1) What is a Wi-Fi Hotspot and why do I need one?

Wireless Internet has become increasingly popular due to convenience of usage and low cost of ownership. Wi-fi hotspot is like an internet café without any computers any wires and of course software licensing fees. With wi-fi hotspot, wireless internet access can be offered as a free service to facility owners to enhance quality of service provided to existing customers and/or a paid service to earn some money from your existing Internet connection. Many people have already gone wireless and they are looking for a spot where they can hop in. Why don't make this spot yours? It's cheap to have one.

Wireless Internet has become increasingly popular due to convenience of usage and low cost of ownership. Wi-fi hotspot is like an internet café without any computers any wires and of course software licensing fees. With wi-fi hotspot, wireless internet access can be offered as a free service to facility owners to enhance quality of service provided to existing customers and/or a paid service to earn some money from your existing Internet connection. Many people have already gone wireless and they are looking for a spot where they can hop in. Why don’t make this spot yours? It’s cheap to have one.

2) What is AAA (Authentication , Authorization and Accounting) and why is it needed?

Authentication is simply a process of comparing user's credentials in request with credentials stored in database. This means that your wireless Internet access is only available to authenticated customers. Authentication prevents other users across the road to use your expensive broadband connection for free. Legacy access points do provide authentication but in a limited way. According to original 802.11x standards, authentication of wireless clients is provided through shared WEP key which is not suitable in hotspot environment where there is no trust between you and the customers or even among the customers themselves.

Other conventional authentication solutions have been made available to overcome this problem but they come with a price of having to some configuration on the clients.RapidSpot provides a secure authentication of clients and zero-configuration on the clients.

Authorization is a process of obtaining information about the user and checking that the information in request is enough to authenticate the user and what kind of access that a particular user has. In terms of hotspot, Authorization ensures that users can only use the service according to the time and bandwidth limits that have been defined by the operator. Authorization is needed because we do not want to users to exceed what they entitled to do. Users will be disconnected automatically upon expiration of allocated time credits. RapidSpot supports both prepaid (account with time limits) and postpaid (accounts with no time limits but with expiry date). It also supports upload and download bandwidth limits.

Accounting is a process where use of wireless services is recorded in details. For wi-fi operators, this is used primarily for billing, report and statistics generation. RapidSpot can be configured to provide a real time user statistics and monthly reports to hotspot operators.

In short, AAA solution is necessary to operate a commercial hotspot. It requires considerable technical knowledge to setup and operate. RapidSpot comes with different packages that will fulfill your expectations.

3) How does this solution compare to Hotspot in a box solution?

There are quite a few hotspot-ready access points in the market and yet more to come.
This solution may seem interesting for hotspot operators who want a quick and dirty hotspot solution. However, there are some drawbacks worth mentioning; First, they are much more expensive than ordinary access points (but the hardware spec is not that much superior either) Second, they are not scalable due to limited resources available (it is not a PC where you can upgrade hard-disk or memory). Third, it can be relatively slow since it operates as an access point and hotspot at the same time (access point alone can take a lot of resources already). When comparing cost vs performance, they are just not worth it.

RapidSpot supports ordinary access points, can be configured to run on a dedicated PC of your choice. Access point is already cheap and also becoming cheaper. PC can be used for other things also if you intend to abandon the business in the future. Obviously, if this were a hotspot box it would be just a box sitting unnoticed forever on your shelf.

4) You mentioned about security and controls. I am curious to know what kind of measures you have taken?

Security is a process whereby adequate protection is implemented to ensure that system is protected against: unauthorized information disclosure, unauthorized modification of data, and unavailability of services. RapidSpot uses strong encryption on information stored and transmitted over the network. This means that the username and password are protected at all times. Firewalls are also implemented to protect against malicious threats. The system has been well heavily tightened and regularly assessed for security weakness to ensure it is not susceptible to new threats.

In terms of availability, we have full redundancy of hardware and power supply. Data is frequently backed up and can be easily recovered when required. The system is run in a locked and controlled facility. The generation process is done in a secure manner and cards are hand delivered to hotspot operators.

All activities are recorded and monitored. We have a centralized logging system for anything done on the system to ensure that suspicious incidents are noticed and reacted upon.

5) Why choose RapidSpot?

RapidSpot service is operated by a handful of experienced network and information security professionals. The solution is affordable, scalable, easy-to-use and highly stable for running in a 24x7 environment. We aim to maximize your satisfaction as well as minimizing your expenses. At RapidSpot, quality of service is always guaranteed!