Internet/Wi-Fi GURU & Lawyer advice needed.

[Snert]

Well here is the delema...

I live in a community and am part of the board of directors. I deal with beach and recreation department. I have a few things I would like to accomplish before our next community board kicks in.

Now let me set up the scenerio first.
we have a large club house, recreation room and resturant and deck. This all overlooks the beach area. Upstairs of the rec. room there are 10 motel rooms residents can rent for guests.

I am looking to get Wi-Fi for the rooms,resturant, and people on the deck. In the rec room we can set up 3 donated desktops(hard wired). these will be used by kids in the rec room on say 30 minute intervals.

Is there a way for me to set up a wireless router and block adult/porn sites? I know that it is impossible to block all of them. But last thing I want is someone looking at porn and have a little kid walk by and see it. Or even worse some douche looking at kiddie crap. this is a community amenity, and for all members in good standing to use.

ALOT of residents are in support of it and would like to see it happen.
I would like to keep it clean as possible for the kids. HOW can I accomplish this??? need direction and advice on this one. I am sure on the desk tops we can set something in say a parental control setting. but how do I accomplish this on a wifi setting???

NOW on another thought...
Lets say someone was to try to look up illeagle porn from a wifi connection. Is there any leagle recourse that can be taken against the Wi-Fi provider (which would be our community)? So in other words if Captin kiddie perv moves in, looks up kiide stuff useing our wi-fi. Are we accountable for anything, being we gave him/her a access/connection to it..

Snert...

[pandemic]

You can block specific urls or IP's from the router, but good luck blocking all porn sites. The best way would be to install something like 'net nanny' on the PC's.

If captain kiddy porn came in and hooked up wirelessly, you wont be held accountable. IANAL. Worst case is the feds trace him to your ISP, your ISP traces it to you and you have to answer to the feds (records of who was there, router info, etc.)

Setting up such a large network will take work, however. You're going to need at least three access points I think.

[Dredly]

its going to be a little difficult but it can be done. I would suggest having a professional do it. You'd be better off using a hard wired connection for the rooms from a cost perspective and also a design / support area, as well as a security area. Its much easier to keep people off a hard wired network then on a wi-fi network. you'll also need to think about security, logins... etc

The only real expense would be installing the cable and jacks and whatever you are going to run them through. I would strongly suggest avoiding laptops if you can, they are very easy to steal and extremely difficult to work on if they are damaged. You should be able to get 3 or 4 desktops with everything for under 1k. I would suggest running Linux w/ VM Ware if possible, it will allow you to quickly correct issues that users create, with Windows you stand no chance of keeping them clean and clear

As for how to control the access... you are going to have some issues with that, net nanny is a good solution, there are few others out there as well. I think your best bet may be writing in rules of use and ensuring that they know that all usage will be logged and all activity recorded.


- few other notes:

You will need a business connection most likely, ISP's frown greatly upon residential users actually using it for business reasons.

- make sure you have all the machines on this network 100% separate from any actual work computers, the last thing you need is a virus jumping across the network. Also this will ensure users on the network aren't killing your business network

[Snert]

I am thinking that the 10 rental rooms are better off being hard wired with a jack. people using the rooms can plug in their laptop and surf. The rec room will be desktop units, these will be provided by the community.

What I am looking for is mainly two things.
If you have guests and they are staying at the rooms, they can have internet connection. The ones in the rec room will be for the kids to use on say 30 minute intervals. We do have some familys in hard times and figured this would be a nice thing to help kids. Especially during the school year.

On the deck ,well for use for anyone there. basically the idea of a cafe with wifi. you can come down sit relax, do work what ever while your kids use the recroom/playground/beach.

the building in question is all one part but looks like 3 buildings attched together in a row. first section is about 80ft long 50ft wide and 2 storys tall. The next section is about 25x30 single story (adult lounge). kinda like a split level look. next off that on the same level as the adult lounge is the resturaunt. it is about 30x50, 1/3 is kitchen, other 2/3 is tables. So the adult lounge almost looks like a breezway between a house and garage.
the deck is about 30x80. this would be the area for the wifi..

I will see if I can get a link to some pics of the building and deck for better idea.

http://goldkeyestates.org/site/10%5E...ges/lodge1.jpg

This all I can find to give a idea.
resturaunt pic. need to copy and paste...


http://goldkeyestates.org/site/20%5EPhotos/10%5Ebeach[summer[hide].htm]/images/beach19.jpg

deck... copy and paste sorry.

http://goldkeyestates.org/site/20%5EPhotos/10%5Ebeach[summer[hide].htm]/images/beach19.jpg


Snert..

on edit****the business office is located 3 miles away, wont be on this network.

[quipfan]

Rather than use a router, get a firewall. We have one at my place of employment that can be configured to block whatever you want.

The one we have is made by Sonic Wall...

[edstephan]

I use pfsense as a router and firewall. It's free. All my access points are on different subnets with differing controls that all are concentrated to the pfsense server. You can v-lan subnets out for each group as well as put up a disclamer and terms of use page.

www.pfsense.com


An OC Activist and 1 of the 3%
Ed Stephan

[Sandcut]

Hey Snert,

It sounds like your community doesn't have a lawyer on retainer despite the fact that you're big enough to have a club house etc.

I'm president of a small (34 lot) community and we had to hire an attorney last year to redo our bylaws. After looking around the area we settled on Young and Haros in Stroudsburg. They specialize in Associations and came recommended by several other board members from other communities in the area. And to date, they've done alright by my community. Enough that I'm willing to plug them openly. Their number is 570-424-9800 and they're located on Main St. You may want to give them a call. They were willing to help us out on an hourly basis since our annual budget is only moderately over their retainer.

Good luck with it. Sounds like a nice amenity for the community.

[RobW]

Snert,

The big question is "What is your budget for this project". Technically speaking, your requirements are plain vanilla bordering on trivial ;-> There are numerous appliance/subscription based solutions that will filter content based on your criteria e.g. WebSense. That is, the black box blocks whatever categories you tell it to block, and the service provider constantly updates the "who gets blocked in each category" list. Hard wired, wifi, doesn't make a difference - all traffic will be monitored by the appliance. The question is how much do you want to spend ...

--RobW

[mjfletcher]

If you're linux savy, you can setup a linux system using the squid proxy with the URLfilterDb addon to block specific sites.

I've got one setup here but the HD died. Mine's a Toshiba Magnia SG20 (dedicated internet appliance) but any linux system can be setup for it.

Once its setup its just a matter of connecting the internet connection to the *nix system and then from that going to the router. If you get a Magnia you can add a wireless card to it to make it a wireless router.

Here's a site with instructions for settng it up on a Magnia system (they can be found on Ebay cheap, they usually don't have hard drives in them but those are cheap on Ebay as well.) http://anoldman.com/modules.php?name...article&sid=48

[MostlyHarmless]

If you're linux savy, you can setup a linux system using the squid proxy with the URLfilterDb addon to block specific sites.

That's a good setup to begin with. Squid is already good with just a few wildcard filters (my stepson hates that dreaded error message or all those broken ad-images ... disgusting what kind of banner adds those gaming sites are making money with).

Note however that unless you clamp down almost everything with a Nazi-admin-style firewall setup, you won't block a network savvy BG. There are open proxies on the weirdest ports out there. The problem with them is that the proxies IP address, contacted by the BG within your network, is different from the IP address, that showed up in the honey-pot that the FBI set up for tracing. The latter just leads to China or similar and there the tracing usually ends.

Don't aim for 100%, you'll never reach that goal. Try to accomplish 90% with 10% effort. Put the rest into "policies" that state that "if caught, kicked out with no refund, reported to state and federal law enforcement, yadda, yadda". That's where your lawyer comes into play to put those policies into proper legalese.


Jan