Free WiFi Fair Use

[Epiphany74]

I offer free wifi in my coffee shop. This has attracted lots of good customers, but also a few who take the p**s. They might nurse one cup of coffee for hours, use up a table designed to seat four, and plug into my 'lekky without any regard to my bills or to the fact that their leads are trailing across my floor. Can you suggest a few reasonable points to put on a "Fair Use" policy?

[daffy654]

I would put a notice up saying that all WiFi users must have their own power source(battery) and are only allowed one hour of use in any 3 hour period.The trailing leads are a health and safety issue and you could be sued if someone falls over them as you are the business owner.Can you have a designated seating area for them as well?

[fo3nix]

What you want is a ccomputer set up (it's not that hard) to run this:
http://www.publicip.net/

A computer to run this could be found second-hand for under �50, and the software from that website is free.

It allows you to give users special access rights to your network, in a fairly simple way. So, people outside your shop can't use your connection for free. Those that go to your counter and pay for a drink can be given an access code, so they can get online. You could limit their time to 1 hour.

Then could then buy another drink or a snack or something to get another hour of wifi, with a new access code.

It's used in quite a few public libraries, and seems to be pretty successful.

[Phantaxus]

Thanks fo3nix handy site