
In this paper, we describe an FreeBSD-based open source 802.1x
implementation, and show how it can be used to implement different
authorization and charging systems for public WLANs, including a
pre-paid, pay-per-use charging system and another one based on
community membership. The implementation is based on the netgraph
facility, resulting in a surprisingly flexible and simple
implementation.
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Technical Program