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Creating a wifi setup at a hotel

(12 posts)
  • Started 7 months ago by bvicritter
  • Latest reply from Enthusiast
  • Topic Viewed 666 times

bvicritter
Posts: 3

I hope someone here can help with an answer to this...

We own a hotel and have wifi for the guests... not free of charge. We currently ask guest to use the "honor system" and let us know when they use the internet so we can charge for it appropriately. Obviously, that doesn't work.

So, the guestion is... is there a way to give guests individul passwords for their stay? Say they come to the front desk, pay for 1 hour of internet total, we give them their own password, but it will stop working after 1 hour of internet time or something?

Would love help with this.

Posted 7 months ago #
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Lighthouse
Lighthouse
Posts: 13598

bvicritter hi. As far as I know, you can't. It's possible on a wired connection with a special router I do know.

Posted 7 months ago #
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raphoenix
raphoenix
Posts: 14920

This sounds so [ 1960s ] when hotels use to charge folks extra for a TV or Telephone in a room.

May be come up with a better overall room pricing plan or your competitors could soon put you out of business.

Posted 7 months ago #
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Lighthouse
Lighthouse
Posts: 13598

btw. how many rooms ?

Posted 7 months ago #
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whs
whs
Posts: 17584

This is really a very bad idea. I avoid hotels that charge for WiFi even if I have to go to the next town to sleep. Unless you have a very exclusive location - like THE hotel in Death Valley - I would really not recommend doing that.

Leave a box at the reception where guests can make a 'WiFi donation' and give the money to charity.

Posted 7 months ago #
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bvicritter
Posts: 3

wow.... well we are one of the few hotels that actaully has internet, so ... ya. no phones in the rooms either.

Posted 7 months ago #
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whs
whs
Posts: 17584

I am curious - in what part of the world is your hotel.

Posted 7 months ago #
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afuhnk
afuhnk
Posts: 309

Well... there are tons of places where internet is not cheap or easily accessible.
I'm guessing the British Virgin Islands is one of those places.

You could use mac adress filtering to allow access for limited time. Just set wifi security with a key (wep, wap) AND, and that part is VERY important, enable mac adress filtering.
This would be a pain, though, as you would need to add their mac adress to your router before they can access and delete them after the hour is over.

So.. yeah.. huge pain, but it can be done.

Posted 7 months ago #
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bvicritter
Posts: 3

only mac or can it be done for pc?

Posted 7 months ago #
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afuhnk
afuhnk
Posts: 309

The 'Mac Address' is an address assigned to devices that connect to lan/wan.
PCs, Macs, SmartPhones, eBook readers etc all have a Mac Address.
So if your customer wants WiFi for his laptop, smartphone and ipad, you would need the Mac Adress of the 3 devices, add those addresses to your wifi's allowed list, and delete them once they reached the limit (1 hour, 2 hours, whatever you offer / they pay for).

Here's a link that tells you more about it. (link allowed, hopefully).
http://compnetworking.about.co.....ddress.htm

Here's one very useful post from TheGeek himself:
http://www.howtogeek.com/68403.....intrusion/
Scroll down to
Filter Network Access by MAC Address

Posted 7 months ago #
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Lighthouse
Lighthouse
Posts: 13598

Link is fine :)

Posted 7 months ago #
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Enthusiast
Enthusiast
Posts: 566

bvicritter,

The MAC address is not something that refers to Apple Macintosh computers. Short for "Media Access Control" address, the MAC address is a hardware address that uniquely identifies each piece of equipment. PC's, Mac's, routers, printers, network interface cards, etc. all have a MAC address to uniquely identify them on the network.

afuhnk's suggestion may be the most workable, least expensive solution for you. If you have any questions about it's implementation, ask and we will try to get you up and running with it.

Posted 7 months ago #
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