Advice on layout and purchase requirements

[erike]

Just downloaded trial and did some testing. We are happy with the product and would like a little advice before purchasing early next week.

What we plan to do:

*Office FS1 - AP's (dhcp) - Local clients - router - internet
*Office FS1 - router - frame - router (dhcp) - 4 AP's - 100 clients
*Office FS1 - router - vpn - internet - vpn - router - FS2 - 50 AP's - 200 clients
...to start off with.

In order to get intenet at the client site, as I understand it all traffic needs to go through the FS, then off to the internet...this way FS monitors/mangaes expiration times and other management features. So in our scenario, we would require two full versions...correct?

If true, then distributed is the only way to go if we dont want all remote locations internet to come back to office FS first? So, in this scenario there would be two authentication servers with seperate databases. Is this correct?

Other questions:
*Users grouped by subnet/location...is this a feature, or can it be?
*Does FS support dhcp for specific subnets and allows other devices to provide dhcp when desired?
*Remote management of the FS...is there a web interface to manage the FS?
*Regarding MAC vs. IP. Is each server an eithor or? with MAC enabled is there an area to create "floating users" so a user is not tied down to a MAC?

Enough for now...thanks!

[alan]

1) I am not too sure what you mean by "full versions"

Please refer to http://www.patronsoft.com/firstspot/topologies.html for typical FirstSpot network scenarios.

For scenario 2, you need 1 FirstSpot (can be either Standard or Advanced)
per site.

For scenario 3, you need 1 FirstSpot Advanced Edition which will be
installed in a centralized location. Note that for this setup, the setup can
be quite involved and you need to have dedicated line or a VPN tunnel to mimic the dedicated line (see
http://www.patronsoft.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=1409#1409 )

If you don't want all remote locations internet to come back to office FS first, you should use Scenario 2:Distributed Network Topology. You need several FirstSpots and 1 centralized SQL database (either MySQL or SQL Server) for this scenario.

2) Users grouped by subnet/location - FirstSpot does not link IP with the username. There maybe some customization here.

3) DHCP - Note that for any subnet, only 1 DHCP server should be available (since it relies on broadcast mechanism)

4) Remote management - Yes, FirstSpot has a web-based Configuration Manager which let you manage FirstSpot remotely. Note that you need to select "Allow configuration manager access from the visitor-based network" or "Allow configuration manager access from the public network (e.g. Internet)" in order to enable remote management

5) MAC vs. IP - You can EITHER use MAC-based session handling OR IP-based session handling. Session handling is the way for FirstSpot to identify client PC. Note that the username is not tied to MAC address at all and user can login via any machine.
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