Authenticating access to "free" hotspot

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windows.networking.wireless (More info?)

I need to setup a "free" public hotspot, but with access only by
authenticated users. The authorized user list is in a SQLServer 2000 table
that contains the userid and a hash of the password (i.e. no clear
password). There are over 1000 users so I would not like to use a hotspot
gateway with local authentication, but rather use an external authentication
server that accesses this table.

I haven't settled on the hardware yet, but price is an issue, so I have been
looking at possibly using a DLINK DSA-3100 hotspot gateway configured to
present a logon screen then use its RADIUS client to authenticate with IAS
running on an existing Windows 2003 Server (which BTW has an ASP.NET app
with forms authentication running on it). It seems that I might need a
RADIUS extension DLL to access the user table, but I am wondering if there
was a more straight forward way to use an ad hoc SQLServer table to
authenticate access to the network or possibly somehow piggy back on the
ASP.NET forms authentication Thanks.

Chuck Hartman