Splash Screen at Coffee Shop

At some public places with free wireless internet, you get a splash
screen that appears when you first bring up your Internet browser.
This screen at Panera, for example, welcomes you to the shop, and
suggests that you not take up 2 tables during busy hours, etc.

I would like to put up a splash screen at my place of business where I
have free wireless Internet. My Internet is just through a local cable
provider. How do I set it up to have a splash screen when users first
log on?

Thanks for any help you can provide.

Steve Stottlemyer

On 22 Sep 2005 04:34:40 -0700, matthew.beckwith@myactv.net wrote:

>At some public places with free wireless internet, you get a splash
>screen that appears when you first bring up your Internet browser.
>This screen at Panera, for example, welcomes you to the shop, and
>suggests that you not take up 2 tables during busy hours, etc.
>
>I would like to put up a splash screen at my place of business where I
>have free wireless Internet. My Internet is just through a local cable
>provider. How do I set it up to have a splash screen when users first
>log on?

It depends on the wireless router you're using or whether you have a
local server available. Basically, the router redirects all port 80
(http) connections to a local web page until some action is performed.
There are a bunch of commerical and free implimentations of hot spot
software to impliment a captive portal[1]. Most are designed for the
Linksys WRT54G and are based on NoCat. In this case, look at "NoCat
Splash".
http://nocat.net
OpenWRT has a build which includes NoCat Splash but the link appears
to be dead:
http://wiki.openwrt.org/OpenWrtPackages
Anyway, we need to know what hardware you have in order to suggest a
more specific implimentation.



[1] Firefox just ate my bookmarks file and I have to dig a backup out
from my pile of cd's that fell over last night. There are days like
this. Sorry, no links right now.


--
Jeff Liebermann jeffl@comix.santa-cruz.ca.us
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

matthew.beckwith@myactv.net wrote:
> I would like to put up a splash screen at my place of business where I
> have free wireless Internet. My Internet is just through a local cable
> provider. How do I set it up to have a splash screen when users first
> log on?

There are some solutions that you cobble together, and there are some
packages that you can buy ready to go. Some include hardware, some expect
you to add their software to existing hardware.

Three thoughts:
http://www.dnsredirector.com/
http://www.boingo.com/hso/owners.html
http://www.publicip.net/zonecd/how.php


--
---
Clarence A Dold - Hidden Valley (Lake County) CA USA 38.8,-122.5

<matthew.beckwith@myactv.net> wrote in message
news:1127388880.569039.96080@g49g2000cwa.googlegro ups.com...
> At some public places with free wireless internet, you get a splash
> screen that appears when you first bring up your Internet browser.
> This screen at Panera, for example, welcomes you to the shop, and
> suggests that you not take up 2 tables during busy hours, etc.
>
> I would like to put up a splash screen at my place of business where I
> have free wireless Internet. My Internet is just through a local cable
> provider. How do I set it up to have a splash screen when users first
> log on?
>
> Thanks for any help you can provide.
>
> Steve Stottlemyer

ZoneCD

http://www.publicip.net/

Free and open source.

Works great. I use it myself.

Cheers
Eric