The most impressive solution I've seen

by dwilcomb - 3/23/12 5:34 PM

In Reply to: Can you help me stop the bandwidth leeches at my pub's free Wi-Fi hot spot? by Lee Koo (ADMIN) Moderator CNET staff

There's a place I visit often in New Hampshire called Federal Jack's. (A brew pub / restaurant - which explains why I visit often.) They have customer wireless that's actually pretty good. But they're smart enough to not have a fixed password. When you show up, the hostess will give you a unique wifi key on a printed slip that's good for a couple of hours. When you sign into their web-auth, the key will give you access, but clearly expires after the normal guest access window. I don't know which system they're using, but it struck me as the most serviceable option I've seen in public use. It's certainly not something they're administering manually - something has to be generating the keys en-masse and setting the expirations.