free wi-fi hot spot

thetourist

hi - a client has asked me to set up a free (probably) wi-fi hotspot for him in his pub. I know how to do it, but i dont know much about security concerns. Do i need to advise him to get a special router that blocks certain activity or are typical hot spots just regular wi-fi with no passcode. I suppose it's up to him in the end but i wonder what is typicaly done, or anywhere i could get info about it. bottom line this is a small job and i dont want to spend much time on it except to make sure that i am not liable for anything dodgy that could happen.
i was going to suggest to him to have a passcode up on a notice board in the bar and just change it every now and then.
thanks if anyone has any info i'd appreciate it

apologies if this has been asked before -- had a look and couldnt find anything

PS.. actually my main concern probably is this ---- would business data on his own machines be more open to hacks from within the lan or not

ironclaw

Hi there,

To be honest, if your asking that sort of question you are WAY out of your depht. People spend their lives making and breaking hotspots.

You need a specialised unit, his business LAN should be VPN'd and Firewalled securly or even on a seperate connection. You need a "Captive Portal", so that should get you started. Wifi at home and HotSpots are Chaulk & Cheese in terms of implimentation and security.

Regards.

thetourist

:eek: thanks for advice ... i have to set up the broadband for him anyway -so he can give the passcode to people on his own ticket if he feels lucky or keep it to himself or whatever.....

Capt'n Midnight

The cost of collecting money and metering and blocking access far outweighs everything else. Fon will let people connect for €3 per day and you keep half. I have no idea how much the commercial providers give as a kickback, but IMHO they charge so much that you'd just alienate so many potential users that it wouldn't pay for the goodwill lost. Bottom line, cleaning the toilets over a year will cost more than broadband + access point and few places charge for the use of the toilets.

Four approaches

1 - Free for all / insecure - legal minefield. Lets say someone looks up kiddie porn, they trace it back to your IP and then ....


2 - DIY authentication system - an old example http://nocat.net/ messy but doable and if some breaks it you are back to square one and you have to provide support


3 - bitbuzz and similar commercial stuff, absolute rip off , ONE customer at FULL price could more than pay for the hardware and broadband. To me this smells of extracting money from the customer rather than providing a service as it's extrotionaly expensive.


4 - let someone else handle the authentication
http://www.fon.com/en/
https://shop.fon.com/FonShop/shop/
https://shop.fon.com/FonShop/shop/IE/ShopController

if you really trust people you can let them use the private logon which is free , (see point 1) otherwise they can use the public logon which costs then €3 for the day, but it's is free for people who already share fon (so you won't upset techies). And the first 15 minutes is free too, so people won't waste too much time not drinking.

http://www.fon.com/en/info/makeMoney

FON will pay you 50% of the net revenue that we get every time a visitor purchases a FON Access Pass through your FON Spot! There’s more. To help you promote your FON Spot, visitors can get 15 minutes of free access to trial the service before start purchasing FON Access passes from you! And we even pay you for this!

People who use the WiFi of a Linus or a Bill but who themselves don’t have FON Access Points are Aliens. They pay €3 or $3 for one day of connection, which we think is a darn good deal, which allows you 24 hours of nonstop connection. You can also buy a 5 ticket bonus costing 10$/€ that you can use at any moment within the next year of the purchase.
Every ticket (individual or bonus) has 24 hours of nonstop connection.

[edit]actually there is nothing stopping you having option 2 and 4. Not exactly sure how you would do it maybe transparent proxy or something. Fon is there to handle security for untrusted people. People you trust can connect to the public connection , and you setup a logon there for them via whatever authentication scheme you have on the local network , have an AUP something along the lines of all traffic can be monitored / CCTV camera can be used to ID you etc. [/edit]

thetourist

thanks for the info

mayhem#

http://www.sputnik.com/
It doesn't come any easier...

Capt'n Midnight

mayhem# wrote: »

http://www.sputnik.com/
It doesn't come any easier...

http://www.sputnik.com/products/sputniknet.html

It costs $49.95 to set up a SputnikNet Account, with monthly charges starting at $19.95 per Sputnik-Powered AP (range extenders are free, of course). Sputnik takes no cut of your transactions.

Like I said the billing overhead costs more than the broadband

mayhem#

You could go for the SputnikNet Express option (http://www.sputnik.com/products/snet/sputniknet_express.html).
It's free and gives you a splash-page and all ;-)
The advantage from Sputnik is also that you can use one of those cheap but very Good Buffalo Tech wireless AP's for only €35 - €40...

Capt'n Midnight

Missed that
that's a lot better all right !