Ubiquiti & Social HotSpot Assistance
Good night all. I've done work with a couple different networking products - and about two (literally) Ubiquiti devices, but it seems like I may get more into them for their Unifi feature. However some checks into social HotSpot kinda shows some different equipment to be used. So here's a few questions for persons that are more versed in these pieces of equipment. Hopefully you guys (and the few girls in here) may have had some experience with the actual setup and not the brochure version - because the documentation shows Ubiquiti can do it all, but I think the pfSense/SmoothWall/MonoWall/etc boxes - and maybe even DD-WRT - has some more features than what the EdgeRouter may have. So here are the items.
UNIFI MANAGER
I think they mentioned that I will need a controller/manager for the devices. While I know I can setup an AP on it's own, what are the benefits of using their controller? Can I use an EdgeRouter-X to do this, or will I need separate equipment?
EDGEROUTER
I use pfSense primarily. I've been using it for maybe more than 10 years and I love the features. Am I going to be losing anything moving to EdgeRouter? Can I use my existing setup and just integrate with the Ubiquiti stuff?
SOCIAL HOTSPOT
Doing checks seem to show OpenWRT as the thing to use with a paid service online - captive portal and redirect. Is there any free way to do this locally? I know some of the sites will give you like 500 authentications for free, but what other options would I have?
CP AUTHENTICATION
For the Captive Portal authentication - if I'll just abandon the whole social HotSpot - I'm having a challenge integrating with a receipt printer for random key prints. Does Ubiquiti offer this easier?
Thanks in advance for any advice and insight.
Knowing the solution doesn't mean knowing the method. Yet answering correctly and regurgitation are considered "learning" and "knowledge".