Archived from groups: alt.internet.wireless (
More info?)
On 5 Jul 2004 15:47:31 -0700, brewerja@yahoo.com (brewgle) wrote:
>As a first-class-smart-a$$ myself, I appreciate you sarcasm.
Sorry, I lack subtlety, tact, remourse, diplomacy, and netiquette.
It's much easier to deliver a sane answer if you kindly disclose what
you are trying to accomplish. Many people paint themselves into a
corner and only ask how long it takes for the paint to dry, rather
than ask for help on painting the floor.
>I also appreciate that you put an effort into finding answers.
I spend quite a bit of time on the FCC web pile looking at photos of
boxes and reading test reports. Lots of schematics, block diagrams,
and real specifications. Anyway, I trashed about 2 hours trying to
find the Zyxel (ZyAir) B-4000. Nothing.
>Yes, I'm putting hotspots in some businesses.
Yep. Lots of ways to do that. See list below.
>No, billing is really not an issue. My biggest desire is to have
>users initially redirected to a designated page, then let them go
>free.
That's a common feature where port 80 gets redirected to local web
server with a signup page. See NoCatAuth at:
http://nocat.net
>Oh, and I want the wireless folks to never see the hardwired
>network.
Swell. I posted a rant on various ways to do that last week. Digging
on Google:
http://www.google.com/groups?selm=ok6rd05dskhorur3v4hndmpsfn36mt7v2o%404ax.com
There are probably other ways, but those are the ones I concocted for
the ocassion.
>I have read a bit about the WRT54G mods and I believe the splashpage
>part is part of the package. I don't know if all the effort is worth
>it. Any feedback here?
We have a group using those for free hotspots in the People's
Republiic of Santa Cruz at:
http://www.thirdbreak.org
Lots of other people doing it judging by the huge traffic on various
mailing list. It does have one advantage in that it concentrates
quite a bit of server related features into the access point for very
little cost. That's not the way I like to do things. I prefer a
brain dead wireless bridge connected to a more intelligent and
capeable server. Having the radio seperate from the
router/firewall/authentication/yadah-yadah allows versatility,
flexibility in choice of radio, and ease of locating the radio (away
from the router/switch where all the CAT5 LAN wires meet).
WRT54G router links.
http://www.portless.net/ewrt/index.html
http://openwrt.ksilebo.net
http://www.seattlewireless.net/index.cgi/LinksysWrt54g
http://www.batbox.org/wrt54g-linux.html
http://nocat.net/wiki/
http://wifi-box.sourceforge.net
Another all your eggs in one box solution are SBC (single board
computahs) designed for wireless applications. One such manufacturer
is conventiently located in the People Replublic of Santa Cruz (so
they get a plug):
http://www.soekris.com
One to three ethernet ports, one or two radios, compact flash
filesystem, runs Linux, fairly cheap. Also used by BAWRN (Bay Area
Wireless Reseach Network):
http://www.barwn.org/docs/BARWN_outdoor_router.pdf
There are other boards that will work but this is the only one I've
played with.
What I've been doing is fairly weird. I find that strip malls with
coffee shops tend to have neighboring shops that want internet access
but don't want to see each others networks. The usual and most
expensive solution is to get 5ea static IP's and 5 routers shared on
one DSL line. For routers, I've been using Freesco:
http://www.freesco.org
which supports up to 10 ethernet cards. The 802.11b wireless gets one
port. Bluetooth gets another. Metricom goes on the serial port (PPP
login). The other ports go to various seperate businesses. DHCP
delivers seperate class c IP blocks to each business and radio.
If that sounds like too much work or too messy, there are ready to run
solutions on Sourceforge.net. Go to:
http://sourceforge.net/search
and inscribe the word "hotspot" as the seach key. Looks like 5 good
and 5 more so-so solutions.
Gotta run...
--
Jeff Liebermann jeffl@comix.santa-cruz.ca.us
150 Felker St #D
http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 AE6KS 831-336-2558