How to implement Guest wifi network

[Davide Depaoli_3]

Hello,

I'm not a wireless networking expert (nor the newbie), but a customer ask to me how to implement guest access with daily password change.

The complete history is the following:

he has a number of shoe stores and wants to provide free WiFi access to customers using a guest network.

The problem is that he wants to change guest password every day (don't ask me why) with a simple tool  usable by store manager.

If it is simple setting up a router with a guest access, it is not, for me, the system for password management.

Obviously the system must have, in addition to the guest network, even a "normal" wifi network used by the store manager.

Because today there is nothing implemented, the possible soutions  could be the following two:

- standalone stores, without any interconnection between them and with central IT.

- stores could be connected to central IT.

Does HP has any hw/sw able to deploy this kind of solution ?

Thanks in advance

Best regards

Davide

[lightxx1980]

You're adressing multiple problems here.

The MSM Controllers support "guest" networks (aka web forms based login) out of the box, and (nearly) as many SSIDs as you like (one for guests, one for "normal" (lol) users, one for aliens from Mars, whatever).

As for the daily password change, the MSM Controllers have an excellent SOAP API. Building a GUI (or a script for that matter) to consume that API is a matter of an hour if you have a skilled developper at your hands. We've been using the SOAP API for quite a bit now and you can really tell it's a Colubris product HP didn't manage to f**k up (yet). The only docs puplicly available are those over here ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/networking/software/MSM-SOAP-XML-SDK_550.zip , or, once you have a MSM controller deployed, you can access the SOAP WSDL file by browsing to https://<controller>/soapapi.wsdl

Of course you'd have to route the AP controll traffic to the controller hosted at some central location. The MSM controllers support encrypted control traffic out of the box, so you can either use that or do a LAN-to-LAN IPsec tunnel between your locations.

Hope that helps.