IleSansFil & WiFiDog

By Mina NaguibFor 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 20-30 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, 5-

10 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

WiFiDog client features a built-in web server that

offers several admin tools

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 portal page

WiFiDog server’s portal page

WiFiDog server’s admin page

WiFiDog server’s admin page

WiFiDog server’s admin page

WiFiDog server’s admin 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

• http://www.ilesansfil.org• http://sf.net/projects/wifidog• http://lists.ilesansfil.org• http://www.openwrt.org

Thank you!