Mac addresses missing on status page.

mikenl

I can't see the mac adresses of the users who are logged in.
Also missing from Status: System logs: Portal Auth page.
Mac passthrough works fine though and i can see the mac adresses at the dhcp leases page.

I recently devided my network/hotspots, different ip ranges, all come to the same captiveportal.
Now when someone hops to another hotspot, they get a new ip from a different range, they have to login again.
My understanding was that users were tracked by mac address rather then ip, or has this something to do with my issue

2.1.3-RELEASE (i386) built on Thu May 01 15:52:17 EDT 2014

jimp

There is an option on the portal settings (per zone) to not require the MAC address, "Disable MAC filtering". If that is set only the IP is checked.

That option is required if the client MACs are hidden from pfSense, e.g. be intermediate routers.

If you don't have that checked, then it should be tracking them by IP and MAC combined.

mikenl

Oops, i am very well aware what that setting does, somehow it got ticked ?
It all makes sense now ::)

Still i'm left with the issue that clients need to login again after they get assigned a new ip.
I noticed that Ipads do a lot more access point hopping then other clients.
Since the number of Ipads are more and more they bring to our site, this is a growing problem.
If i could turn off the ip check it would solve my problem.

Gertjan

Hi,

If an iPad swithes often from Wifi point (AP) they keep the same IP - IF that IP is available and assigned before to that same MAC address (== that iPad) or still assigned, the lease will be ack'ed (renewed) again.
It is important that the DHCP of pfSEnse handless all the IP allocation, and that there are NO other DHCP servers active (example: those that could be activated in a AP - they must be DE-activated).

It is important to have a 'big' IP pool, so that, when a device comes back in scope, it gets it own IP back, the one it used before.
I tend to say, several times bigger as the potential maximum number of portal users.

I use myself 4 AP (Linksys) to project my 'Wifi-radio-cloud' and have no problems with the radio AP hopping (== some sort of roaming, like cell phones :))

Btw: all this has nothing to do with portal logging, but …. changing IP means also: the user has to login again.

Or: I didn't answered your question becaéuse I didn't understand your issue, please explain more then.

mikenl

I guess i'm not that clear about the network i'm running.
My network has about 10 public access points all ubiquity, spans about 10 hectare or 25 acres.
I physically devided the network in segments, all connect to the pfsense server to its own network card.
All networks have its own dhcp server with different ranges, 10.20.1.1/24, 10.20.2.1/24, etc.
but all connect to the same captive portal, opt1.
All this was done for containing problems to a smaller sector, if problems araise (which did, multiple times) it doesn't bring the whole network down.

So this is why when people wander from one side of the site to the other they have to login again each time.