Any WiFi Hotspot is an location that has WiFi access to the Internet. The word Hotspot is now used reciprocally for the both the area the location where the signal is available and the unit (WiFi Router or Wi-fi Access Point) that is transmissions the signal. Likewise often the terms "WiFi Router" and also "WiFi Access Point" (AP) are often used interchangeably. Positive aspects setting up a Hotspot System inside a Coffee shop is that normally one particular WiFi router will cover the complete building so it's not very sophisticated to set-up. Wireless routers can now be bought for around fifty dollars so setting up a Hotspot won't need to be expensive. The only additional thing you would need is the DSL or cable link with your shop. Depending on your city these normally cost close to $30/mo.
The easiest way to setup any Hotspot is to set the actual router wireless security options as "Disabled" or "Open". That would allow everyone entry, but how can you control the volume of bandwidth a customer uses or maybe how long they spend on-line?
One option would be to established a WPA or WEP key on the router and present that to your customers. That will stop people in the community using your connection but will not allow you to set time restrictions on how long your customers can spend online. In order to do that you need a hosted or standalone "Captive Portal" this is a particularly modified WiFi router that will appears as an Open as well as Unencrypted WiFi signal but redirects any traffic to a certain web page called a "Splash Page" where your often questioned to login or obtain internet access.
Although a twin band router will allow you numerous options for delivering wireless indication in your home or office, the particular 5GHz signal frequency has many caveats. Firstly, the 5GHz frequency won't let your internet signal travel as far as some sort of 2 . 4GHz frequency indicate will. Since most common house appliances don't operate in the 5GHz frequency range, you can run into less interference which can be nice, but you won't be capable of take advantage of that signal coming from too far away. The other in order to this, is that not all wi-fi devices are capable of accepting a new 5GHz wireless signal, thus not every device you own will take advantage of the added frequency, learn more.
Put captive portals are often offered free of charge to business owners in trade for a share of the earnings from the hotspot. With a put solution your customer becomes redirected to the servers in the WiFi Company and has to purchase Internet access online. Standalone attentive portals are normally sold downright to the business owner and allow one to generate tickets, which you can offer (or give) to your consumers. Each ticket allows Access to the internet for a defined amount of time. A pleasant thing to do is to give your consumer a free 30-min ticket with all the first coffee they acquire, then if they want to keep online longer they need to get back to the counter and buy one more ticket, or another coffee.