Glenn Sanford

DNS Redirector v6.3 and Apache

Well continuing my quest toward a Free Hotspot I’ve been playing with DNS Redirector a bit.  It’s an inexpensive utility to intercept the first querry that those who use laptops will see when they open up a web browser to surf.  I’ll probably install it tonight after hours on the deployed machine at The C Shop, however nothing is ever easy when learning new tricks.

Essentially the program sits on a machine on your internal network and assuming that visitors to the Hotspot do not have DNS Servers already put in their TCP/IP settings you can have the wireless router hand out the internal IP address of a machine on your network to do DNS lookups for client machines.  It seems to work fairly well so far.  The proviso is that the client must shut the browser window down before he or she can get to the original web page they were trying to get to.  It’s a one time splash screen depending on the settings you have set, however it may be annoying to some users if they don’t follow the on screen instructions.

Essentially DNSRedirector will hand our a IP address that is to a server that you want the client to see first (must be IP based).  In my case I used 192.168.1.3 since this is a static address on the same box that DNSRedirector is on.

Now the next part of the exercise is to have a web server running on that same machine.  In this case I’m installing the Win 32 2.2.3 version of Apache to serve up some very basic pages.  The reason I’m installing Apache is that it will allow me to bind certain web pages to different IP addresses which is needed for DNSRedirector to work properly.

I then had to change the httpd.conf in two places.  One I had to change the Error document to:

ErrorDocument 404 /index.html

so that it would open up the index.html for any file opened at the destination URL since all files would likely be errors.

And add a Virtual host to answer on 192.168.1.3 in the Virtual Host section like the following:

< VirtualHost 192.168.1.3:80>
DocumentRoot htdocs/splash/public_html
< /VirtualHost>

htdocs is already installed when Apache is installed.  splash/public_html is the directory for the Landing / Splash page that I want to show up.

Ultimately you have to log into your Router and change the IP address of the DNS Servers that you are going to hand out.  I’m probably going to put the 192.168.1.2 address first (for DNS Redirector) and then the real DNS Servers from the ISP second and third just in case my machine is ever shut down.  Otherwise clients will be without a DNS Server to lookup with.

DNS Redirector also allows me to set-up keyword allow and disallow lists to keep users of the network for surfing sites that may be less then desirable.  (I haven’t tested this yet, and not sure if we will use this in the short run)

One last feature that I haven’t tested yet because it only runs under IIS and is an ASP script at the moment is the advertising replacement module.  I’m not sure exactly how it works, but I’m assuming that it looks for major advertising network look-up and replaces the banner ads with ads that we might want to run.  I may try this later if I can get a fixed IP on someone elses IIS server.

Add comment November 11th, 2006

Setting up the Linksys WAP54G in repeater mode

Well this one looked like it was going to be an easy operation, however the documentation was flawed.  I was attempting to expand the network at The C Shop since Patrick’s wireless router in his office didn’t cover the restaurant very well.  I went and looked at all of the router’s and access point’s at Northwest Computer Supply and based on a couple of factor’s decided on the Linksys WAP54G to use in repeater mode.

The challenge with this particular Access Point is that the documentation is scarce in the box.  Actually other then the CD there really wasn’t much print documentation.  Running the Linksys set-up utility it seemed like it would be pretty easy to install, however the set-up utility didn’t cover putting the device in repeater mode but more as a router.  It did refer to the web based utility which could be accessed at http://192.168.1.245 with the user ID: admin and password as set in the set-up utility, however trying that combination and resetting the Access Point probably 10 times trying to figure it out, I finally figured out the documentation was incorrect.

There is no User ID for the Access Point which is different then the Linksys Router.

So to log in the User ID is actually blank.

The other challenge in putting it into repeater mode is that the MAC Address that one gets off the Router itself doesn’t seem to work when entering it into the Access Point.  The method that finally worked was when I hard wired the Access Point to the Router, used the web based utility and scanning for the MAC address through the Access Point.

The last point which seems to be a bit better documented is using the same wireless channel on both the Access Point and the Router.

Add comment November 11th, 2006

Setting up a Free Hotspot

This is reposted from my original blog on icafe.com. 

Well I’m relaunching iCafe.com based on the instalation of a Hotspot that I set-up at The C Shop in Birch Bay Washington.  I’ve wanted to set-up a Hotspot for a while. 

A little background: In the early 90’s I purchased the domain iCafe.com for an online service Interactive Cafe which at the time was a mini AOL.  The ultimate remaining asset after running a web development company under the same name for about 5 years was a very cool domain name iCafe.com.  Since then I’ve started one dot com which I sold to a public company, and during the last 4 1/2 years I’ve started a successful multi city and state real estate team.

Anyway talking with my old friend Pat Alesse of The C Shop I suggested expanding his wireless network to more adequately cover his place of business and that as part of the experiment I would purchase an inexpensive eMachine and throw a wireless card in it for those who wanted to check email on the go in Birch Bay. 

On the eMachine I installed a couple of programs.  1) Deep Freeze to lock down the computer from kids who might try to mess with the computer and install stuff that shouldn’t be on there and LogMeIn Free so that I could remotely administer the network, install software on the machine and monitor the network a bit.  In addition I picked up a Linksys WAP54G Access Point to expand the network by putting it into repeater mode.

Add comment November 11th, 2006