Sharing Wireless Connection?

izzop · 2 Feb 2011 at 14:57

Hi,

A friend of mine wants to offer free WiFi within their cafe.

They have a BT connection running from the office, which has one PC on it (wired), in addition to this they have a till connected to the network, again wired.

Using a Linksys WAP54G Access Point they'd like to offer customers the wifi.

What would be the best way to do this?

Obviously just having the Access Point as open will do it, but how secure would the rest of the network be i.e. PC and Till?

I know it could be configured to ask for a key, but once the key is entered it's still open, right?

The PC and Till are on a network and both are password protected with no public shares.

Any thoughts on finding a happy medium between offering this to the public and the security of other things connected to the BT hub?

Thoughts very much welcome.....

Regards

Syx · 2 Feb 2011 at 17:03

I might be way off here, but won't putting the AP onto a different subnet and leaving the gateway pointing at the router solve this problem? I believe that the Linksys firmware allows you to specify exactly those details.

izzop · 2 Feb 2011 at 20:50

Syx said:
I might be way off here, but won't putting the AP onto a different subnet and leaving the gateway pointing at the router solve this problem? I believe that the Linksys firmware allows you to specify exactly those details.

Not sure, but I will give this a go.

tntcoder · 2 Feb 2011 at 21:10

Yer if you whack it on a different subnet with NAT then it should be fine, I think you would have to compromise the Linksys firmware in order to compromise the LAN.

The best way though (especially when payment terminals are involved) is to air gap the networks. VLANs might also be another option for you, don't know if your kit supports them or not.

paradigm · 2 Feb 2011 at 22:04

The linksys WAP54G supports installation of the DDWRT firmware.

http://www.dd-wrt.com/site/support/router-database

Install that instead of the linksys firmware, and then configure a second disjointed wireless network on a different subnet.

Or even configure one of the built in hotspot or advertisement supported wireless network options (if you want your customers to have to log-in).