How to Set up a Wifi Hot Spot
Whenever you are passing a big hotel or a bank, take a moment and sit on a bench to turn on your laptop. You will find a “Hotel Name Free Access” internet network, which is a wireless network that is open for people in the area, or in other words for hotel residents. This is what you would call a wifi hot spot.
This doesn’t mean that you should belong to a great company to have the opportunity of creating a hot-spot. In fact, if your home network is not secured it can also be considered a sort of wifi hot spot because it allows access to people that pass your house. But when setting up a wireless home hot spot you should do it in a secure way.
Let’s say you want to provide free wi-fi access to people in your apartment building. There are of course ways to make money out of this, is you have the necessary equipment to install and really provide a big range hot spot. If you wish to bill people for traffic on your hot-spot, you can turn to hotspot billing software programs that monitor the incoming and outgoing traffic for each client that connects and then allows you to elaborate a pay system at the end of your proffered pay period (month, week). You will need to be able to allocate enough broadband connections and speed internet to those wanting to use your hotspot service. The easier hotspot solution is presented below, but you will need to device on the range of the access points, on the hotspot billing program and on paid hotspot services you are going to offer.
However, before you start you will need to make sure that your internet provider allows paid internet sharing of your connection, because others are going to connect to your services through wireless and LAN networks and then access the internet through your provided gateway, from various ips that correspond to their computers, and you need to know if your IPS allows this.
The first step is determining the dimensions of the area you are going to offer traffic to. People that are in that area should be able to connect with no problems using their laptops or other wireless devices. For a residential perimeter, a configuration formed by a high broadband antenna, a router that is quite capable and if needed a network repeater should do the trick.
Then you have to choose the type of the antenna you are going to use. The router’s antenna usually covers the lengths of one or two apartments, so for an entire building you need a bigger one. Omni-Directional antennas that operate on low frequencies will offer 360 radius coverage and a more stable traffic, as they are less susceptible to interference. Then attach the antenna to the router. Mae sure it fits to the router’s model and type before you purchase it.
If you are looking to cover longer distances, then you will need to install additional access points and even an external outside antenna, which will provide internet access from above, and therefore encounter less interference from internal objects. The easiest solution to mount such an antenna is to wire it to the router whit a connection cable that can travel till up the building.
Finally, the network needs to be protected. You can do this by protecting it with a standard user name and password that you give out to the public. To protect your personal information it’s better to make sure this shared hot spot has nothing to do with your usual LAN network that you use to enter the internet. The easiest solution is to buy a Guest Networking router that allows you private network to stay private while also allowing the internet access to be shared.
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