Knowing location (AP) of hotspot user

RouterOS General
1

Hello

I have mikrotik controller (RB1200) with a hotspot setup.
Several APs (RB411’s) connected to this controller (ether1-wlan1 bridged)
So all customers land directly on the RB1200 dhcp, get IP, authenticate, etc. All good

Except that i have no idea from which AP customers are connected. How do i know if customer X is physically connected to AP A, B or C?
There seem to be no clear indication of the origin AP, neither in Radius attributes nor in Mikrotik special hotspot variables $(xxx).

I could use logs; dhcp logs from controller show IP->MAC , AP logs show MAC addresses connecting, so with a syslog server and some scripting i could find what i need, but it seems a bit heavy, isn’t there a more simple way?

Thanks

2

create one EoIP connection for each wlan1, bridge both and on hotspot concentrator create EoIP ends and one hotspot service for each EoIP.

3

So that makes one hotspot for each AP ? wow
I think i will loose client transparent roaming between APs if i do this, right?

4

Yes, but it’s a speed way to know exactly where each client are connected.

I think the user not need to login again for each repeater, if you use mac-cookie.
The client each time change hotspot made one new DHCP request, if the AP are all on bridge togheter or if are single dhcp…

5

Well i just tested and roaming is not working between APs when you have different hotspots (same SSID of course) on same machine. Each hotspot keeps its own cookie list, which is a good thing for security in my opinion.

So i need to achieve

  • hotspot with multiple APs and roaming between APs
  • separate portal page for each AP (or group of AP)
    is this possible?
6

You can bridge all of the EoIP tunnels together. Then under bridge, enable the bridge to use IP Firewall. This will enable you to use the bridge port under hosts to see what access point they are connected to and you should be able to retain roaming between the access points. Setting the horizon value also for each bridge port would be helpful for network performance.

The other option is if you have switches that can do VLANs is to have a different VLAN for each wireless access point’s client facing wireless interface. Bridge those VLANs together in the 2011. The main parts that you need to do for this is to set the horizon value as the same for each bridge interface to prevent VLANs from talking to each other via the bridge on the router and causing it to break down. Also you cannot bridge VLANs together on the routerboard along with the physical interface they are a part of. I.E., you cannot bridge VLAN101-VLAN120 along with ether5 if ether5 is the interface the VLANs exist on.

Have the hotspot run on top of the bridge.
The horizon value basically says that any traffic coming in on this bridge port cannot leave another bridge port with the same horizon value (port isolation).

7

Thanks Feklar, i didn’t know about that “bridge ip firewall” setting.. That gives me some hints to do what i want.