[CentOS] RADIUS

[hw]

Pete Biggs wrote:
>>> Yes, I do it frequently with my phone.  You do it once and it remembers
>>> it. My phone is more often on wifi than on 4G when I'm in a town.
>>
>> And you need to install certificates or enter a password or something?
> 
> Yes. Just once, then things are remembered and you can seemlessly roam
> between various APs and networks.

What do you need internet access so urgently for while you´re in a shop?

>>> Because you get faster data rates and in the middle of a big shop you
>>> don't get a phone signal.
>>
>> How do you get faster data rates?  In a shop that even has a 100Mbit internet
>> connection and 50 customers using it, you would get only 2Mbit.
> 
> 4G isn't ubiquitous, 3G/EDGE is still common - and phone networks are
> patchy and slow.

Then why do ppl pay so much for it?

>> How do the shops prevent you from getting a phone signal?
> 
> Why "prevent"?

They somehow have to prevent you, or you would get a signal.

 > I never said that. Shops are essentially big metal boxes
>   covered in wires and fluorescent lights, with the phone transmitter
> outside and an indeterminate distance away. Phone signals are weak and
> attenuated by the big metal box so your phone gives up on the network.

Phone signals are fine here.  We would need to somehow block the signals.

> Shops provide a "free" wifi as a service to its customers (nothing is
> free, they get the chance to harvest information about your presence in
> the store - if you don't like it, don't use their wifi, it's not
> compulsory).

right

>>
>>> In general the user knows nothing about RADIUS - you are presented with
>>> a username/password box when you first connect to the wifi and that is
>>> it.
>>
>> Those are particularly painful to enter, but I guess it could be used
>> for some customers.
> 
> <sigh> yes, mobile devices can be awkward to type on. If they had full
> size keyboards they wouldn't be easy to fit in your pocket.
> 
>>>
>>> RADIUS is a very mature technology and as such there are lots of ways
>>> of using it.
>>
>> Well, I don´t know about any of this.  I found out that RADIUS is probably
>> what I could or should use to get things working as intended, so I tried to
>> find documentation on /how/ to use it and found nothing but documentation which
>> says that it could be used, which I already know.
>>
> RADIUS is just the authentication mechanism. Often that is a backend
> process and comes along with something that says "authentication can be
> provided by LDAP, RADIUS or ....".

Something like?

> All the other things like PXE or WPA
> or 802.1x or VPN or whatever is frontend technology and use a RADIUS
> server to authenticate.

I thought PXE doesn´t?