Setting up a Wifi Hotspot
Discussion
Some good friends of mine own a hotel/pub/restaurant which is busyish in the winter and packed in and out in the summer.
Anyway, in our little town, we'll be getting broadband enabled very soon, and I though I'd try and get in first with a Wifi hotspot, and approach the friend and get it set up in his hotel.
I found that thecloud.net seem to offer a pretty good service. They support most Wifi providers and have a pay-as-you-go service to, where they get about 50% and the hotspot owner gets about 50% (at £4 - £6 an hour, could be pretty good)
Anyhow, has anyone set one up, own one, or have anything useful to contribute?
At the moment it's just an idea.
>>> Edited by _dan_ on Wednesday 9th March 00:31
Anyway, in our little town, we'll be getting broadband enabled very soon, and I though I'd try and get in first with a Wifi hotspot, and approach the friend and get it set up in his hotel.
I found that thecloud.net seem to offer a pretty good service. They support most Wifi providers and have a pay-as-you-go service to, where they get about 50% and the hotspot owner gets about 50% (at £4 - £6 an hour, could be pretty good)
Anyhow, has anyone set one up, own one, or have anything useful to contribute?
At the moment it's just an idea.
>>> Edited by _dan_ on Wednesday 9th March 00:31
yeah Ive worked with the Cloud product before, particularly on the NETGEAR based Hotspot in a Box product - you can buy these from www.broadbandbuyer.com , Dabs etc...basically a wireless router you plg into your adsl modem (must have ethernet port) , register with the CLoud service (that ships in the box) and away you go...you are then a Cloud Hotspot and get revenue share as you mentioned .
miniman said:
If it was me, I would be weighing up the relative merits of making a few quid from having a pay-as-you-surf hotspot versus attracting more business by setting up a free one. Personally, I would offer it free.
Given they will be paying for broadband anyway...(SURELY!???) why not open up the bandwidth via a couple of wireless routers. Its not hard to set up permissions to prevent their business machines from being affected by customers' laptops. Its an added service which might attract more business customers to the hotel. If necessary why not add £1 to the room rate...Worth a look - Colubris are making some dog danglies WiFi kit
www.colubris.com/
Might be a bit overkill for a single installtion though.
best
Ex
www.colubris.com/
Might be a bit overkill for a single installtion though.
best
Ex
Thanks for the replies guys.
Point taken about giving it away for free I guess!!
Being that it's not my hotel I was just being greedy and thinking about lining my own pocket.
The more I think about it though, maybe I should approach them, and offer to set it up and maintain it as a free to the customers service (as they're both useless with computers!!)
I'm sure they'd be grateful for the extra business it would attract.
So the next question is, it's a reasonably big old hotel with very thick old stone walls. Would a decent router cover the property (and garden) quite well? Are there any routers out there that have better coverage than others? Just been looking at the Colubris stuff and that looks pretty decent. Is there the option to install extra antennae for extra coverage.
Also I take it that all the surrounding houses would be able to jump on and use it unless the WEP is reasonableably frequently changed, but that defeats the object of having a "arrive and surf" setup really I guess, if the would-be-surfers need to obtain a passkey every time they visit.
I guess it's neither here-nor-there if a few extra locals use the sevice provided we get at least a 1Mb line.
Thanks again for the input.
Point taken about giving it away for free I guess!!
Being that it's not my hotel I was just being greedy and thinking about lining my own pocket.
The more I think about it though, maybe I should approach them, and offer to set it up and maintain it as a free to the customers service (as they're both useless with computers!!)
I'm sure they'd be grateful for the extra business it would attract.
So the next question is, it's a reasonably big old hotel with very thick old stone walls. Would a decent router cover the property (and garden) quite well? Are there any routers out there that have better coverage than others? Just been looking at the Colubris stuff and that looks pretty decent. Is there the option to install extra antennae for extra coverage.
Also I take it that all the surrounding houses would be able to jump on and use it unless the WEP is reasonableably frequently changed, but that defeats the object of having a "arrive and surf" setup really I guess, if the would-be-surfers need to obtain a passkey every time they visit.
I guess it's neither here-nor-there if a few extra locals use the sevice provided we get at least a 1Mb line.
Thanks again for the input.
If you want to secure the network in any manner you are going to run in to problems (read that as 'need to spend money').
Customers arriving at the hotel don't want to be bothered with having to make changes to their network settings to access the Net. The just wanna switch on their laptop and surf.
Normally you'd take a credit card number or perhaps enter a voucher number obtained at check in.
All of this requires back-end systems to authorise the connection, usually this is done with a RADIUS server that takes a username and password.
All of this for a 'free' connection is just going to add to the cost of installation and running of the system.
If you want to see what the big boys are doing in this area look at www.broadreachnet.com/
Unless you are prepared to spend some money on the system then all you can really do is offer a free access system and live with the fact that locals might wise up and start leaching the bandwidth, however I think some of the Colubris products allow you to throttle the bandwidth given to any one client.
Take a read over those links and see what features are available and then decide which if any you need to implement.
Id be interested to hear from any others here on a way to secure access to a WLAN via a voucher system that didn't require a backend server authorising the access.
best
Ex
Customers arriving at the hotel don't want to be bothered with having to make changes to their network settings to access the Net. The just wanna switch on their laptop and surf.
Normally you'd take a credit card number or perhaps enter a voucher number obtained at check in.
All of this requires back-end systems to authorise the connection, usually this is done with a RADIUS server that takes a username and password.
All of this for a 'free' connection is just going to add to the cost of installation and running of the system.
If you want to see what the big boys are doing in this area look at www.broadreachnet.com/
Unless you are prepared to spend some money on the system then all you can really do is offer a free access system and live with the fact that locals might wise up and start leaching the bandwidth, however I think some of the Colubris products allow you to throttle the bandwidth given to any one client.
Take a read over those links and see what features are available and then decide which if any you need to implement.
Id be interested to hear from any others here on a way to secure access to a WLAN via a voucher system that didn't require a backend server authorising the access.
best
Ex
I'm definately thinking now that a free to all service is the way to go.
One of the main reasons being that aswell as hotel guests being able to use it, It'd be good if off-the-street tourists could just sit in the back garden and connect up.
Our little town isn't mega-clued up on this side of technology yet, I reckon only about 5% have even heard of Wifi!! So uninvited neighbours nicking bandwidth shouldn't be a problem for a while.
One of the main reasons being that aswell as hotel guests being able to use it, It'd be good if off-the-street tourists could just sit in the back garden and connect up.
Our little town isn't mega-clued up on this side of technology yet, I reckon only about 5% have even heard of Wifi!! So uninvited neighbours nicking bandwidth shouldn't be a problem for a while.
_dan_ said:
....
So the next question is, it's a reasonably big old hotel with very thick old stone walls. Would a decent router cover the property (and garden) quite well?
Probably not. I'd go for covering the bar / reception areas. That way you can get the punters to buy drinks at the same time, rather than have them in their rooms.
_dan_ said:
Also I take it that all the surrounding houses would be able to jump on....
Not if you get the radiation pattern right. Or only let people use the hotels PCMCIA/USB wifi cards and lock the router by MAC address. Not the nicest but it does work.
For a free service then just get a wireless router, with detachable antenna, and stick a decent omni directional jobbie on there - sorted - reception should be pretty good over a fair area, depending on walls etc.
If you want to do a full install, to all rooms, and charge for it then consult some pros - but you will be looking at multi access points with say a PC hosting the landing page, running something like Chillispot as the access controller etc. You would want a PoE switch powering all the units for ease of use.
Other 'off the shelf option' - get a Cloud or BT Openzone Hotspot in a Box product - self install, and they take care of everything. Basically you plug it into your network, it VPNs all the traffic back to theres, with all the hassle taken away. BT are offering the basic, single AP/router set-up (would cover say a large hall or reception area with std antenna) for £100 now IIRC, whereas the Cloud want about £300 ish (and its the same Netgear hardware)
The Colubris stuff is good, and designed for the job, but its not cheap, and you really have to know what youre doing to set everything up properly.
cheers
bogie
If you want to do a full install, to all rooms, and charge for it then consult some pros - but you will be looking at multi access points with say a PC hosting the landing page, running something like Chillispot as the access controller etc. You would want a PoE switch powering all the units for ease of use.
Other 'off the shelf option' - get a Cloud or BT Openzone Hotspot in a Box product - self install, and they take care of everything. Basically you plug it into your network, it VPNs all the traffic back to theres, with all the hassle taken away. BT are offering the basic, single AP/router set-up (would cover say a large hall or reception area with std antenna) for £100 now IIRC, whereas the Cloud want about £300 ish (and its the same Netgear hardware)
The Colubris stuff is good, and designed for the job, but its not cheap, and you really have to know what youre doing to set everything up properly.
cheers
bogie
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