FreeRadius v. Commercial

Roland.....your freeradius development effort does seem to be the way to go for a small scale, low cost AAA solution....

I looked at lanroamer as Thorn suggested - looks like a hereuare wannabe, though they seem to be offering a gpl development platform, though not clear what it does....

Surf and Sip offers a $500 package desgined for one-off coffee shops, including access point and server...developed their system to use prepaid cards

also spoke with hereuare, and their back-end system is designed to do the whole AAA thing over the Internet for a fee, but they are looking for network ops running at least 35 sites

Avaya makes a $1400 access server (AS-1000) - looks like it does standard radius stuff, good for AAA for existing subscribers (who might come in thru your web site); but if you want to offer ad hoc access via a login redirect, perhaps not a complete solution

no wonder mobilestar and wayport developed their own proprietary solutions

so i think you're on the right path with freeRADIUS...any way i can help....i will continue to research alternatives...