Member Avatar for dyrshin

Hi Everyone,

I'm beginning some research in creating a WiFi Hotspot for a cafe I consult for. The cafe currently has one DSL line the the POS (Point of Sale) machine connects to. This started as a mom and pops, so the security and budget isn't there, please keep this in mind.

My initial thoughts are to get an additional line specifically for the hotspot. I'm not comfortable splitting DSL speeds with the public and having them on our system network. My other thought is that DSL won't be very great for a public Hotspot, even if the users will not be doing any heavy downloading. Currently, we have a 3mb download, but we can bump it to 11mb (that is, the second line for the hotspot).

What I thought was ideal, was to skip the DSL and go for cable. While DSL will claim 11mb at our site, I don't really trust it. However, I know the business class cable provider will give me steady 5mb up/down. Price isn't much of a factor, as cable is like $10 more a month.

My other thought is to place a software based gateway (which is the norm, I suppose) for the guests.

Has anyone here gone through a similar project? I can Google all day along for Hotspot software (like Antamedia), but I want to know from first hand experience what people like and don't from here. And also if my thoughts are correct in the second line.

And really any help and guidance would be cool :) I will post back, if we go through with the project, what was used and my experience with it.

Thanks

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Dani AI

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A compact, practical checklist to turn the thread into a working cafe hotspot while addressing points raised by , , and .

Start with isolation and reliability. A physically separate uplink for guests is the simplest way to ensure the POS stays unreachable and unaffected by heavy guest traffic; where a second line is not feasible, place the POS on a distinct VLAN/subnet and enforce strict firewall rules so guest traffic cannot reach the POS or internal servers. Treat the gateway as the trust boundary: block inbound port forwarding for guests, disable AP-management from the guest SSID, and log any exceptions.

Captive-portal and voucher mechanics. Choose a gateway that supports time-limited vouchers, per-user bandwidth caps, and simple voucher printing or on-screen code generation. Look for HTTPS-friendly captive portal behavior (modern phones and browsers can fail on naive HTTP redirects), optional RADIUS backend if expansion is planned, and easy reporting for troubleshooting. For the school-style one-hour-per-day requirement mentioned by , configure vouchers bound to MAC or to an account and enforce session expiry—this avoids repeated reuse.

WiFi planning and QoS. Select APs designed for many concurrent clients rather than plug-and-play home routers. Prefer 5 GHz where coverage allows, plan channel layout to minimize co-channel interference, and enable client isolation so guests cannot talk to each other. Apply per-client and per-session bandwidth limits and block typical P2P ports to protect experience for everyone and keep the POS responsive.

Operations, security and compliance. Display clear terms/acceptable-use on the portal, retain minimal logs needed for abuse handling, patch firmware regularly, and segment monitoring/management interfaces from the guest network. If payments are involved, separate payment processing from access control to avoid handling cardholder data. Test captive-portal behavior across iOS/Android/Windows/macOS—this is a frequent source of deployment surprises.

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Member Avatar for skilly

how's it coming along?

Member Avatar for dyrshin

The decision hasn't been made to go ahead with the project. We're getting closer to convincing the owner, but not yet.

I will post back when I get started. Was hoping someone here had some experience, but it looks like not. I'll post on other sites and see what I get. Thanks for asking tho :-)

Member Avatar for shbk

the cheapest option is to buy wifi adapter and create hotspot. it will cost near 10$)

if you have more money you may buy router which has embedded wifi (and possibility to setup it). in this case you may even don't be need in computer.this 'll cost near 40$, but it's more comfy. second variant is my choice.

Edited by shbk because: n/a
Member Avatar for maninaction

Ya . Good Idea for going wifi hotspot. But take care of security reasons . where the username should not be visible to others. Because now a days wifi can be easily hacked.

Member Avatar for dyrshin

the cheapest option is to buy wifi adapter and create hotspot. it will cost near 10$)

if you have more money you may buy router which has embedded wifi (and possibility to setup it). in this case you may even don't be need in computer.this 'll cost near 40$, but it's more comfy. second variant is my choice.

Thanks for the suggestion. But I'm looking for something a little more than just a simple hotspot. The visitors will need some gateway to land on, put in some code that has a time limit, and be booted after that time limit.

I may consult with some local cafes in the area that use this already and see what they implement. I'll update when I have more information. I consider myself a pretty good Googler, but I haven't found a good "how-to" for a business to setup a visitor hotspot with a payment or code based gateway.

Member Avatar for dyrshin

Update on this:

I may go with something like this, which is similar to one of the suggestions above:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833181129

The above product seems like it will do it all for what I need, which is to create a gateway for the visitors and comes with a printer to print code access. It's pricey (at $550), but looking at a pretty good online service that will do something similar, they want to charge $30/month with a $300 setup fee. I like the idea of owning the device.

I'm running it past the owner and if he chooses to go with this, I'll update this thread with my experience, in case someone else is curious. I'm still welcoming suggestions.

Member Avatar for Coolyfett

the cheapest option is to buy wifi adapter and create hotspot. it will cost near 10$)

if you have more money you may buy router which has embedded wifi (and possibility to setup it). in this case you may even don't be need in computer.this 'll cost near 40$, but it's more comfy. second variant is my choice.

You can buy a private router from any discount department store or electronic department store. I would suggest the owner lease the passwords to paying customers to keep outsiders from using the signal. Cable broadband is also a better option than the DSL hardline.

Member Avatar for Coolyfett

Update on this:

I may go with something like this, which is similar to one of the suggestions above:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833181129

The above product seems like it will do it all for what I need, which is to create a gateway for the visitors and comes with a printer to print code access. It's pricey (at $550), but looking at a pretty good online service that will do something similar, they want to charge $30/month with a $300 setup fee. I like the idea of owning the device.

I'm running it past the owner and if he chooses to go with this, I'll update this thread with my experience, in case someone else is curious. I'm still welcoming suggestions.

Thats not a bad investment in my book, but thats subjective. Hopefully the business is not selling the signal, but offering the signal as complimentary thing for supporting the main business.

Member Avatar for androidz

Hello how's your project me also is searching for that kind of stuff i want the users to redirected to a page or ads if they did not get the password.and the password should be generated on the page once he is registered on the page.I am not selling or making profit
i just want to give the user a 1 hour free of internet everyday actually i'm planning this on school premises which there are students who will use for their research purposes

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