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Counting Wireless connections

Looking for suggestions on the ability to count wireless connections/day for a business that allows free wireless.
Do I need to install a proxy server like Squid or a syslog server in order to do this? We are using a Cisco wireless router which has no way of tracking connections other than showing current connections through a DHCP table. Does have a syslog configuration, but does not look like that would give me what we need.

Thanks.

Kimputer

Both would be a good solution. Transparently rerouting wifi to squid, and then running a script at the end of the day on unique MAC addresses (still needs a lot of work). And depending on what the Cisco is sending to the syslog server (hopefully also something with MAC addresses). And again, at the end of the day you need a way to parse all these information.
And the last thing I can think of is some app that logs in the wifi web interface and periodically retrieves the DHCP table, logging all MAC addresses (requires you to write the code).
Solution 3 might be disastrous when you suddenly change from Cisco to another device (who knows, maybe one day it will break down, and you can't get a replacement unit), and to some degree, also solution 2. Solution 1 is probably the only one that will work with any wifi router.
All in all, a lot of time and effort is needed for this to work. How much time and money were you planning on investing? If the service is free anyway, and you're not earning anything, how much are you willing to spend for this function?

Craig Beck

What AP do you have? If it has SNMP options or Syslog you can use that. Syslog could show you each time a client associates to the AP - that would help you learn how many unique users connect per day.

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Cisco RV180W.

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Craig Beck

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gheist

You need to count both associations and dhcp entries. Once can run bridge (like vmware player) and single association can yield multiple DHCP IPs.
MRTG is a nice tool to overlay both