offering free wifi

[Oneeyedvic]

I live opposite a public park and I would like to offer free wifi to the park users.

What I want is:
a) people to see that there is sn 'unsecured' website for them to connect to (like Btopenzone offer)
b) when they connect by wifi, it will go to my landing page
c) people will need to login, (after creating an account with a valid email address) and can only then connect to the internet
d) There will be a time limit of 1 hour
e) I need to protect myself from people downloading dodgy software

Any ideas / advice etc greatly appreciated

[ChuckFickens]

Very commendable and I have done similar at home before (though I didn't require people to login)

The easy way to do it (though doesn't quite satisfy all your points) if to use the BTfon service, for a small price you can buy the btfon router which gives others the ability to use your connection and also enable you to use any other BTfon acess point in the country (there are loads about!)

http://www.btfon.com/...end?partner=btfonjoin

The harder way would be to setup a dedicated gateway to manage the service, this would require a high level of knowledge on your part and isn't really something that can easily be covered on here.

[Oneeyedvic]

Hi Chuck - I wanted to do it with hotspot software. I am fairly techy and think that this would be within my abilities - I really just need a starting point (site links etc)

[ChuckFickens]

http://reviews.cnet.c...6603_7-5023845-1.html

http://www.hotspotsystem.com/

I personally done it with a linux based computer running as a caching proxy server, if you use this method then if you turn on the "need authentication" setting for the proxy people would need to supply a username and password to use the net.

this is the version of linux I run for doing it.

http://www.clearfound...oftware/overview.html

[Oneeyedvic]

Fantastic stuff - many thanks