Student wireless access outside hours/timed access/vlans

[jjohnsoncantell]

Hi all,

 

I have been tasked to setup wireless access for the students so that after school hours they can use their phones/laptops to access the wireless network and gain access to the internet. I am completely new to vlans and have no idea what to do. I operate a meru wireless network with a procurve 5406 backbone. I dont want them to have any access to the main network whatsoever, just simply as a passthrough to the internet. The wireless access points are spread throughout the building on different switches which is where i get a bit concerned because last time i tried messing around with vlans i completely ballsed the switch...

 

My main questions are as follows.

 

Can this be setup through the meru controller, which i believe can set up vlans, and avoid making config changes to the switches?

Is it possible to set access up for certain times of the day?

Is there a better way to do this?

 

All advice is appreciated.

Thanks

James

[tumbleweed]

We're just trialling some Meru stuff, and yes VLAN can easily be set on the controller - set the SSID Tunnel Interface type - configured VLAN only.

Haven't look at timed access yet ...

[jjohnsoncantell]

Can i vlan off the individual ssid's or does it not go that deep?

[jjohnsoncantell]

how do i go about assigning dhcp to the different vlans?

[themightymrp]

As long as your DHCP server plugs into your core Layer 3 switch this is fairly simple. Create your different scopes on your DHCP server i.e. one for students, one for normal school use etc. Once you assign an IP address from your various ranges to their own VLAN within your switch (or meru system - I am not familiar with meru) then the switch will allocate IP's from the correct scope for you

[cpjitservices]

I believe Meru have some sort of captive portal ? if so you can set it up so that once a user (guest user access) logs in through the portal it will log them off the internet after a certain time.

 

I believe it's called a hard timeout and you can set it to kick in after a certain time.

 

**I'm not using Meru but this is how it's setup on my Wireless Network, and I believe Meru have a similar setup.**

Edited June 18, 2012 by cpjitservices

[dcwhitworth]

Funnily enough I'm looking at this very thing myself which is how I've ended up at this thread. One of the issues we hit was that the Meru support for 'public' devices is pretty poor, no link to AD, no transparent proxying. We're going to get around most of the issues by using a Smoothwall firewall which does both and will also act as a DHCP server.

 

I'm not sure about using Meru on a VLAN, do I need to set up the VLAN on all intermediate switches ? I know you normally would, just wondering how the APs talk to the controller.

 

As far as timing goes, I'm not sure that can be done with what you seem to have available. You *could* set up a daily guest user, that's a drag but I can't see any other timings available on Meru.

[dcwhitworth]

Can i vlan off the individual ssid's or does it not go that deep?

 

Yes you can, there's settings for this on the ESS configuration. Hopefully going to give it a try today.

[jjohnsoncantell]

did you have any luck with your testting?

[dcwhitworth]

did you have any luck with your testting?

 

Yes it worked fine with no issues. Simply define the VLAN ID number in MERU and specify it in the security settings.

[jjohnsoncantell]

did you get anywhere in timing access to the vlan? We dont want students using it and wasting time during the day but want them to use it after hours for their coursework.

[mhowell]

Chaps

feel free to contact us directly here in the UK [email protected], or [email protected] with any queries. Very happy to help and we'll have likely seen what you are trying to achieve in other schools

thx

Mark

[dcwhitworth]

did you get anywhere in timing access to the vlan? We dont want students using it and wasting time during the day but want them to use it after hours for their coursework.

 

There's no provision that I am aware of for setting access timings on Meru SSIDs or VLANs. I'd suggest you are probably looking in the wrong place, something like access times can be set in AD.