Captiveportal max users

valshare

sure. just give me some time to organize it first. i will also explain things about my setup so those others out there who might also looking for this kind of setup would benefit from it :)

why you didn´t share your setup with us?

cmb

@dhatz:

I wonder, what are the practical limitations of pfsense's Captive Portal?
Has anyone used pfsense for large hotspots, e.g. 2000 or even 5000 active users?

Yes, there are WISPs who have 2000+ active users on a single box.

trunglam

anybody try with freeradius?
I think ianrhen have good idea to build radius server

j.comulada

I've tried with 40.000 users.

Scenario: 2 computers
pfSense 1: old VIA Nehemia CPU with Captive Portal, 2.0.1 Release (i386), 1Gb RAM
pfSense 2: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU P8600 @ 2.40GHz with FreeRadius2, 2.0.1 Release (i386), 4 Gb RAM

In PC 1 I have a Captive Portal with Radius Authentication over second PC.

Provisioning users to Radius has been via .xml configuration files.

I've been uploading users from 10.000 to 10.000. All changes and problems had been at FreeRADIUS computer.

Until 20.000 users, system works fine, nothing changes (well, a little bit slow)
At 30.000 users, system has been slowed seriously: more than 5 minutes to boot, load, save configuration o any other work that involves a write to disk.
At 40.000 users, system has been slowed DRAMATICALLY: more than 45 minutes to boot, load, save configuration, etc…

But, it works !!!!

I can authenticate in my CP as fewer users load.

Best regards.

ianrhen

you mean 40,000 users connected at the same time?

j.comulada

No, I have about 100-200 concurrent users.

40K users are in Radius database.