Open Wifi in a Small Business

Trojan Horse · 16 Apr 2017 at 15:01

Is there a better way of creating a small public wifi hotspot for customers that enter a small business, than to simply disable the wifi password to the router?

Caged · 16 Apr 2017 at 15:03

bledd · 16 Apr 2017 at 15:26

Expand. Tell us the setup,nature of the business and location, or is it in a city centre etc?

Trojan Horse · 18 Apr 2017 at 11:25

bledd said:
Expand. Tell us the setup,nature of the business and location, or is it in a city centre etc?

Just a restaurant that wants to provide free wifi to customers in a safe way

MonsterMoshi · 18 Apr 2017 at 11:55

In first.
Ubiquiti.

Armageus · 18 Apr 2017 at 12:16

MonsterMoshi said:
In first.
Ubiquiti.

Just to expand on this - specifically you use the guest portal facility. Ideally you also want to capture some user details for purposes of accountability e.g. if someone visits inappropriate sites via your internet connection.

https://help.ubnt.com/hc/en-us/articles/115000166827-UniFi-Wireless-Guest-Network-Setup

bledd · 18 Apr 2017 at 12:26

Trojan Horse said:
Just a restaurant that wants to provide free wifi to customers in a safe way

Give more information..

Is it a lone building on a dirt track road?
Middle of a busy city centre, surrounded by passers by?

Sp00n · 18 Apr 2017 at 12:33

What is your current equipment, it may already have guest network abilities?

Trojan Horse · 18 Apr 2017 at 12:47

Sp00n said:
What is your current equipment, it may already have guest network abilities?

It's XLN technicolor not sure of the make. I'll have to check it out.

Sp00n · 18 Apr 2017 at 13:12

Quick Google suggests that they do have multiple SSID/guest ability but without a captive portal.

Steveocee · 18 Apr 2017 at 18:59

UniFi guest network paired off with a Spotipo portal for data capture. Brilliant setup and you can grab a recurring charge to the client for "cloud hosting" of the controller and data capture portal. Clients like it when you sell them bits of the "cloud"

teaboy5 · 18 Apr 2017 at 20:57

Just get a Cisco Meraki device and job done. Attend of their demos and get a free one for 3 years. Gives you access to the dashboard which lets you do a lot of things around a guest network.

APM · 18 Apr 2017 at 22:39

Use the business name as the password?

Caged · 18 Apr 2017 at 23:11

Speak to The Cloud (Sky) and get them to do it all for you. You don't want the headache of being liable for whatever the connection gets used for.

bremen1874 · 18 Apr 2017 at 23:21

I'd completely agree. A managed service has got to be a better option than a DIY approach, especially where skills are limited.

Orcvader · 19 Apr 2017 at 14:48

Steveocee said:
UniFi guest network paired off with a Spotipo portal for data capture. Brilliant setup and you can grab a recurring charge to the client for "cloud hosting" of the controller and data capture portal. Clients like it when you sell them bits of the "cloud"

Exactly what I've done for one of the restaurants the company I work for supports (apart from the cloud hosting, we have a local server), they wanted it cheap so went with this way. But my supervisor wasn't really happy with setting it up and recommended going with O2/The cloud/BT to the boss for the new restaurant chain.

Steveocee · 21 Apr 2017 at 10:57

Orcvader said:
Exactly what I've done for one of the restaurants the company I work for supports (apart from the cloud hosting, we have a local server), they wanted it cheap so went with this way. But my supervisor wasn't really happy with setting it up and recommended going with O2/The cloud/BT to the boss for the new restaurant chain.

I was really happy with the Spotipo solution but recently they've gone a bit "upmarket" and added a paid for option so I feel the free option will dwindle and suffer. It's a real shame Ubiquiti don't build this in as standard.

Deleted member 77746 · 22 Apr 2017 at 07:55

MonsterMoshi said:
In first.
Ubiquiti.