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Wireless Hotspots in a Large Environment?

Posted by Cliff on from the widespread-working-wifi dept.

matth asks: "So here at work we provide wireless internet access to customers all over our city, and into suburbia, via Alvarion radio gear. We have a large number of customers that are places like pubs, libraries, restaurants, etc. We would like to, in conjunction with these locations, setup up a public Wi-Fi network. The problem is getting the mac address back through to a central authorization server. What experience have others had in setting up a Wi-Fi hotspot network over a city, and allowing a user to register at one location and get on at any of the various locales?"

2 of 22 comments (clear)

  1. HP by dJCL · · Score: 0, Informative

    I've been in a recent presentation about HP wireless hotspot hardware(well, networking in general, we were checking out their switches, but the guy wanted to get our attention on some other stuff too) and they had a setup that used a centralised device to manage everything, and local hardware to run a wireless network with roaming on. It looked to be designed to be put into an exsisting environment, and just work, but we have not really bothered to check it out, as none of our custmers need it. You might want to give you closes HP supplier a call, if only to see the tech, they like to try to sell stuff, so it should cost you nothing.

    --
    On Arrakis: early worm gets the bird. Magister mundi sum!
  2. Allegany County Maryland by ej0c · · Score: 2, Informative

    You may not want to follow folks who can't spell Allegheny, but the leaders of the Cumberland Gap area have set a pretty audacious task. They want people in their remote mountain area to all have access.
    http://www.gov.allconet.org/about.htm

    Allconet2 seems to be the wifi part:
    http://prime.allconet.org/allconet2/

    http://gov.allconet.org/tech/welcome.htm

    Ed