Worldspot is compatible with a lot of hardware and software because of its generic compatibility with chillispot.
This is why WorldSpot can manage all hotspot sizes from a single wifi router to a metro scale wifi coverage.
There are lots of techniques that you can combine to extend the range of your hotspot.
For example, one WorldSpot client has setup a metro scale experiment that reached more than 150 simultaneous users.
This sub-forum is a dedicated place to talk about all these techniques. Users are free to propose new howtos. Please try to maintain the first post of each topic updated. Also please don't create new topics to ask for help. Please go in the "Help" forum or reply to existing howtos.
I will first make an introduction about how chillispot works, about ethernet, wifi and IP routing.
Chillispot needs 2 separate interfaces to work: The internet (WAN) side and an ethernet network where it will manage the captive portal.
EthernetEthernet is a local area network protocol which can transport IP packets. This protocol is widely used on many different transport mediums:
- wire: standard ethernet cables and switches. Ethernet plug is RJ45, which you can find on all network devices.
- wireless: WIFI is an ethernet network. A WIFI Access point extends an ethernet network into the air. Wimax also...
- powerline: You can use existing powerline network to transport ethernet frames. A cost effective solution to go through multiple floors of a building.
- Ethernet is fully plug and play.
If you have one ethernet switch on one place, and you want to connect a second switch, simply connect them together (today all switches are automatic).
If you want to extend the range with a powerline device, simply connect your powerline device to your switch, and all your powerline devices will be connected to your local area network.
If you connect a wifi access point to your switch, your wifi clients will be connected to your local area network.
You can combine all these mediums to extend the range of your hotspot. The most common way to extend your wifi range through walls or floors is to combine the powerline and wifi access points. There event exist wifi access points that integrate with a powerline access, so you just have to plug one or more of them at each floor of your building.
All you users can then move between all the access points transparently (this is called roaming)
There are also methods to extend the range of your wifi network without any wires like WDS, which allows you to setup WDS repeaters
You just have to connect your hotspot router to this extended local area network through an ethernet cable. Then configure your hotspot to handle both WIFI and LAN ports.
WAN side, or internet backboneChillispot needs to connect to the internet to serve the hotspot users and to connect to WorldSpot web and radius service. Any internet connection should work: DSL, cable, T1, phone modem, satellite, GPRS, WIFI, WIMAX, OLSR mesh network, etc...
Mesh wifi networkWorldspot is compatible with openmesh.com routers. These router have a plug and play firmware that handle a mesh network automatically. You can extend your wifi range easily and cover a large surface. Simply buy routers, create and configure a mesh on the dashboard, plug them, and that's all. Open-mesh setup is in the english documentation.
http://wirds.net has a nice howto about using the OLSR routing protocol with worldspot. OLSR is a little like WDS but is more flexible, and more scalable. However, it does not work at the ethernet level, but ip level. So I can't be used as a chillispot frontend but is a good solution for a backend. As there are multiple chillispot instances, you will have to login again everytime you move to another node.
To be continued
