Hotspot Gateway with Captive Portal

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Eric1066
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Hotspot Gateway with Captive Portal

Post by Eric1066 » Mon Sep 04, 2017 10:11 am

Hi,
I am not a technical person, and can't seem to find what I am looking for in Google. My Broadband provider is equally useless. So I need help.

I run a small coffeeshop, I want to offer free wifi to my customers but I want them to log on with an email address. My broadband provider tells me that the router I have doesn't do this and that I should get a piece of equipment which attaches to the router via ethernet and that deals with the captive portal. However looking online I can't seem to find such a thing. But not knowing what it is called equally doesn't help.

My question here is how do I do this cheaply. Is there a box that I buy that does this or do I need a new router that does this. If both exist which is cheaper, like insaid we are a small shop.

Thank you so much for all and any help!
Eric.
mstombs
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Re: Hotspot Gateway with Captive Portal

Post by mstombs » Mon Sep 04, 2017 7:33 pm

You are correct to ask (but a bit quiet around here) - many places just use domestic routers and just give out the wifi password - this can be a security issue for you or your customers, and can be against Ts and Cs of your broadband connection, you may be responsible for what users do using your connection! Consider a totally separate connection for customer use. Asus routers usually have a built-in 'guest wifi' which uses router code to keep your guests away from your own machines, printers and servers etc. Many hotels seem to use custom variants of dd-wrt 3rd party firmware which provides 'Captive Portals' to provide a custom Hotspot. This article a bit old but hope it helps with search terms.

http://www.wi-fiplanet.com/tutorials/ar ... DD-WRT.htm
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Alan
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Re: Hotspot Gateway with Captive Portal

Post by Alan » Tue Sep 05, 2017 7:32 am

Have a look at Ubiquiti products, they do the equipment you are looking for.

www.broadbandbuyer.co.uk sell them, and they are very good at giving advice on which equipment will best suit your needs.
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