Thank you Lillian for this insight, As Bosco Uganda, we had seen that challenge and we are trying to address it. we developed a captive portal that we have been piloting in one of the ICT centres and we have seen it work perfectly. The captive portal is voucher based and restricted to only one device at a time so that means if one shares his/her password, he/she will not be able to use it. The voucher is created for a day or a month at a very affordable rate for example 0.27 dollars per day and 1.36 dollars per month. We are planning to start deploying the captive portal to the rest of the ICT Centres such as Gwokke keni, Superstar, Warocco kwo, Lukole, Atyang among others.
It would be good to start a topic on Captive Portals as this topic has come up recently in another context on a call with Gram Marg & Servelots - where illiterate users need something that comes up as soon as they connect to WiFi, with icons that will get them to the service without having to type in a URL.
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Hi @mitra - fantastic idea!!
@nicopace - can you help to facilitate to make the above conversation into a new topic called “Captive Portals”?
kathleen
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The captive portal can be a great tool for many uses.
Sustainability is the easy one, were the captive portal sits in between our network and the connection to the internet so the people that wants to connect to the internet needs to go through it.
But it can also serve as a space for the announcement of local services (like our offline versions of the internet archive that @mitra works on), or the community portal were we can have a local news feed…
in the community i live in Quintana, Argentina, we are thinking of putting a captive portal, and in one of the conversations with one of the networks there (LaBolsaLibre) we discussed to put a video of the CN as a way to get more peoople involved in the CN before the people get to the internet instead of a paywall…
In our case, technology-wise, it is a technology that will be integrated in the librerouter called pirania, being developed by @luandro and @gmarcos87: https://github.com/libremesh/pirania/
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We’ve been testing Pirania for the past 4 months in Moinho, Brazil. It’s been working reasonably well for us, but for non techy users, which is the case of most in our community, it has been a bit of challenge, so we are still enhancing the software based on our experiences.
One of the things that I find that could be most useful for my community is a way for governance of internet connection. So I’ve started implementing something on those lines in Lime App:
But my initial use case for the captive-portal was to enable the discovery of local applications thru the portal, in my case apps they are being developed using p2p protocols such as Secure Scuttlebutt or Dat, that enable accessibility of local content, as they’ll work even for users who are “blocked” to the internet by the captive-portal.
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I’ve come across two clear use cases
a: The simplest one, just a bunch of icons, statically configured to point to local services, to allow less-literate people to just connect to Wifi, and click on a button.
b: Used to control data and payment, for example one network were telling me how they use the captive portal with icons to free services - either locally stored data, or government sponsored services, and with a login that then tracks data usage against a paid-for data pack, which allows them to give access to the rest of the internet in small increments (backhaul being their most expensive cost)
Also Adam Holt at Internet In A Box said…
On the specific topic of Internet-in-a-Box’s Captive Portal, that is not yet ready for all smartphones at this time.
So it is turned off by default in /etc/iiab/local_vars.yml as you can see in this example:
https://github.com/iiab/iiab/blob/master/vars/local_vars_big.yml#L82-L87
If you want to enable IIAB’s new-but-experimental Captive Portal, you can certainly modify those 2 variables within /etc/iiab/local_vars.yml (prior to IIAB installation works far better, as a general rule!)
And of course if you want to turn off Captive Portal, please read the instructions at http://FAQ.IIAB.IO #36 (“Captive Portal Administration: What tips & tricks exist?”)
Guys, thanks for this. I was looking for a way to somehow sustain connectivity for years and found this. I’ll be testing whatever is suggested here. And will post my review based on the testing.
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This is great to know.
I hope the communities get to know this in good time.
It will motivate many.
Hello, I have new questions around this topic but more specifically, I have some questions regarding INTRANETs.
I’m trying different softwares on a Raspberry Pi for experimental purposes. I have:
- PirateBox (https://piratebox.cc/)
- Fuxico (http://redeautonomafeminista.org/fuxico/)
- RACHEL (World Possible | World Possible's RACHEL Server - The Best of the Web Offline)
I find RACHEL extremely useful as it has tons of content. Fuxico and PirateBox are really good for uploading and sharing content, as well.
We’ve also experienced with YunoHost (https://yunohost.org/) and we love it. My question is: Is there a way of installing two of them in one server? For example, to have YunoHost and also be capable of accessing RACHEL in the same network?
Does any of you know? Any tips are greatly appreciated 
Thanks!
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Your challenge is that Rachel, Yuonhost, IIAB (and maybe Piratebox & Fuxico) all try and manage the experience of an entire box to make it easy to configure and then package a set of tools nad installation process for those tools. Mixing them might work, but I would bet that you’ll run into unpredictable problems, for example with two installers editing your firewall rules.