Hello!

Do any techies know if one can implement a hotspot for internet access for a large number of users (200-300) with only enabling access to one specific app?

Thank you

K

Commercial hotspots allow this - typically they have a login page which doesn't actually have to do login it can be the location of your desired app.

For a cheaper option, would IP address be good enough?

Outbound IP and port filtering is common on routers (which is what you would need, not a plain hotspot).

But if they access it by name not IP then DNS may fail, unless you open port 53 for that.

Thanks - I have honestly got zero clue. Trying to convince IT in my company to install a hotspot to allow access to one app only. From what you say above, we could configure a browser redirect to open an app - correct? I am not sure IP address would work - what criteria can I check for?

Apologies for my lack of knowledge

TBH if you're going to have to get your IT team on side, me giving you random suggestions is probably just going to annoy them...

I'd approach it more along the lines of "I really need your help, I'm sure this would be easy for you experts".

ahaha yes it would annoy them but so far I got "not possible" so I want to challenge that!

Maybe "if Hornbach can do it why can't we" is a bit harsh, but clearly kills the "not possible" argument...

What is it that you actually want to achieve?

What "app" is that anyway?


Is it a web-page?


Where does it run (server-side)?




Be aware that you can tunnel other traffic through DNS, so if you allow DNS lookups, people can still use it to browse the web. A bit slow, but enough to do some basic browsing anyway.


IT probably doesn't want anything to do with it for precisely that reason...

Ah in that situation, definitely it's doable (initially my thought were going along do you mean to tap a hotspot button on your mobile phone, etc)

I believe what you need is easy to accomplish, even without additional hardware.

If your app is a 'web app', i.e. an application which provides what it needs to provide via a web interface, what you are probably looking for is called a (configurable) "captive portal" - i.e. the page that gets automatically displayed when you connect to a public WiFi (e.g. "insert your email address to surf" in a mall or "provide your last name and room number" in hotels) - pointing to your application page . If it's not a web app, then you can discard the "captive portal" part - you only need a very limited guest WLAN.
Most if not all enterprise access points (APs) have the feature. For that number of users, you likely don't want to use consumer-grade equipment (and your IT department would reject that anyway).
Preventing access to "anything but that app" is done via a combination of firewalling and routing. Not exactly rocket science for any network engineer.

In terms of implementation, you would probably want (your IT team) to configure a guest wireless network (WLAN) on all the existing APs in the office, with its captive portal set to the app page that you are looking to display. On consumer-grade equipment, you typically (with default firmware) get one primary and one guest WLAN on each frequency; enterprise gear should (in principle) allow for more than these (in case you have another "proper" guest WLAN).
Go talk to your network folks - if you tell them 'separate guest WLAN with its own captive portal' (or 'separate guest WLAN', if it's not a web app), they should understand exactly what you want/need (assuming I got that right in the first place ).

Thanks Dox. My first inquiry was to use current WLAN and set up a "permanent" guest access - which I think it what you describe. Not possible as the system is "maxed out".

Hence we went down the route of buying a portable hotspot (business grade) but IT says no as they are concerned about people doing funky stuff on it.

(These are employees without company phones/emails).

Thank you all!

K