wif network for internet cafe advice

Superficial

Superficial

Superficial

Soldato
Joined
29 Oct 2002
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Location
London
Hi there,

A friend of mine is opening an internet cafe and wants a solid, reliable solution for allowing customers (potentially 15-20 concurrent) to do basic browsing and emails.

are there any reasonbly priced recommendations from anyone regarding an router + access point solution?

thanks
 
20 Clients is not really a big number, any half decent consumer AP can deal with that.

What I would be more concerned with is the feature set of the device, i.e. can you easily isolate each wireless client from another and block their communication with the rest of the wired LAN beyond what is needed for internet access, does it support any kind of client authentication from a RADIUS server etc. which will be needed if it is being integrated into some kind of billing system.

My choice for this sort of thing would always be a Cisco Aironet device, with the 1240 being the current product, I've also had good experience of using HP's access points and a few Proxim ones too. These are though all enterprise devices and have a price tag to match.

I believe there are firmwares around for the WRT54GL that let you turn it into a fully fledged little wifi hotspot with a pay pall type billing system built in, that could be a very cheap alternative to doing it with "proper" hardware.
 
Thanks for this - you've been very helpful indeed.

Ive been looking in the linksys and think the hot spot firmware looks grand so were going to try this first and see how it goes. we're Considering a procurve with draytek router if it cant handle the job.

thanks again.
 
If it's for a net café, wouldn't it be cheaper / less hassle to get a switch or two and run some ethernet cable?
 
Mattus said:
If it's for a net café, wouldn't it be cheaper / less hassle to get a switch or two and run some ethernet cable?
Click to expand...

Not really if people want to walk in, sit down with a coffee open their laptop up and get some wifi ala Starbucks. :)

@ Superficial

The ProCurve 420 AP's are pretty good, have most of the features that the Cisco ones do bar a few of their proprietary or more advanced featuers (which you more than likely wont need).

The RF component of the Cisco is still king though, so if you're going to be expecting it to go through a few thick walls or up a couple of floors then I would look at spending the money on an Aironet with some decent antenna.
 
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