Wireless Hotspots in a Large Environment?

Posted by Cliff on Tuesday February 24, 2004 @11:30AM 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?"

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One way to do it. by bob_jordan · 2004-02-24 12:14 · Score: 3, Interesting

You could allow everyone to connect regardless but use a VPN client on the customers machine to allow internet access.

The only problem here is that people could connect just to play online games with other connected people or run VOIP style apps but would this be a problem? If you only intend to charge for internet access, allowing people IP access to each other would be a way of getting them to try the system first.

Bob.