hot spot managment

Jared Watkins jared at watkins.net
Tue Dec 14 07:50:01 EST 2004


Travis Roy wrote:

>
>>> I am working with a client of mine that owns a restaurant in Nashua 
>>> he is looking to add a free hotpot to his restaurant but does not want
>>> people not in the restaurant using it
>>>   
>>
>>
>> You could try encasing the restaurant in lead..
>>  
>>
>
> This really is your only option. Even with directional antennas you're 
> going to leak outside the building and people with directional 
> antennas outside will probably be able to pick it up.
>
> One way, that is not totally secure is to force the patrions to use 
> restaraunt supplied wifi cards and only let the mac address from those 
> cards have access.
>
> You might want to look into signull's hotspot product. While it lets 
> anybody connect, you still have to create a username and password to 
> use the device so that at least allows an audit trail.


I would suggest doing this with a mixture of
software/placement/settings...  I'll explain... there are captive portal
solutions out there that will require a person to log in the first time
they connect... these could be tied into a ticketing or account system
if you wanted.  Place the hotspot(s) close to the center of the area you
want to cover...  and set them to only accept connections at a such a
speed..  this will effectively limit the distance by which they can be
reached.  A laptop with wifi and something like Net Stumbler will help
you map out signal that is leaking outside the building.  For a captive
portal and other wifi stuff... check out these resources:

http://nocat.net/
http://socalfreenet.org/volunteer
http://www.wi-fiplanet.com/

If placement is a problem... check out what some innovative people have
done  http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/h/352

Lots of places like to use cordless phones... I'd check with the
neighboring businesses to see if they use 2.4G phones... if they do...
encourage them to change to 900mhz or something else... those 2.4G
phones can be really disruptive to wifi... as can microwave ovens.

Jared





More information about the gnhlug-discuss mailing list