stunningly reliable wi-fi

be your neighborhood's most reliable hotspot

Love it or not, your café has long been a de facto office for your freelance and remote working customers. Likely, you've noticed that your establishment's chairs are filled when your Internet service is running well, but quickly empty when service goes down.

The primary challenges to providing wi-fi service for your customers are scale and security. Home networking devices are not designed for the volume of devices concurrently connecting in a bustling retail space, while business-grade equipment is extremely costly and frequently requires setup and maintenance by a professional network engineer, as is typical in an office environment. Despite being supplied by the leading cable and fiber Internet providers with business-class accounts, the routing devices provided by these ISPs are not 'business-grade' devices; their processors, memory and configuration capabilities are entirely insufficient to public wi-fi demands.

We have sourced the ideal equipment for the café environment. Once installed and configured, this equipment provides highly reliable, high-throughput service, with a host of capabilities and benefits perfectly tailored to the public wi-fi scenario.

The equipment we install:

provides a competitive, cost-effective solution
is easily capable of handling 200+ concurrent users
isolates your networked devices, like POS and telephone, from customer traffic, prioritizing bandwidth to your equipment
isolates and protects each customer's traffic from that of others
controls the bandwidth that any customer can use, guaranteeing timely, reliable access for all
can be optionally, remotely monitored by us for issues and outages, so that we can quickly assist in restoring service

have your hotspot work for you

Most importantly, we configure an easy-to-manage captive portal system, providing a number of imperative benefits:

security
Providers offering publicly available Internet service can protect themselves from legal liability by requiring users to agree to use terms that explicitly absolve the wi-fi operator from responsibility for user activity or injury. Such contractual agreement pages are referred to as captive portals, where users must agree to terms before completing their connections to the network.
Captive portal software also archives each user's traffic activity, so that, in the event of an investigation by authorities, individual devices used to perpetrate illegal activity can be isolated and identified. Such portal pages are frequently encountered when connecting to wi-fi service in larger, corporate-operated environments, precisely because their legal counsel recognize this potential exposure.
optional marketing opportunities
The portal page can optionally be used to exchange wi-fi access for email information, or sign-up to social media accounts, growing your mailing list, and allowing you to keep a connection with your customers.
optional in-store menu ordering system
The portal can be configured to facilitate in-store food and beverage orders, right from the customers' seats.
optional wi-fi payment system
The portal can be configured to either limit connection time for customers, or, more politely, can be configured to offer extended, premium wi-fi sessions for small payments.

our implementation process

document your existing configuration
decipher and document existing network setup, so as to not break existing functionality (phone, POS, etc.)

test existing ISP service for capacity and reliability
test and confirm for a reliable external Internet service connection
optional: work directly with ISP, if configuration or fixes are needed

install new equipment
clean existing equipment slated to remain in service
reroute existing wiring, as needed, and remove unneed/depricated wiring and box up old equipment
replace outdated CAT5 and CAT5e with new CAT6 cable, wherever possible
connect equipment (pos station, security camera nvr, telephone, etc.) to new router

configure equipment
update firmware versions on new and existing devices
configure firewall, qos, prioritization, bandwidth throttling, device isolation, etc.
configure wi-fi for multiple frequencies and ssid's
configure DNS or DDNS, depending on whether your ISP account provides for a staic ip address)
configure captive portal service
back up configuration files and document network/account settings
configure remote monitoring and management, if requested

develop captive portal content
work directly with customer to prepare legal use terms
work directly with customer to develop portal page content (i.e. food menu, social media links; events, etc.)

test and monitor
provide a full day of real-world testing and monitoring
monitor router connection logs for anomolies
ensure all types of devices are successfully connecting & maintaining connection without issues
make configuration adjustments to resolve issues and optimize traffic behavior
conduct routine monitoring of the service for thirty (30) days following installation