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Re: OT: setting up public wifi

On 1/29/2014 9:33 AM, Rob Owens wrote:

On Tue, Jan 28, 2014 at 3:46 PM, Jerry Stuckle <jstuckle@attglobal.net
<mailto:jstuckle@attglobal.net>> wrote:

    On 1/28/2014 1:42 PM, Rob Owens wrote:

        I need to set up wifi in a church, and share the wifi with the
        rectory
        (a separate building).  I've been doing some research, but am
        looking
        advice to help me get through this quicker.

<snip>

    Rob,

    What's your background in such technologies, i.e. rf, hot spot
    creation/management, etc.?

I have enough background that I know I can do this if I was willing to
drill holes and run wire, which I've done plenty of times before.  But
I'm trying to make this as easy as possible.  I've never used a wireless
range extender, but maybe I'll just buy one and try it out.
Running wires and trying to cover a large area with or without range extenders are two entirely different things. The latter takes much more expertise to do properly. 


When I said "general public", I should have said "congregation".  This
is for members of the church.  That could be several hundred people.
The guest account would be password protected, but I have realistic
expectations of how secret that password will be.  In any case, the
church is in a semi-rural area and is surrounded by empty land on all
sides, so there is no general public except for the people in the church.
It doesn't matter how rural your church is. As soon as the password gets out (and it will, as you understand), your hot spot will be subject to abuse.
There are people who look for unlisted hotspots and post them on hacker sites. Small businesses (Mom and Pop) and churches are favorite targets because they often have not spent the money necessary to have someone knowledgeable properly secure their system. 


My worst case scenario is probably some kind of event at the church
where 100 people with smart phones all want to check their email.  Most
of the time it'll just be 3 office computers being used for church business.

-Rob


That is nowhere near your "worst case scenario".

Jerry
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