Hot­spot installation

If you don’t have a HOTSPLOTS account yet, you’ll have to regis­ter with us first. Under “My hot­spots” in the regis­tered users sec­tion you will find the fol­lo­wing form which lets you regis­ter a new hot­spot under your account:

The fields have the fol­lo­wing meaning:

1. Hot­spot name: The name iden­ti­fies the hot­spot in our data­ba­se and should be as clear as pos­si­ble. This name must not con­tain spe­cial cha­rac­ters or spaces.
2. Public name: Sin­ce neither spaces nor umlauts are allo­wed in the hot­spot name, the­re is also the public name. If not­hing is ente­red, the hot­spot name is used ins­tead. All users will see this name on the log­in page of your hot­spot: Wel­co­me to the hot­spot “Hotel­Mus­ter”. On our map this name is also used (except for hot­spots with rate “V.I.P. / Nur Tickets”).
3. Descrip­ti­on: Here you can add any descrip­ti­ve text that hot­spot see­kers will see in our database.
4. Lan­guage: curr­ent­ly Ara­bic, Bul­ga­ri­an, Croa­ti­an, Czech, Dutch, Eng­lish, Ger­man, French, Greek, Ita­li­an, Polish, Roma­ni­an, Rus­si­an, Spa­nish, Ukrai­ni­an are available. This set­ting is used as default for the log­in page of this hot­spot. The user can chan­ge it the­re for him-/hers­elf.
5. Secret: The secret is a key that the hot­spot rou­ter uses to log on to our ser­ver. You must also store the key that you enter here on the hot­spot rou­ter. So choo­se a cha­rac­ter string that is as ran­dom as pos­si­ble. You can choo­se the key yourself.
6. Admin cont­act: You can enter seve­ral e‑mail addres­ses, sepa­ra­ted by spaces, to which e‑mails are auto­ma­ti­cal­ly sent by the moni­to­ring sys­tem if the hot­spot is off­line for the time spe­ci­fied under fail­ure reports.
7. Opti­ons: In the fol­lo­wing check­bo­xes, choo­se whe­ther you: 
   1. Release your e‑mail address. If you share your e‑mail address, it will be dis­play­ed as the cont­act address for the hot­spot. This can be useful if sur­fers have ques­ti­ons about your offer or pro­blems arise.
   2. enable the landing page as a ser­vice. We would be hap­py to advi­se you on addi­tio­nal ser­vices and the landing page desi­gned indi­vi­du­al­ly for you. Plea­se cont­act us for more infor­ma­ti­on, we will find an opti­mal solu­ti­on tog­e­ther with you.
8. Auto log­in: After a con­nec­tion to the hot­spot has been estab­lished, the­re is the opti­on of auto­ma­ti­cal­ly recon­nec­ting. Devices with a known MAC address are auto­ma­ti­cal­ly log­ged in. The MAC addres­ses are saved after a log­in for the spe­ci­fied time.
9. Street, zip code, city, coun­try: Enter the loca­ti­on of your hot­spot here. The default address is the one you used to regis­ter with us. This infor­ma­ti­on is hel­pful so that other users can find your hot­spot in our data­ba­se.
   In a first step, we use the zip code to deter­mi­ne the geo­gra­phic posi­ti­on of your hot­spot and to dis­play it on our map. You can then pre­cis­e­ly adjust the posi­ti­on on the map.
10. E‑mail address: Enter an e‑mail address for the hot­spot here. This can be dis­play­ed as a cont­act address for users if desi­red (“release e‑mail address”).
11. Web page: You can enter a URL for each of your hot­spots, which will be dis­play­ed on our over­view map. So you can e.g. B. Make your hotel’s home­page public.

Then click on the green “App­ly chan­ges” but­ton to regis­ter the hot­spot with us. You can dele­te it again at any time or chan­ge its data by cli­cking on its name in your hot­spot list:

You can also cus­to­mi­ze the log­in page of your hot­spot if you e.g. B. want to dis­play a pic­tu­re of your hotel or an indi­vi­du­al greeting.

To run a hot­spot, you need two things:

Pre­fer­a­b­ly a DSL connection: 

A DSL con­nec­tion with a flat rate pro­vi­des a fast con­nec­tion to the inter­net. Depen­ding on the loca­ti­on, alter­na­ti­ves to DSL can also be used to con­nect to the internet.

A WiFi router: 

Users can use it to con­nect to the wire­less net­work. At the same time, it moni­tors who is using the inter­net. Only tho­se who can authen­ti­ca­te them­sel­ves via HOTSPLOTS are for­ward­ed to the inter­net. And you as the ope­ra­tor will regu­lar­ly recei­ve your share of the revenue.

Here you will find an over­view of our cur­rent pro­ducts.

We would also be hap­py to advi­se you per­so­nal­ly and respond to your needs when choo­sing our pro­ducts. Use our cont­act here.

We recom­mend the rou­ters from our web­shop as hot­spot rou­ters. For out­door WiFi instal­la­ti­ons we recom­mend the devices from Ubiquiti.

All hot­spot rou­ters can also be used as access points or repea­ters. All devices with the same firm­ware gene­ra­ti­on can be con­nec­ted to each other as repea­ters. Repea­ters with firm­ware 2.0 can work but can­not be con­nec­ted to newer access points or rou­ters via radio – but the other way around.

Our firm­ware offers the fol­lo­wing advan­ta­ges, among others:

• The hot­spot can be mana­ged easi­ly with a web browser
• VPN rou­ting as pro­tec­tion for hot­spot operators
• Moni­to­ring sys­tem: If the hot­spot rou­ter is no lon­ger online, the HOTSPLOTS ser­ver auto­ma­ti­cal­ly sends a fail­ure mes­sa­ge by e‑mail as well as a mes­sa­ge when the mal­func­tion is resolved.
• Auto­ma­tic firm­ware updates can be car­ri­ed out with just a mou­se click
• The ope­ra­tor can release his own web addres­ses (e.g. for the web­site of his hotel, cafe, club, etc.).
• A so-cal­led “traf­fic sha­ping” ensu­res that uploads do not “clog up” the DSL

1. Gate­way with cap­ti­ve por­tal. On LAN ports the cap­ti­ve por­tal is optional.
2. Three opti­ons for WAN con­nec­tion: ppp­oe, sta­tic, dynamic/DHCP
3. Con­fi­gu­ra­ti­on as hot­spot rou­ter or repeater
4. Packet secu­re port for­war­ding (PSPF). I.e. the WLAN cli­ents do not see each other. (This secu­ri­ty fea­ture can be deac­ti­va­ted if unwanted.)
5. Con­fi­gu­ra­ti­on of trans­mit­ter power
6. Wal­led gar­den: List of domains that can be acces­sed wit­hout authen­ti­ca­ti­on and who­se traf­fic is not charged.
7. Wire­less encryp­ti­on with openVPN.
8. Traf­fic shaping
9. Com­for­ta­ble gra­phi­cal user interface 
   • Con­fi­gu­ra­ti­on of all net­work settings
   • Input and test of HOTSPLOTS ope­ra­tor data
   • Down­load OpenVPN cer­ti­fi­ca­te from the HOTSPLOTS ser­ver with just a mou­se click
   • Down­load and instal­la­ti­on of new firm­ware ver­si­ons by mou­se click
   • Activation/deactivation of SSH as an alter­na­ti­ve admi­nis­tra­ti­on tool
   • Activation/deactivation of admi­nis­tra­ti­on by WLAN, LAN and WAN ports
   • Chan­ge passwords

All con­nec­tions are initia­ted by the hot­spot rou­ter. For sta­teful fire­wall it is the­r­e­fo­re not neces­sa­ry to open or for­ward any ports.

For manu­al­ly con­fi­gu­red fire­walls it might be neces­sa­ry to allow cer­tain ports. The fol­lo­wing ports are rele­vant for hotspot-routers:

• DNS:UDP Port 53
• Web: TCP Ports 80, 443
• NTP: UDP Port 123
• VPN-Rou­ting: UDP Ports 1193, 1194, 1195
• HSVPN-Rou­ting: UDP Port 2001
• Radi­us: UDP Ports 1812, 1813
• Load-Balan­cing: TCP Ports 5001–5008 (Appli­ances up to ver­si­on p6.5), UDP Port 2001 (Appli­ances with ver­si­on d8.0 or higher)

The pro­vi­der or respec­tively the medi­um hard­ly plays a role here as long as our sys­tems get access to the inter­net. Howe­ver, one must be awa­re that shared inter­net lines (shared medi­um) such as cable net­works or LTE do not gua­ran­tee band­width and the­r­e­fo­re offer lower through­put in core hours. You can usual­ly find details on this in the gene­ral terms and con­di­ti­ons of the inter­net provider.