Hotel WIFI Shared Access

2blue4u

2blue4u

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John
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Can anyone help with some techie advice please :)

The situation is this. It's not a hotel but a development of holiday villas where they used to provide free ethernet connection. That's now been 'upgraded' to a wifi connection and we have to pay for it. €70 a week :( I guess the majority of folks wanted wifi.

What I'd like to know is how I can use the paid-for wifi service to provide net access to a number of devices, probably four. Paying for one weekly subscription is bad enough but I'm not paying for four :thumbsdown:

I have a mifi unit which works very well with either a broadband dongle or an ethernet connection. Would it be possible to use an access point of some sort connected via ethernet to my mifi box which would then generate the wifi signal for our multiple devices? The bit I'm trying to get my head around is the device needed to feed the mifi unit.


Thanks in advance

John
 
Am I missing something? Surely if it is wifi, and I am assuming you are just paying for an access key you can just use that key in any of the devices you want to use on the wifi?
 
neil_g said:
you could enable internet sharing on any windows machine and do all traffic through there if that helps?
Click to expand...

With wifi-only devices? I don't understand :thinking: Are you saying the laptop could receive the wifi signal then output it via ethernet to the mifi?
 
Jimmy_Lemon said:
Am I missing something? Surely if it is wifi, and I am assuming you are just paying for an access key you can just use that key in any of the devices you want to use on the wifi?
Click to expand...
Not at the same time you can't.
 
Jimmy_Lemon said:
Am I missing something? Surely if it is wifi, and I am assuming you are just paying for an access key you can just use that key in any of the devices you want to use on the wifi?
Click to expand...

Usually you sign in/pay for access on a device and that is the only one which it allows to use. You don't, in my experience, get a key/password, it just logs you in so I guess that it goes on the MAC address.
 
I think I should be looking for an Access Point enabled in Client Mode. Anyone any experience?
 
Simmotino said:
I'd tell them exactly where to stick their Wi-Fi at that price to be honest! :eek::nono:
Click to expand...

That works out at €10 per day which is cheap. Last June, on an 11 day trip stopping for only 1 or 2 nights in any one place, I was paying between €15 and €24 per day. Apart from a couple places where it was free.
 
Bucketp said:
Surely you would be better off buying a dongle and using that?
Click to expand...

I could - and I already have a dongle. And I've used it with the mifi to serve all devices. But I take it you don't know the cost of data in Europe :)
 
2blue4u said:
That works out at €10 per day which is cheap.
Click to expand...

€10 a day for internet access is not cheap!

Just because people are daft enough to consider it the 'norm' and pay it without thought doesn't make it reasonable!

Anyway, that doesn't assist you so I'll refrain. Sorry for the hijack! :)
 
2blue4u said:
With wifi-only devices? I don't understand :thinking: Are you saying the laptop could receive the wifi signal then output it via ethernet to the mifi?
Click to expand...
Just thinking aloud here, but if you internet connection share on the laptop and have a wifi-router attached to the laptop ethernet port with everything else using the wi-fi router as their internet, wouldn't that work. Not sure which mifi you've got, but it might be possible to configure it to do that.

You'd have to point the router to send it's traffic to the laptop IP and configure the laptop to route out to the wireless, but I think that would work...
 
2blue4u said:
But I take it you don't know the cost of data in Europe :)
Click to expand...
How about buying a PAYG dongle for the country you are going to and then using that (or the sim in it) for the duration you are there.
 
arad85 said:
Just thinking aloud here, but if you internet connection share on the laptop and have a wifi-router attached to the laptop ethernet port with everything else using the wi-fi router as their internet, wouldn't that work. Not sure which mifi you've got, but it might be possible to configure it to do that.

You'd have to point the router to send it's traffic to the laptop IP and configure the laptop to route out to the wireless, but I think that would work...
Click to expand...

in theory that might work..
 
Simmotino said:
I'd tell them exactly where to stick their Wi-Fi at that price to be honest! :eek::nono:
Click to expand...

@ €10 a day that's pretty much the going hotel rate.


- sorry should have updated the thread before posting... that bit's already been covered! :)
 
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2blue4u said:
I could - and I already have a dongle. And I've used it with the mifi to serve all devices. But I take it you don't know the cost of data in Europe :)
Click to expand...

Do you spend a lot of time here? i.e. is this your place? or is this for other people renting?
 
It was the cost of hotel wifi here that caused me to buy a dongle when we staying out every weekend at tournaments. Something like £5 for an hour or £9 for 24hrs, so sounds about right in Euros - ridiculous and over inflated.

I agree that findding someway of sharing the one wifi connection via a windows machine to other devices is probably the best way, its just working out the way of doing it.
 
Thanks for the help and advice so far.


barneyrubble said:
Do you spend a lot of time here? i.e. is this your place? or is this for other people renting?
Click to expand...
We visit this one place at least once every year. But I'm sure the solution to this problem will be be used at other places we visit throughout Europe.

arad85 said:
Just thinking aloud here, but if you internet connection share on the laptop and have a wifi-router attached to the laptop ethernet port with everything else using the wi-fi router as their internet, wouldn't that work. Not sure which mifi you've got, but it might be possible to configure it to do that.

You'd have to point the router to send it's traffic to the laptop IP and configure the laptop to route out to the wireless, but I think that would work...
Click to expand...
I'd rather avoid ICS. All devices are apple of one flavour or another and, although the lappy does run XP under parallels, I'm not sure how ICS would work in that configuration.


arad85 said:
How about buying a PAYG dongle for the country you are going to and then using that (or the sim in it) for the duration you are there.
Click to expand...
I looked into that a year ago just after getting the mifi. I wasn't impressed with the data price. Maybe I'll have another look as prices have, allegedly, been tumbling.


2blue4u said:
I think I should be looking for an Access Point enabled in Client Mode. Anyone any experience?
Click to expand...
I think the answer is somewhere in the realm of Access Point and/or Bridges. This is the area I'd appreciate assistance with.
 
neil_g said:
you could enable internet sharing on any windows machine and do all traffic through there if that helps?
Click to expand...

I've never actually managed to get that to work properly. It seems like one of those many windows features that looks great on paper but actually doesn't work in reality.
 
trencheel303 said:
I've never actually managed to get that to work properly. It seems like one of those many windows features that looks great on paper but actually doesn't work in reality.
Click to expand...
I've had it working perfectly - and that was back in the days of XP ;)
 
2blue4u said:
All devices are apple of one flavour or another and, although the lappy does run XP under parallels, I'm not sure how ICS would work in that configuration.
Click to expand...
I'm out then...
 
Re: ICS, you really needed to set the IP addresses exactly correctly on XP as it was a simple packet filter that was added into the stack. On the later versions of windows, I think that's taken all care of for you.
 
Depending on Data charges, and you have an iPhone you could use the Personal Hotspot option in iOS4.3. Your iPhone acts as a modem and you can connect via USB/WiFi/Bluetooth. Tried it this week and seems to work OK on Vodafone ( no tethering surcharge at the moment) . It does depend on Roaming Data Charges and how much you need to be on line whilst you are away.
 
I really don't want to go down that route (iPhone hotspot). I've already got a t-mobile broadband dongle which I know is the best value UK-sourced sim for Euro data bundles. If all else fails, that is what I'll be using.

But I'm sure there must be a way of capturing an existing (hotel) wifi and re-routing/re-transmitting it either by wifi or ethernet.
 
If all the devices are Apple then your sorted. Just enable internet connection sharing.

Am at work just now but I use it in my bedroom as my iphone never picks up a decent signal (or wifi) but my MBP does.
 
trencheel303 said:
Guess it was a case of user error then...
Click to expand...
Don't know, but I know you needed to understand a bit about how ICS worked before you could figure out which IPs to put where. It's all hidden under the bonnet now in Vista/7.
 
It may sound silly but, if you are on holiday why would you possibly want 4 connections to the internet? I could understand maybe 1 device to catch up with emails etc but whenever I go away on holiday its a holiday from the internet too :D

However, when I was in America driving around we purchased a wifi dongle so we could look at what was on in each of the locations we went too. Worked out a lot cheaper than using our uk mobiles.
 
cobwebscavern said:
If all the devices are Apple then your sorted. Just enable internet connection sharing.

Am at work just now but I use it in my bedroom as my iphone never picks up a decent signal (or wifi) but my MBP does.
Click to expand...

WOW thank you. Why didn't I know about this????

Just tried it out with ethernet in and wifi out and it works straight away. But I can't seem to get it to work the other way. Wifi into the lappy and shared via ethernet. I need to do this as the only available signal will be wifi and I need to send the shared output to a mifi. I guess I'm missing a setting or three. I'll have a play later. Can anyone help?
 
2blue4u said:
WOW thank you. Why didn't I know about this????

Just tried it out with ethernet in and wifi out and it works straight away. But I can't seem to get it to work the other way. Wifi into the lappy and shared via ethernet. I need to do this as the only available signal will be wifi and I need to send the shared output to a mifi. I guess I'm missing a setting or three. I'll have a play later. Can anyone help?
Click to expand...

Cool glad it got you semi-sorted.

Not sure it can import wi-fi and export via ethernet. Never tried it that way. It might work but don't know.

That's why you've gotta love Apple...things just work better...apart from the trash :)
 
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