Re: Cyber Cafe software

Bret

        Thanks for the reply.  I put that message up on three list (PHP, MySQL, RedHat) and this has been the only reply.  There are a lot of software packages that I found searching google.com, but they are all for cyber cafe's that have the computers all ready set up for people to log into.  I have found none that would allow someone to bring in their own laptop and be able to just hook it up and also keep track of the time.  I was hoping to find one that would run the server on RedHat/PHP/MySQL and do what is needed.
        The customer is not actually going to be running a regular cyber cafe.  But for the things that they want to do, it is pretty much the same thing.  I guess they have some clients that travel a lot and want to come in and use their network when they are in town.  From what I understand, it is getting pretty annoying but they don't want to tell the people NO.  I don't know all of the details about that, I just know that they want it, so I am going to try and get it for them.  I have not tried to connect my laptop in an airport yet, but from the way it sounds, that is part of the type of setup that we want.
        If I can ever figure out how to do this, I will try to post the results to the lists so other people can use it and improve it as they see fit.

Thanks Steve At 09:08 PM 6/3/2002 -0500, Bret Hughes wrote:

On Mon, 3 Jun 2002, Steve Buehler wrote: Does anybody know of any software all ready written or what would have to be done, to allow us to run a cyber cafe style setup. What we need the software to do is to allow someone to come in and plug in their computer to our network (actually a customers network). They want the following: 1. A customer comes in and signs up starting a clock so they could charge the customer for the time. 2. They want it to work for wired or wireless networks. So when they sign in, it would either have to set their IP address on their machine automatically, or we would have to give them an IP address to put in to their system. 3. It would have to send a report once a day to an email address (or multiple email addresses) with the days summary of time used and amount of money made. 4. A regular customer could come in and use the same login each time so that they could track everything over long periods of time, on a per customer basis. They might want to give discounts to these people and/or give away free stuff. Kind of like....for every minute someone has been on, they get one credit point. Those credit points can be used for purchasing extra time, or other products in the business. Now, if it is kept in a mysql database, than that would not be hard to pull. I know that there are cyber cafe's out there now, so I am assuming that I should not have to reinvent the wheel for this software. If not, how would somebody go about setting this up. Basically, if I could get it set up so that ALL IP addresses on the local network are not allowed in unless they sign in first, than what file would it have to put that IP address in and what would have to be restarted to allow that customer access? Preferably, I would like the program to work with RedHat Linux, PHP and MySQL. Thanks In Advance Steve Buehler Steve I am sitting in a cyber cafe right now in Las Vegas, and no inspite of what the reservations people tell you there is no highspeed internet connectivity in the Flamingo Hilton. Pisses me off but I will leave that for tomorrow. Any way I have used these types of thing occationally while traveling probably 3 or four times but have yet to see anyone do this cleverly. It is usually writting your name on a peice of paper with the time and then paying as you leave. However If I was going to try to do this I would probably start with a simple php generated html form that everyone should be able to use and have them obtain an address via dhcp but have the firewall setup to block all outgoing except for those that have logged in vi the php page. THe phph script would of course have the ipaddress since that is part of the http packet and could then build a FW rule that would allow the machine to hit the net. Then logging off via the same page would then kill the rule and tell them how much they owe. I don't know what happens when the shut down the machine without logging off but I am sure some business pratice could be put in place mabye a $2 stupid charge. If you wanted to get real fancy , I guess the php page could take a credit card and bill them automatically after verifying of course. Now, having said all that I have not seen this anywhere but would start as you have asking qestions and probably googling and freshmeat. Bret _______________________________________________ Redhat-list mailing list Redhat-list@redhat.com https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/redhat-list -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean. ow3