Sukhumvit 1 Plaza Gets Wifi Access!

[simon43]

I'm happy, (nay proud..) to announce that wifi internet access is now up and running in the Sukhumvit 1 Plaza building.

If you are happier playing with your laptop, rather than the other activities on offer (!), then internet access is completely free if you sit in Revolution, Night Night Joop Joop or Big Screen Sport bars, (.. er .. my bars..). Sit in another bar and you're gonna have to pay 60 baht/hour.

I'd be interested to see if anyone actually gets to use this wifi - let me know

Simon

[Crushdepth]

Many thanks...free WIFI rules. Paid WIFI sucks !!!

:-)

[Rinrada]

Good to hear that Simon I knew that you were talking about it.

Should be good for the whole concept of the New Suk 1 Plaza Complex and wont be surprised if one day it becomes and indeed proves to be a very welcome alternative hangout to the likes of the now very seedy Buckskin Joes Village (under the arches-almost opposite) and the now defunk Clintons P and even Nana ......Well done.

What with your Tex Mex Salsa,Revolution and Sports Ents bars you will have just about everything and everyone covered/catered for ...sounds Great...will bring K.Wifie next time.....all the best and Chok dee na krup

R

[Sydney_Tom]

Simon, what kind of a router did you use ?

[simon43]

Simon, what kind of a router did you use ?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Rouer or Access Point? The ADSL router is a Zyxel type. The AP is a Zyxel G-4100. This seems very good because it allows for authentication, home page redirects etc etc etc - all in a small footprint and with a little printer to print out receipts with username/password etc. Cost was about 30,000 baht.

In the next week I'll move the AP to a more central position in the building so that coverage is obtained for most/all the bars.

Simon

[monty]

Stickman is trying to keep up a page on his site listing all the free hotspots...

http://www.stickmanbangkok.com/wifi.htm

Simon, drop him a mail, he'll be happy to include your place!

Unfortunately when you put up a hotspot you have to work with special equipment to control access (even if it's free)

Most popular ways are a special hotspot accesspoint (such as Simon uses), or an extra PC running hotspot gateway software (mostly on Linux) combined with a regular accesspoint.

A sensible hotspot operator will for example want to block the smtp port. Leave it open and sooner or later somebody walks in and will use the smtp server of your ISP to start sending bulk e-mails (spam). A sure way to get your ISP to cancel your account (happened to me once in Thailand)

Simon, did you buy the Zyxel g-4100 in Thailand? If so where...

Cheers,

Monty

[monty]

If anybody is interested in setting up a hotspot on a bit smaller budget, then take look at

http://www.publicip.net/

This system uses a regular PC (an old PII 300 Mhz with 128Mb will do perfectly), with only a CDrom installed and a floppy, no hard drive required...

Total cost price including PC & accesspoint will be around the 10000 Baht mark

Just pick up a secondhand PC at Pantip, you'll need two network cards and you're ready.

What this software does is pretty amazing! You can manage pretty much everything, including for example how much download speed a certain user can get, how many hour /day access or how many Mb he can download,etc....

You can get users to register themselves and get a password assigned by the system, so your staff needs to do nothing!

And most importantly, for being a free product, the support is extremely good at their forum...

If somebody wants to try it out, but doesn't want to download the 300Mb ISO, send me a PM and i'll mail you the CD...

I've tested it extensively and it works a charm, so probably most of the problems can be solved on the forum here

More free hotspots are needed, forget about Starbucks / KSC at 150 Baht/hour

Cheers,

Monty

[udon]

Si, Sukhumvit 1 Plaza is already listed on Sickman's site.

[stumonster]

Monty,

Does this setup allow you to mesh(? ie. hook in another 802.11 card/dongle with a directional antenna aimed at a similar setup )

Just thinking this might help out expats who wish to access broadband but cannot via the phone lines.

[monty]

Stu,

Yes you can mesh,

you can put up a wireless bridge to another location.

When you put the bridge at your internet source (your adsl router) you will have to put up another gateway at the receiving end of the bridge.

When you put the bridge behind your gateway pc, all you need is the wireless part of the mesh. All accounting / authorization would be done at the one gateway box.

One gateway box supports up to 100 simultaniously connected clients. (limited through the dhcp server of the box, mainly because more clients would start to slow down the linux iptables, where the NAT happens)

The fun thing of this setup is that all accounts are stored at a central server (currently in the US), meaning that if you have a username/password you could log in at any place in the mesh, irrespective of which local gateway you are going through...

This also means that all the gateways run completely on their own (my gateways run blind, no monitor / no keyboard!). Account management / network supervision can be done anywhere in the world where you have internet access (and can reach the central server in the US)