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Build a Wireless ISP on Linux
JuiceMan wrote to mention an article that goes into the the specifics of setting up a Wireless Internet Service Provider (WISP) using Linux and a few easy scripts. From the article: "Wireless clients will have questions, and the Linux-based management tools I'll discuss will help you answer them. Here are some quick examples of how you can answer typical user questions - Question: 'Is the Internet down today? Why can't my browser find www.flakyhost.com?' Solution: First, check your wireless network with the scanap script; it will tell you about the wireless signal quality of all associated clients, including the one that's giving you problems. Then, check IP connectivity with the pingall script; it will tell you about the latency to your ISP's gateway, the DNS, and all your clients, including the problematic one. If these two scripts establish that your network is OK, try www.flakyhost.com."
You can install wifidog, nocat's successor if I may call it that on top of openwrt and voilà, instant gratification. You won't become an ISP, but your users will never know the difference ;)
In case you're wondering, openwrt is a replacement firmware for the wrt54g series of routers. It's a small gnu/linux distribution that does its job quite well.
Are you sure it's latency and not congestion? Large downloads have little effect on latency.
If, on the other hand, you're using the $5 word "latency" to describe the $.50 symptom "slow", never mind.
Using a commodity PC, and the software provided free by ZoneCD http://www.publicip.net/, I was able to setup a public Wifi Hotspot in about 30 minutes. Super easy, and gives you granular access levels to grant people different types of access (i.e. Super User, Average Joe, etc.). You can track user logins, and other usage stats via a webpage as well. It sure pissed off my wife to have to log in everytime though!
Because teenage pranks are fun when you're about to die!