[Michlib-l] How do you gather Uses of Wireless Logins per Year for LOM Annual Report?

Fri May 25 16:14:56 EDT 2018

Hi Susan,

We simply send the syslog logs from our wireless controller to a logging solution.  There are many free logging solutions available, but we use a paid for product called AlienVault.   You can do the same for individual Access Points, if you don't have a centrally managed wireless solution.  Once all the logs are centralized, you create a search for successful logins and then export the results into something like Excel.  Some logging solutions are sophisticated enough to produce nice looking reports, but most require some type of basic syntax language in order to effectively search the raw syslog's for this level of detail.

Since you'll need a logging solution to accomplish this task, I suggest your research includes support for your specific wireless solution.  For example, we have a Ruckus wireless solution, so when we researched loggers one of our requirements was that the logger had the ability to identify and parse Ruckus Syslog events, and more importantly it could identify successful logons/access.  This allows the logger to earmark these types of logon/access events specifically, making your life easier to produce the desired reporting.

One solution you might want to look into is Splunk.  They have a free version that is good for up to so much storage per day (storage in disk storage size, not number of events) and as long as you only point your wireless to it, you should be well under the daily limit.  As loggers go (and ya, loggers can get complicated) this is one of the 'free' loggers I found to be rather easy to use and produce the exact type of reports and dashboards you are looking for.

There are also third party cloud based solutions where you simply point your wireless users to an external proxy server and the cloud service will gather information and allow you to produce reports, but this will result in an annual subscription cost.  Depending on the cost, it may or may not be less expensive than supporting your own in house logging solution, even when considering labor alone as the upfront time to get a logger up and running, collecting logs and producing results in a form that makes sense can be very time consuming.  However, I have not personally researched cloud solutions...so I don't have much insight to share.

Bottom line, I don't see any reason why you would need additional hardware to accomplish this.  Then again, I am not intimately acquainted with your network infrastructure.

I hope this information helps.

Pete Sneathen
I.T. Manager
Herrick District Library

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Subject: Re: [Michlib-l] How do you gather Uses of Wireless Logins per Year for LOM Annual Report?

Here's my question and the replies I got:

Hi all,

I was told by my tech person that in order to track all wireless logins to our wifi, we'd have to get a separate router to do the job, as our current configuration won't pick that data up; it just shows the hits to the website.  Since the Library of Michigan Annual Report has recently been asking for that info (it was in Section H, line 13 this past year), I just estimated it from a clipboard at the front desk, where we note patrons using their own laptops or tablets.  But we're missing the users outside the building, phone use and whatnot that we don't notice.  (We're a very small, Class I library.)

Thanks for your help,

--

Susan Riegler

Susan Riegler, Director

Alden District Library

Hi.

We used to use that same method.  It was frustrating because we knew that we were missing a lot of people.

I don't know the technical stuff, but we now have a "page" that when someone clicks on our wireless, pops up.  There isn't a password, but they have to click on a box to agree to our policy.  The software counts that so we know how many sessions happen.  A session can last up to 3 hours, then they will have to log back in again.  We use "untangle" software.

Ann

Eau Claire District Library

Your tech can't just pluck these out of the air (and be believed); we have an appliance that does this and we keep the reports for a couple years as proof.

Attached is an example. Here is a good presentation given in SE Michigan a couple years ago; and not by me.
http://tln.lib.mi.us/dept/technology-services/wifi/files/techcomm/Best_Practices_for_Wireless_Statistics.pdf
Best Practices for Wireless Statistics - The Library Network<http://tln.lib.mi.us/dept/technology-services/wifi/files/techcomm/Best_Practices_for_Wireless_Statistics.pdf>
tln.lib.mi.us
TLN Wireless Committee; 10/2013 Best Practices for Wireless Statistics The purpose of these guidelines is to suggest a generalized standard for wireless usage statistics that are uniform

wishing you goodness,

Mary Carleton; Farmington Community Library (Mary.Carleton at farmlib.org<mailto:Mary.Carleton at farmlib.org>)

I read my lists from old school account.

Hi Susan,

The Leelanau Township Library purchased a router and a contract with Sputnik (now part of a compnay called Lokket) to track wireless logins, connectivity. I didn't set up the contract (the former director did) but it works just fine and I'm happy with the service.
http://sputnik.com<http://sputnik.com/>
Nellie

Hi Sue,

We use a company called Sputnik (sputnik.com) that supplies us with the routers (we use two so we can cover the library and meeting room). It counts Wi-Fi users and also provides a "splash page" where users have to agree to our wireless use policy before they get onto the internet. Since we do not use internet filters and keep the Wi-Fi on 24/7 which can be accessed outside the building this splash page helps give us some legal protection from improper use of the internet.

Sputnik costs us about $200.00 per year and it hasn't given us any trouble.

Mark Morton

Director

Leland Township Public Library

203 E Cedar St Leland, MI 49654

231-256-9152

We count the unique MAC addresses that our DHCP server hands out in a day.

It sounds like your budget is limited.

Do you have a firewall? So the low-tech/annoying solution is to have your firewall or (most) router make a splash page to use the wi-fi. Set a guest password, and change it once a week or such. Then people will have to come get a slip to login, and you can physically count the users.

Christian Dunham | Director

Bullard Sanford Memorial Library

989-823-2171 | vassarlibrary.org | facebook.com/vassarlibrary

Our Cisco Meraki wireless access point (MR 16?) has a dashboard of statistics that we can log into, info supplied includes number of unique users, devices accessing, operating systems, applications accessed - loads if detail!

I used to have to leave that part of State Aid report blank. We're a class 4.

It does count sessions - not just number of unique users.

 --- jude halloran, Highland Library, 248-887-2218 ext. 110     www.highlandlibrary.info<http://www.highlandlibrary.info/>

Hello Susan,

Have you looked into any software solutions to help you count this?  You might want to check out a service like  Who's On My WiFi or reconfigure your router for the WiFi connection counts and use something like Google Analytics to count your web traffic. I think you would probably be surprised how many external WiFi uses you get.

Thank you,

Joseph Hamlin

Library Data Coordinator

Library of Michigan

702 West Kalamazoo St.

P.O. Box 30007

Lansing, MI 48909-7507

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