Starting my new biz in my country

[jsd]

Hello,

I want to start this business in my country providing internet access in malls/hotels.

Nobody is offering wifi in my country...i think i'll be the first.

But i need advice..im going to start with a mall first, in the food court. and then the lobby of a hotel.

What router do you recommend? I'm considering lynksys router. Is this a good choice? If so, how to increase the signal?

What's the difference between access point and antenna.??

I want this thread to learn the hardware first..then i'll evaluate the software and other things..

So, i'll order ADSL in a small room close to food court.

Then attach a proxy server running linux/squid to the adsl and then attach the linksys router to the proxy.

Then what?

[Aiakos]

I want to start this business What's the difference between access point and antenna.??

Whoa there!! ;)

I would start learning the basics before I threw much money at this. A good place to start is here (http://wi-fiplanet.com). You could also jump over to wifinetnews (http://wifinetnews.com).

A good certification is CWNA (http://www.cwne.com/cwna/)

What's the difference between access point and antenna.??

An access point is kinda like a hub. An antenna is what distributes the signal.
here (http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/cc/pd/witc/ao1200ap/index.shtml) is an access point
here (http://www.hyperlinktech.com/web/hg2404cu.php) is an antenna.

access points come with antennas, but you can also add them if you want different coverage than the stock one provides.

Then what?

Well it depends. Are setting this up as a value added service for the mall (free) or will you be billing the users? If you want to bill people it can get pretty complicated and maybe someone else can help you out with that (you can search for "hotspot in a box" (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=%22hotspot+in+a+box%22) in the mean time though).

The AP-2500 (http://www.proxim.com/products/wifi/ap/ap2500/index.html) might be worth a gander as it has a captive portal and DAT.

For a linux captive portal NoCat (http://nocat.net/) is pretty much the defacto standard.
For a Windows portal check out ControlAP (http://www.controlap.com/index.html).

You might look at Birdsteps software (http://www.birdstep.com/wireless_infrastructure/index.php3) also.


hope some of this helps.