The Internet Cafe for the geek, Part1

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference. -Reinhold Niebuhr



Considering the many technical challenges completely outside of my control, I am going to concentrate this post on the technical issues I do have a say on.

I will leave power issues and ISP issues out of this for now because really...  I can't do anything about it... unless of course SP was right about the internet.



Requirements:

There are three main technical challenges to deal with for the Internet Cafe.

1. Network infrastructure
2. Internet Management system
3. Workstation setup and upkeep.

For the network infrastructure, the setup of the space can be seen as a giant U shaped room on the outside of an inner room.  The tables have since all been re-enforced and the electrical run all the way around.  There are going to be 10 permanent workstations (we'll talk about those later) setup all around the room on these tables at about 10 foot intervals.
Originally I wanted to run cat5 to each station and make a simple star network map, but that means about 1000ft of cabling and I don't think we will be up for that.


Then I thought of star behind a star network, run a couple of cables all the way and run small switches in between them and patch the computers in that way. This may still be the case, but I have never been a fan of putting switches at end points and into view and physical access of the users.

Right now though I am considering a hybrid wired and wireless because of the possibility of using Open-Mesh.


I will say this about the ISP, we will be using a cellular based ISP solution that I hear is doing pretty well.  The nice thing about this is we can deploy the cell modems anywhere we need.  I am still concerned about physical security though so this is something I am going to have to look into.  Maybe making a lock box for the equipment.  (Added to my todo list)

So back to the idea of using Open-mesh as the Internet management system...



The basic requirements for this point are:
- simple management UI
- control individual access by a username and password
- each user would be allowed a certain amount of time and/or bandwidth
- extendable to multiple ISPs to grow bandwidth

I started by looking at using just straight up DD-WRT and Coova.  I like this system but two things bother me...  The lack of commercial support and this is not the simplest system to get off the ground and fix when things go wrong.  So I started looking at commercial packages.  I really liked Sputnik.  It has all the features and then some however it also has a yearly subscription fee.  This is not out of the question, but not ideal.  Then someone on MLUG pointed me to Open-Mesh.  I like the simplistic approach and the business model was they sell you equipment once and the service in included.  My question is now, do they have the feature set...

...

I just finished reading the Open-Mesh Using Vouchers Guide and I do think the feature set is going to be OK for Internet Cafe.  I also read though all the other guides, Network Planning, Quick Start, etc... and this system does seem perfect for the job.  So if I was to use it, my setup might look something like this...

This is what I am going to go for.  I'll order 3 of the OM2P tonight.  And considering the time, that's the last thing I do tonight!

The backup plan will be the star behind the star network and dd-wrt with coova running on a good ol WRT54GL.

I have not talked about the workstations yet, that will come soon.  If you have read all the way to the bottom of this post, give yourself a star and post a comment.  I'll be collecting the stars and giving out prizes.  Thanks for reading and feedback is always welcome.