is it possible to put a timer on wireless internet access??

here's the situation fellow techies:

i have a client who is balking at putting in free wireless internet access at her coffee shop because she feels that people will hog the tables and surf the internet and not buy coffee or pastries thus she'd be losing paying customers.

what i would like to do is find a way to allow people to access the internet for a set time (say an hour) if they buy a mocha or something. then if they weren't constantly buying something, they would get cutoff.

another question is this: is there any way to say that only 5 people can access the wireless internet at a time? then someone would have to leave before someone could get on if there were 5 people using the wireless access....

any other suggestions/ideas?

thanks.

Not sure about the first one with the timer, but the second can be achieved, I would think, by setting the router to a 5 address range.

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Originally Posted by Larommi

Not sure about the first one with the timer, but the second can be achieved, I would think, by setting the router to a 5 address range.

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Your client is in the market for something like this then. Do a search for google and you can probably find a company that will give all the equipment needed for a hotspot (sometimes even the broadband depending where she's at) and give her a percentage of the takes. Cheers.

She's looking at this the wrong way. The longer people stay the more they will buy. Sitting in a coffee shop surfing away with all those great smells I'd be constantly getting more coffee & food in.

i think that way also, and I kind of asked her how this would be that much different than the guys reading the paper who have the paper spread out on a whole table taking up four spots!

i think the concern is during peak times, like 6 a.m to 8 a.m.. after that i think its ok to be free the rest of the evening.

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Originally Posted by gazzak

She's looking at this the wrong way. The longer people stay the more they will buy. Sitting in a coffee shop surfing away with all those great smells I'd be constantly getting more coffee & food in.

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I think she probably needs to read studies of what happened to places like Barnes & Noble and Starbucks when they implemented things like this. YES, there are people who take advantage of a good thing, but this also fosters LOTS of loyalty.

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