Creating a Wireless Hotshot

Associate
Joined
6 Nov 2004
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5
Hey,

A friend of mine runs and owns a coffee shop / cafe and would like to give his customers the chance to browse the internet for free while having a coffee by setting up a wireless hotspot.

He is getting broadband setup in his office above the shop, to his work computer, and would like to let the punters use the broadband, I could do with a bit of information of what products i would need to do this.

basically i could do with a push in the right direction.


Thanks in advance

Dan
 
Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2002
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found this for you
Link

Good writeup on the pros and cons and how to do it your self or getting someone to do it for you etc.
 
Soldato
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29 Oct 2004
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A small linux box with Squid proxy could work quite well for restricting access...I had a play about with it a year or so ago and you can lock down P2P use, restrict access to websites (stored in a seperate text file), configure the bandwidth so when downloading a file it drops in speed after a certain amount downloaded...perfect for balancing bandwidth between users so you don't get someone downloading an ISO or something and maxing out the line.

It may not be the best solution as it's the only one I'm aware of, but certainly worth a look in to :)
 
Soldato
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. Restaurants that rely on a high turnover of tables or seats might find it counterproductive to have customers occupy tables for hours while sending email or reading the online Wall Street Journal

Anyhow, very simply to do its just the question of controlling it. Personally i would install a SOHO firewall put the wireless box on the trusted interface and setup port rules to only allow port 80, 443, 25 and 110 through to the external interface.

If you want to do QOS or content filtering it is possible but youll be spending more money.

A small linux box with Squid proxy could work quite well for restricting access...I had a play about with it a year or so ago and you can lock down P2P use, restrict access to websites (stored in a seperate text file), configure the bandwidth so when downloading a file it drops in speed after a certain amount downloaded...perfect for balancing bandwidth between users so you don't get someone downloading an ISO or something and maxing out the line.

Yes but i doubt the average coffee shop owner is well versed in linux, keep it simply and lock down everything that you dont need with well structured passwords or encryption.

I wouldnt put the work pc on the same network either, seperate the two completly even better get a firewall with a dedicated DMZ port.
 
Soldato
Joined
29 Oct 2004
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10,884
Hey, if I can set one up anyone can :p

They'd only need someone to sort it out for them intially and the only thing he would probably have to do in the future is block sites using a text file.

That way he's pretty much covered against P2P/Bandwidth hogging/access to dodgy sites etc.

A firewall would lock down access to stop P2P and with QoS would stop bandwidth hogging, it just depends if he wants to block sites as well...unless it can do that as well?
 
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