Managing a Wi-Fi hot spot

Hello,

I've been tasked with setting up and managing a wireless hotspot on a scout campsite. I've been looking around the web, and perhaps I've not been looking in the right area - but, there doesn't seem to be alot of info about.

When i've been on work conferences I've seen networks that appear to be open (no security) but when you join and try to browse to something it will direct you to an authentication page where you need to insert a username/password.

I quite like this idea and wondered what hardware and software is required to set this up.

Also, if possible, i'd like to be able to block ports and select web addresses (and to stop people using torrents etc). I just want users to be able to get to web addresses and I guess use email clients.

Hope you can be of help.

Rick.

http://www.solwise.co.uk/wireless-hotspot-was-102r.htm

An example of a simple bit of hardware, most of these are setup for a billing system, but that is usually easily bypassed by setting the cost up as zero.

Whether that hotspot has content control I don't know.

http://swarmhotspots.com/

quite a few of these, FON is another. Depends how much of the revenue you want to give away or how complex the user experience needs to be.