A central WLC manages a Public Spot in a distributed infrastructure. Accordingly, the configuration of the Public Spot (Public Spot SSID, security standards) is identical on all of the participating APs. This allows a Public Spot provider to offer an identical Public Spot at all of the different locations.
After receiving a voucher, customers would have access to this Public Spot at any branch. In order to limit access to the branch where the customer has received the voucher, the AP transmits its own identifier in addition to the user name and password. This identifier enables the voucher to be associated with this AP. To transfer the identifier, the AP attaches the circuit ID (DHCP option 82) to the DHCP requests. These DHCP packets pass through the central Public Spot, which checks the identifier based on the entries in the RADIUS user table.
The Public Spot only allows a request if the voucher in the RADIUS user table is associated with this AP. Customers who have received a voucher at branch A cannot login to the same Public Spot at branch B, since the two APs transmit different identifiers.
The AP identifier is configured as the circuit ID for the corresponding interface under .
- %%: Inserts a percent sign.
- %c: Inserts the MAC address of the interface used by the Public Spot user to authenticate. If a WLAN-SSID is involved, then this is the corresponding BSSID.
- %c: Inserts the name of the interface used by the Public Spot user to authenticate.
- %n: Inserts the name of the AP as specified under .
- %v: Inserts the VLAN ID of the DHCP request packet. This VLAN ID is sourced either from the VLAN header of the DHCP packet or from the VLAN ID mapping for this interface.
- %p: Inserts the name of the Ethernet interface that received the DHCP packet. This variable is useful for devices featuring an Ethernet switch or Ethernet mapper, because they can map multiple physical interfaces to a single logical interface. For other devices, %p and %i are identical.
- %s: Inserts the WLAN SSID if a WLAN client is used for the authentication. For other clients, this variable contains an empty string.
- %e: Inserts the serial number of the AP, to be found for example under .
On the WLC, you configure this identifier in the RADIUS user table under .
As the "Called station", you add the ID of the AP that should enable access by means of the corresponding voucher.
When setting up new Public Spot users, the Public Spot Setup Wizard automatically uses the ID of the device if this is configured under .
When you create a new Public Spot account, the setup wizard checks to see whether this table contains an entry for the logged-in administrator. If this is the case, the setup wizard inserts the circuit ID into the RADIUS user table as the "called station".
