Hello, I own a little cafe in a town called Cromer(England) and I was wondering how I would setup a wifi connection using my current router but so I could make it require no pass key but it re directs them to a website where they can sign up or login, and until they login they cant view any other site..
All help is welcomed and thanked for.
You probably won't be able to do this with a typical consumer router. You will likely need a commercial wireless system that supports Captive Portal. If you're really brave, you could try an open source firmware (if one is available for your router), which may support this concept, but this really requires a lot of technical knowledge.
For instance, Linksys's cheapest business Access Point is $299 US and supports Captive Portal.
Linksys LAPAC1200 Business AC1200 Dual-Band Access Point
Alternatively, your ISP might offer a business router as well.
Hi there
@Ace Denning
Not quite true --- of course it depends on the size of your café and max nr of customers that are likely to want to use the wifi connection at the same time.
If it's less than say 12 and you have decent broadband (would need to be proper fibre cable -- UK seems to be quite slow in rolling this out in places where BT seems to be the biggest players) plus you'd need an unlimited connection you could basically just set up a domestic connection with a bog standard router and have no password on the SSID - although I'd always set up a password - just give it to customers when they ask for it.
This won't be of much use if customers want to start streaming UHD (4K) sports etc but you'll probably find its people playing around on phones and tablets so you might get away with it.
Once you start going into the fully blown commercial area it could cost "Loadsmoney". There never seems to be decent options for small businesses -- pricing and kit usually is fine for Home (domestic) consumers and large businesses - but small 1 / 2 man type operations are rarely provided for.
I'd tend to start with the domestic route to see what the demand is like -- then if the demand is high enough you could think about upgrading equipment etc. Don't commit too much money until you've got an idea of the demand / success of the venture.
It's quite tough in the UK for small businesses -- I'm there quite a lot and while the economy seems (as far as the Politicians say) reasonable - I know small businesses especially outside London can find it tough going.
Cheers
jimbo
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