May/June 2005

As public Wi-Fi wireless Internet access points become more familiar to the business community, the appeal of setting up "hot spots" continues to grow. Whilst leading players such as BT are trying to claim the market for their own, it is getting ever easier for small players to set up hot spots too.

For a hint of just how relatively straightforward this can be, you have only to look at a new product from Wireless Consulting called MeetingSpot, which is being touted as the first stand-alone Wi-Fi access point solution. It costs just £275.

For this, users get https Web page authentication, account management capabilities, and a range of firewall management solutions. As the hot spot grows, they can even link up to 24 of the devices together and manage them all jointly through a single Windows-based administration system.

One of the keys to the MeetingSpot concept is that integrates all technology in the access point itself, eliminating the need for a distant server. Each access point keeps track of its own user database on the basis of username, password, session time and account validity time.