In our office we have a Peer-to-Peer network linking 3 XP desktop machines and 4 XP laptops using wireless lan
We have a single Linksys WAP54 access point and all works fine.
If a colleagues arrives from another office we have to configure their laptop each time they visit to see the webpages we have on our intranet
In Hotels, with hot spots, when I start my laptop it seems to pick up an IP address and also configures IE with proxy settings and the hotels home page appears as the default page.
How can I do this so anyone arriving in the offices connects automtically to our intranet homepage reverting to theirs when they return to their own base?
It looks like you are looking for a "WIFI Gateway".
Check out "ZoneCD". Upon client connects, it will re-direct their first HTTP attempt to a local intranet page -- from which you can either use as a "splash screen" or do logins. Even so, it also allows you to do all sorts of logging.
Great program, I have been using it myself now. It runs completetly off a "live" CD, so doesn't require to be installed to a HDD. Got an old computer? Just toss the CD into the drive, and boot up. It'll turn that old computer into a "WIFI gateway box". All the computer with "ZoneCD" running will need is just a CD drive (obviously) and two NIC cards. After configuring, it no longer even needs a monitor, keyboard, mouse.
"ZoneCD"creates an entire new subnet (10.10.x.,y) to be used for clients connecting to the internet. They pass onto your main 192.168.x.y network through "ZoneCD", thus allowing this type of control over clients. "ZoneCD" also does all it's own DHCP.
Very cool program.
Oh, by the way, did I mention it's price? Its completetly free. It will only cost you a CD-R to burn it onto. Its also free as in open source (i.e., GNU Licensed). Its Linux based, but you need not know Linux to use it.
You will have to re-arrange your network somewhat to get it up and going, but once up it works great.
For a clear picture of the network topolology of how it comes into play, check out:
formatting link
Note: when I first tried out "ZoneCD", I only had one router -- my wireless gateway router/AP. As you can see from the diagram, another router is needed. I was able to successfully get it working by using a PC with two NIC's and using ICS as the "WAN Router". This will work just fine, if you don't want to get another router. I've since purchased a wired ethernet router to function as the WAN router as I didn't want to to do the ICS thing since it requires that PC to always be active for the network to remain alive. Getting a wired router just reduced some clutter and made everything much more convienent.
Or, sorry, the above may be somewhat misleading. The device hooked up to the PC running "ZoneCD" need not be a wireless router. A wireless AP should work fine as well. (Haven't tried that yet, but don't see why that wouldn't also work.)
In my particular case, it made more sense for me to use my older wireless router versus one of my newer AP's. Using some functionality of the AP's that wouldn't be possible if they were used with the "ZoneCD" gateway.
Its recommended that the link between the "ZoneCD PC" and the WAN router be a hard ethernet connection, although using a wireless router for the WAN and an external stand-alone wireless-ethernet bridge on the "ZoneCD PC" should work fine too. (Also something that I haven't tried, but may do so in the future as I have couple DWL-810AP+'s sitting around.)
the thingy that hotels use is known as a captive gateway.
i totally endorse eric's view. In fact, i have been using zoneCd on a wired network too!!! other similar projects include chillisoft,watchdog but none even comes close to the zonecd for its ease of use.
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