Wireless in holiday lets

[RTFM]

Hi all,

 

Not sure if this is the right place to post this but i wondered if anyone could give me some advice.

 

My inlaws are in the process of converting some garages on their land into holiday lets, when finished they would like to be able to offer free wi-fi. The lets wont have phone lines so wont be able to setup wifi access that way.

 

There is currently broadband to the main house but the signal doesnt reach the area where the holiday lets will be (it barely covers the house itself infact!).

 

What would be the best / easiest / securest way to get around all of this? I also wondered what people thought about allowing guests onto the house's broadband using the wirless key on the main router (this could be changed every time a guest leaves......but is it that secure to have them on there in the first place?).

 

Any advice or experience people might have with this would be appreciated.

 

 

Thanks a lot

[witch]

Wouldnt it be best to set up broadband for the holiday lets? Maybe to one of them and then a wireless connection would reach all the others as well?

[Ric_]

You need an AUP for the guests and a way of separating them from the home's network. Easiest thing to do is build a little mini-ITX box and run something like Smoothwall Express with a captive portal plugin. The guests will then be directed to an AUP page before being able to browse the web. Some of the projects even allow for charging via credit card.

 

To get the signal to the lets, it's probably going to be easiest to buy a reel of external-grade CAT-5 and route that to an AP within the lets somewhere.

[cookie_monster]

You could bridge 2 AP's the one at the holiday let end can act as an AP as well as part of the bridge this might cost less than installing a new line. I think you can have multiple SSIDs so your guests will use different encryption to the house.

 

DrayTek Vigor AP-700 Wireless Access Point

 

http://www.broadbandbuyer.co.uk/Shop/ShopDetail.asp?ProductID=8094

Edited April 23, 2010 by cookie_monster

[RTFM]

Wouldnt it be best to set up broadband for the holiday lets? Maybe to one of them and then a wireless connection would reach all the others as well?

 

The problem with that would mean getting BT out to add a phone line. They used to be garages so there isnt one there and i dont like the thought of how much this would cost.....

[limbo]

You could force the home page to be an intranet page of adverts - which could help ofset the cost. Charge a local pub or tourist attraction £100 a year to be on the intranet page and that would cover a big chunk of the cost.

[RTFM]

been chatting to my director of IT here at school and he was saying he thinks it would be best to try and keep it seperate from the main house broadband if possible and also to see into setting up a 'ticket' system which creates a one time use password.

 

he was mentioning the fact that mixing traffic from guests and the main house could have comeback if the guests were (worst case scenario) looking into things or downloading things they shouldnt.....this is a very good point and whilst yes it is worst case scenario, its always best to cover yourself isnt it.

 

anyone got any experience with these 'ticket machine' type systems that prints a one use password? having used them before from a customer point of view i know you are auto navigated to a portal to input the password and you then have x amount of time depending how much you purchased.....

[plexer]

I agree that getting a connection out there would be best.

 

Possibly have multiple ssids one for each let then you only have to change 1 key at a time when they leave otherwise you may inconvenience others guests?

 

Ben

[RTFM]

I agree that getting a connection out there would be best.

 

Possibly have multiple ssids one for each let then you only have to change 1 key at a time when they leave otherwise you may inconvenience others guests?

 

Ben

 

good point, if one guest leaves and another is still there who is using the key and it changes, that would be a pain.

 

thanks a lot to everyone so far for the replies, lots of good ideas so thanks!!!

[srochford]

Would certainly be worth asking how much BT would charge to install a new line - it might not be that much. I haven't done this for ages but the annoying thing used to be that there was a flat charge for an install whether that meant running cables for a few miles or just enabling it at the exchange for an existing wire which had been disconnected. If this is still the case then it's not too expensive.

[plexer]

Doing it with a ssid for each let would also mean that you may have some comeback on who was doing what and when, at the end of the day if a guest was doing somethign they shouldn't and the police came round you would have information on everyone which could have been using the internet at the time and everyone would have to be investigated.

 

If you look at the smoothwall or other filtering proxy solutions then you would have log files of what people have been looking at.

 

Ben

[cookie_monster]

Of course if you use BT already you could offer the FON service to people other providers also offer this and it's what it's designed for.

 

BT | FON