Content filtering for Public Wi-Fi Hotspots
One of the reoccurring questions we get from potential PolkaSpots Wi-Fi Hotspot Owners is what they should do about content filtering and protecting their customers from viewing and downloading copyright protected, illegal or inappropriate material.
Firstly, lets deal with inappropriate material, it’s highly unlikely that a user at a Public Wi-Fi Hotspot will download offensive content in full view of others, however if the signal is accessible from other buildings the user could access sites which are deemed inappropriate by Wi-Fi Hotspot location owners.
Secondly, we have the problem of copyrighted and high bandwidth material such as music or video content. Recently, we heard of an Apartment block located in the UK which received a number of writs regarding the downloading of US restricted content from the iTunes site which contravened the copyright agreement. This was possible because the Credit Card used was registered in the US. As well as the copyright issues the user downloaded gigabytes of data causing performance issues for other users.
So how do we strike the balance between quality of service and acceptable use?
The first step is to use Service Level Agreements to define your acceptable use policies and to put in place a system that can automatically move users who contravene these SLA’s into restricted access queues or blacklists.
Next we look at bandwidth usage and control, having a faster connection can often lead to more problems as the users download larger and larger files and view TV online. The simple solution to this is to give the users enough bandwidth to view web pages and to read email but not for bandwidth hungry applications such as full screen video streaming.
In a situation where you are servicing a large number of users you may need to install a better quality Internet connection. Typically large buildings often require Leased Line which would give a guaranteed quality of service and can be tailored to your buildings requirements. With this in place the PolkaSpots Wi-Fi Hotspot system manages the bandwidth to provide a guaranteed service for each user over a wired or wireless network.
Application level filtering can be added to block specific traffic and to maintain quality of service as well as content filtering using up-to-date website ratings to automate access restrictions to undesirable content.
Whatever the environment, our Wi-Fi Hotspot software guarantees you’re protected against the above threats. For advanced content filtering, we’re here to recommend what’s best for your business. Because we provide a fully managed WiFi Hotspot Service, you don’t have to worry about such problems.
Call us today to further discuss getting a PolkaSpots Wi-Fi Hotspots. You can find more information on our WiFi Hotspot Packages here.
Michael Speechley @ November 14, 2007