Wireless usage statistics

[Colonel Debugger]

Hello,

We are a public library. I have set up a pfsense box to control our wireless hot spot for public users. I have a wireless router connected to an interface controlled by captive portal. We do not want to authenticate, just serve up a splash page that forces the user to click a button agreeing to our usage policy before they are released to the internet, and I have that part working…

Here's my question: How can I keep track of how many users connect to the service? For example, on the first of each month, I need to be able to collect statistics for how many unique wireless sessions there were during the previous month. Is there a package I could add to the captive portal to accomplish this? Or even just a log file where I could manually count how many times users connected? Ideally, of course, I'd like to be able to see bandwidth usage, download/upload totals, etc. Thanks for any suggestions!

[XIII]

use a syslog server like kiwi on a windows system and pf will send its logs that should contain the info you want to the computer you specify.

[trombone]

I also work at a library system. I use PFsense the same way you do. I would like to have the stats too. I downloaded Kiwi and Splunk  a year or two ago but never got them configured properly to do what I wanted. If you get this working please post details about what to do. Thanks!

[Dovermen]

I work at a library and have used a syslog server to collect portal auth for statistics.  Our captive portal has idle timeout after one hour of inactivity, so each accept on the portal page is a unique patron in the past hour.  The system log settings are setup to send only portal auth to a remote syslog server.  The logs are archived each day, then I combine each day of the month and use spreadsheet to count each “user login” minus any “concurrent logins” (assume portal page loaded twice in separate windows or tabs and accept clicked again, or browser submits accept twice).  This is setup for three branches.  Each sends auth logs to same syslog server, then separate the branches in the spreadsheet.

[trombone]

Thanks Dovermen. I can't try this right now but in a week or two I will reload Kiwi on my new computer and start again. Once I get it up and running I will post follow up questions. My main problem was sorting the data efficiently once I

[trombone]

Thanks Dovermen. I can't try this right now but in a week or two I will reload Kiwi on my new computer and start again. Once I get it up and running I will post follow up questions. My main problem was sorting the data efficiently once I got it exported to Kiwi. Didn't think about putting it in a spreadsheet.

Re-posted due to prematurely posting first time.

[XIII]

there is an edit button so that one can edit their post.