How to open my Wifi to public?

Forums › New Zealand Mobile and Wireless › How to open my Wifi to public?

spoonboy

84 posts

Master Geek

Topic # 99428 19-Mar-2012 14:01

Hi All,
I have around 20-30Gb not consumed internet traffic per month that I would be happy to donate to a public. My apartment is on a first flow of the building with a park and all the activities just across the road so I assume there will be some demand for the wifi there. Honestly speaking, I'm playing with my kids there regularly, so I would be the first user ;-).
Anyway, the question now is what would be the best way to configure this?
Basically, I have a telecom BBA with Thomson wifi modem and a few devices connected via ethernet and wifi. I'd like to separate my home network from the public one as much as possible. As well, I need to limit the traffic somehow so that it wouldn't be more than let's say 30Gb a month.
I'm planning to utilize my DIR-615 (http://www.dlink.com/products/?pid=565) that hasn't been used for about a year now as an access point. As well, I can run linux or something not too heavy on my PC in a virtual machine if necessary.
The easiest thing that come to my mind is to configure VPN straight in the router but where to connect? As well, I couldn't find any easy tool to control the traffic limit.
Another question is about legitimacy of opening your internet to public. I mean, is there something in the telecom contract that prohibits doing so?
Any ideas/suggestions?
Thanks,

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Reply # 597146 19-Mar-2012 14:11

My admittedly limited understanding of the skynet law (Copyright (Infringing File Sharing) Amendment Act 2011) is that you would be liable for any copyright infringement committed using your shared wifi... That would be my biggest concern if I were you. Would be interested in hearing from more people in the know though :)

spoonboy

84 posts

Master Geek

Reply # 597156 19-Mar-2012 14:24

Well, I was thinking about this as well. May be it would be usefull to put some page where user checks a button that he agrees with the terms bla-bla before he could use the wifi. But anyway, with this amount of the traffic this is not my main worry. As well I hope that if someone wish to write some angry email to a white house he'll do this from mcdonald or starbucks :-).

MG1976

43 posts

Geek

Reply # 597159 19-Mar-2012 14:27

Have you looked into tomizone?

spoonboy

84 posts

Master Geek

Reply # 597172 19-Mar-2012 14:44

I've briefly browsed though their site, thanks for the pointing.
Well, basically, the whole idea is to make it absolutely free. I don't want to do any money or other commerce related things on that. Generally, I hate that when you're looking for some wifi access just to check your emails or read a book and find only paid services while in many countries you may easily find free wifi networks especially in urban areas. Indeed, there are free wifi zones in nz but the coverage is very limited.

Zeon

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Reply # 597173 19-Mar-2012 14:52

That stupid asss skynet law - seriously....

That aside technically your best bet would probably be to put in something like PFsense on an old computer. You could then have a separate subnet for your internal network and a separate subnet for the part network. Just firewall your internal network from the external one.

You can also do captive portal which means whenever someone tries to go online it brings up a page where you can put a message (and maybe advertising to make some $$) as well as limiting the usage of their sessions sot hey don't use all your cap.

freitasm

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Reply # 597174 19-Mar-2012 14:54

spoonboy: Well, I was thinking about this as well. May be it would be usefull to put some page where user checks a button that he agrees with the terms bla-bla before he could use the wifi. But anyway, with this amount of the traffic this is not my main worry. As well I hope that if someone wish to write some angry email to a white house he'll do this from mcdonald or starbucks :-).

Regardless of the traffic, and regardless of your service having a checkbox, you are still responsible. Even if they download just one kilobyte, if that's logged and a complaint is sent to your ISP, you will be responsible and it will count against your account.

Mauricio Freitas (Geekzone Admin, Devil's Advocate, my blog, technology disclosure)

spoonboy

84 posts

Master Geek

Reply # 597182 19-Mar-2012 14:58

MG1976: Have you looked into tomizone?

As well, I've checked that the revision of the DIR-615 I have (B2) is not supported by the tomizone firmware.

stevenz

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Reply # 597184 19-Mar-2012 15:01

Essentially you would become an ISP and suitably liable. I wouldn't want to risk it.

If you were going to do this, you might want to setup a VPN on the router so that if people _did_ download copyrighted material, it'd be a lot harder to identify it. That will make things a fair bit slower potentially, plus you'd probably need to pay for a VPN account (often only around $10/month though).

Maybe put up a poster and get interested parties to contact you for login details so at least you have _some_ control over it. Then maybe setup QOS if the router supports it so that people don't cripple your connection.

@KnightNZ

spoonboy

84 posts

Master Geek

Reply # 597196 19-Mar-2012 15:17

freitasm:
spoonboy: Well, I was thinking about this as well. May be it would be usefull to put some page where user checks a button that he agrees with the terms bla-bla before he could use the wifi. But anyway, with this amount of the traffic this is not my main worry. As well I hope that if someone wish to write some angry email to a white house he'll do this from mcdonald or starbucks :-).

Regardless of the traffic, and regardless of your service having a checkbox, you are still responsible. Even if they download just one kilobyte, if that's logged and a complaint is sent to your ISP, you will be responsible and it will count against your account.

-). Have just imagined my photo next to the Kim's one in the news. Lol.
But I have a solution for that. I can get VPN access from some other country (I've found one for only 3$/mo) and few completely free ones available with some limitations. So, after the first note I can switch to the VPN and the problem is solved. But I believe this never happen.
The reality shows that they just break in your door :-). Lol.
Seriously, I don't worry about this thing much. My main concern is telecom that could consider this as misusing the service as it supposed to be for a private use or something.

jonherries

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Reply # 597213 19-Mar-2012 15:36

Does router software like Tomato or something like PFsense have a traffic shaping/QOS process which can block/limit a blacklist of sites or limit a bit-torrent protocol?

Jon

sidefx

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Reply # 597217 19-Mar-2012 15:38

pfsense seems to have an entire forum dedicated to traffic shaping :)

http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/board,26.0.html

mattwnz

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Reply # 597231 19-Mar-2012 16:02

Also I would check the ISPs terms and conditions. Surely they would forbid their customers opening up their internet connection to the public in that way. You purchase it for your own personal use, so it shouldn't be able to be accessed by others. Otherwise you may need some form of commercial agreement with them.

Wade

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Reply # 597299 19-Mar-2012 18:02

I would imagine that your 20~30gb would be consumed within days if not hours, I doubt 'fair use' principle would apply to a limited few who would ruin your best intentions at a guess

gzt

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Reply # 597335 19-Mar-2012 19:27

Great idea. You will need router firmware.

To allow browsing only - one approach is to block everything and provide a capture page where users can request unblock of particular sites not yet allowed. You can allow anything you feel like. Useful if you are just catching up with webmail and news in the park.

There will be a bit of a learning curve in enabling exactly what you need to get each site working. Since you are not really concerned about www restriction gaps are not really a problem.

I'm not aware of any router firmware that supports capture out of the box, but I'm not an expert. My feeling is it would not be too hard to add some PHP (there are many examples) to complete the simple rule changes on the fly, serious authentication is not required.

A VPN is a good idea to prevent knowledge of your 'real' ip address, and you need to be comfortable about the service contract provided by your ISP - not using your connection to provide a public information service is often in there.

spoonboy

84 posts

Master Geek

Reply # 597342 19-Mar-2012 19:47

Wade: I would imagine that your 20~30gb would be consumed within days if not hours, I doubt 'fair use' principle would apply to a limited few who would ruin your best intentions at a guess

I doubt that it's even possible to consume 30GB in a few hours with my TNZ DSL connection. And even if so then it's ok as I don't use this traffic anyway. If someone need it then I'm happy to share.

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