Wireless APs in Homebrew Coffee Shops?

An anonymous reader writes "Having seen lots of complaints about the overpriced T-Mobile Wireless APs in Starbucks ($10/hr) got me thinking about setting up a wireless AP for the small, family-owned coffeeshop in my town under the tip jar model. I'm assuming ~$100 for the router, ~$500 for a PC to use to control quotas (to prevent over-zealous Kazaa users, block spammers and script kiddies and other would-be abusers) - but what software should I be using? Do enough people have 802.11a/g cards that it would be worth it to invest in that rather than an 802.11b router?" Has anyone considered making a Linux distribution for use by cybercafes, to handle wireless access and anything else such an outfit might need?

"Since this is a medium (50,000-ish) size town, and pretty much everyone in the coffee shop is a regular, would a tip jar model work? I'm figuring suggest a donation - what should I set that at?

Finally, keep in mind that the owner is not a geek - I'd be doing this when not studying (I'm a college student), so this would be set up over the summer, and most of the maintenance would be done on the weekends and/or via SSH.

Any other thoughts would be appreciated."

Comments

Re:wep key on receipt!

[Golias]

Anybody wired enough to feel they need their laptop with them when they are drinking coffee at a mom & pop cafe is probably one of us geeks... at least, enough of one to know how to set a WEP key.

Re:I think your estimates are way too high

[djqed]

I don't even think the coffee shop would need to charge anything for it - no tip jar or anything. I go regularly to a cafe in my city (SF) which has free WiFi. The cafe is nearly always comfortably full - not impossible to get a table, but most seats are taken. Meanwhile, other cafes around town which charge for access or have no access at all are nearly empty during a weekday. I think the increased business from having the service would pay for itself in one or two days of extra sales. You could argue that WiFi encourages people to sit there for hours on 1 coffee, but personally if I'm there for a few hours or more I get a sandwich and a cookie in addition to my 2 drinks, which I would never pay for at this coffee shop otherwise.

Re:NoCatAuth is all you need

[nehril]

a local coffeeshop does just this. they dont use WEP (useless overhead) and it's all 802.11b (why go for the lower range of a or g when you are only sharing a 1.5m DSL uplink anyway??). at the register they have a bunch of preprinted username/password cards you buy for $8 (they are obviously computer generated, each userid/password is unique). $8 buys you an hour, $20 buys you an all-day access card, and I think $30 buys you an all-month.

The first time you connect to any website you are redirected to a local webserver that prompts you for your name/pass. you key it in, and now your mac or ip is "authorized," and the rest of your connection is completely unrestricted. You cant do anything else until you login to their web server, and once you log in your ID is "used up."

pretty slick, since it requires zero geekness for whoever is at the register, they just sell cards like any other product. I'm pretty sure their backend is based on nocatauth

College Students

[RabidChipmunk]

This is no longer true. I went to a comedy show at a local coffee house and there were at least six "stylish" females there with laptops. [No males with computers.] They weren't there for the show. They were there to write papers and socialize while they did it.

Re:No PC

[mike260]

Except when the hog is a neighbor who has discovered the free access and is running a Kazaa file sharing client or doing some other high-bandwidth use activity. Remember, this is wireless - the person using the bandwidth might not always be visible to you.

It should be pretty easy to spot this kind of thing...keep an eye out for out-of-hours connections to the wireless access point and block their MAC address.

Re:wep key on receipt!

[Ryosen]

As stated below, modifying the WEP key is beyond a large percentage of users. A better approach would be to use your gateway box as a proxy server (which you would be doing anyway) and use a common logon id. Change the password for the account daily and print the day's user id and password on the receipt.

Users are much more familiar with this approach and it is no more complex (less actually) than the revolving WEP.

Provide 802.11 but no AC outlets

[Bretski]

That's a trick a local coffee shop uses here. Free network so you'll stay an hour or two, but you can't charge your laptop to stay longer than that!

Friendliness vs. Paranoia - the More Coffee Model

[billstewart]

The business model for coffee-shop wireless isn't the tip jar - it's the $3 latte, and the extra coffee people drink while they're hanging around using it, and the extra pastries. That's also why you've got the newspapers, the comfy chairs, the shelf of Really Bad Science Fiction books, the chess set. If you've also got a PC in the corner for people who didn't bring their lap top, maybe charge for using that.

WEP isn't necessary for your customers - the main reason coffee-shops use it is to restrict access to paying customers, and you're not doing that - you're selling them friendliness and coffee and chair space and pastries that aren't too sticky to eat next to a computer. If you've got an issue with one of your neighbors sucking down bandwidth, that's different, of course, but setting WEP is an obstacle for users, especially if they've got their own WEP settings for their home or office.

Security and quotas are less necessary than you'd expect, as long as your DSL ISP is good. Start open, and maybe monitor usage and see what problems you get, rather than starting locked down tight, i.e. use your router's security features rather than buying a PC to start with, unless you also want to have the PC for customers who don't bring laptops. (And if your ISP is the uptight, policy-heavy types, running free or especially paid wireless in your store probably violates their policies, plus they're probably already restricting SMTP.) For consumer DSL ISPs, I'm quite happy with sonic.net, Speakeasy's also good and has nationwide coverage, and ever Earthlink's not too bad. Business DSL providers will charge a bit more, and tend to have flexible policies. Cable Modems are a much better match technically, but are run by terminally clueless paranoids who don't understand their business models, so you can't use them except maybe with a higher-priced business-class service.

You're unlikely to have much problem with spammers - geeks hate them, and have fun imagining scenarios like drive-by spammers, but in a small town, it's more of a know-your-customer thing. If you're in a college town, or get lots of high-school kids, you may need to worry more about crackers using your system. On the other hand, you need to leave things open for gamers, and the problem there is making sure the high-school kids keep buying enough drinks to make up for chair space. KaZaa's not really much of a problem, as long as your ISP doesn't ban it, because users are transient enough that they won't be doing much uploading, just leeching.