Build your own hot spot
By Dong Ngo
If you go to the CBS Interactive building at 235 Second Street in San Francisco and turn on your laptop, you will find an access point called “CBS_Interactive_Public” that offers free wireless Internet access. That’s a typical example of a hot spot.
However, it doesn’t take a tech news company or even an organization to create a hot spot. You can do it by yourself. It’s easy and fun, and–if you want–you may even make money from it.
In the last few years, the amount of devices that have built-in Wi-Fi has increased tremendously. In fact, despite the economic downturn, the sales of Wi-Fi chipsets have been constantly rising.
However, the Wi-Fi feature of these devices is useless on the go, unless there’s a hot spot.
What’s a hot spot?
In general, a hot spot provides users’ unfettered access to the Internet via one or more wireless access points.
The cost for using a public or private hot spot can vary. For example, CBS Interactive’s headquarters, or many schools or community centers in big cities like San Francisco or New York, offer this service for free. Companies, such as T-Mobile, hotels, or other organizations may charge membership fees.
We’ll tell you how to set up your own hot spot, from determining your coverage area to installing and controlling access to your network. However, before we begin, make sure your ISP lets you share your Internet connection. Some companies don’t care, while it may be a violation of your Terms of Service with others.
Who you want to connect Where you want them to connect What your ISP’s connection-sharing policy is for your service Which network resources on your network require protection from hot-spot usersFollow these five steps
Step 1
Determine hot-spot coverage: The goal of a hot spot is to cover a public area with an 802.11 signal. Most of the decisions about how and where to mount your access point and what antenna to use will depend on your desired coverage area.
For small areas close to the physical location of your access point, a standard device such as one offered by your service provider or any wireless routers you can get off-the-shelf would do the job. Among those reviewed by CNET, Draft N (or 802.11n or Wireless-N) routers are faster and offer larger coverage than 802.11g routers.
However, if you want to provide coverage to a municipal park a mile away, you will need to attach a more sensitive antenna and establish a line-of-site connection between your access point and the hot-spot location.
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Wireless standard | |
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| 802.11 | Operates at 2.4GHz; the lowest common denominator of the IEEE wireless LAN standards; provides bandwidth of only 1Mbps; equipment based on this older standard may be hard to find. | |||||
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| 802.11b | Operates at 2.4GHz; backward compatible with the older 802.11 standard; delivers bandwidth of up to 11Mbps. This once-popular standard is becoming obsolete and routers/access points based on this standard are hard to find. | |||||
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| 802.11g | Operates at 2.4GHz; delivers bandwidth of up to 54Mbps; backward compatible with 802.11b; currently has the largest user base, especially in mobile handheld applications. | |||||
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| 802.11n | Also called Draft N; operates at 2.4GHz and 5GHz ; currently a draft specification awaiting ratification by the IEEE; delivers bandwidth of up to 300Mbps; backward compatible with 802.11g and b (when operated at 2.4Ghz); we expect this standard to co-exist with 802.11g as the standards of choice. | |||||
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| Bluetooth | Operates at 2.4GHz; is a short-range, low-bandwidth solution designed to connect peripheral devices without the use of cables; is not compatible with any of the above standards; is not well suited for hot-spot deployment. | |||||
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Step 2
This entry was posted in Business Blog, Computers/Networks, Networking, WIFI and tagged 802.11, 802.11g, 802.11n, Bluetooth, Dlink, ISP, WIFI. Bookmark the permalink.
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