How to do Post-Paid Billing by client location (Room #)

[sandles]

I was wondering whether your product is capable of identifying a client via it's location.

I have seen this in some hotels where you plug your laptop into a connection in your hotel room and you are directed to a login page which only requires you to accept the propesed usage plan. You don't need to enter any username or password. Somehow the system knows that you are in a particular room in the hotel, and the internet charge is then billed to your Hotel Room, which you pay for on check out.

I assume this requires some sort of managed switch that support VLAN's or some other fancy switch feature to allow you to assoicate certain network switch ports with certain locations and then that information is picked up by the logon page somehow?
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Shane

[alan]

As FirstSpot is hardware neutral, it cannot recognize the client room # via network port information. Note that the system you mentioned only works in Ethernet connection, and for wireless case it still won't work (since there is no "port" for the AP).

We have a FirstSpot customer use the following method to recognize the client room # (this works for both wired and wireless):

1) use FirstSpot self sign-up feature, but set the default FirstSpot username status for this newly created username to disabled (you can tie a Plan to self sign-up in v5). Optionally, you can have customer fill in the room # (which the customer needs to use the below step 2 to confirm).

2) Have the customer call a special helpdesk number

3) Since helpdesk can recognize his call display number (and thus the room #), he can then enable the newly self sign-up account manually and link to a particular room.
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~ Patronsoft Limited ~

[sandles]

Thanks for the prompt reply Alan.

My customer is pretty adimant that they would like to offer this type of in-room service to their clients and obviously with minimum overhead to themselves (not having to take calls from guests in over 500 rooms). They understand this would only work for wired ethernet access and not there Wifi setup.

I see that your logon page is written in PHP and is therfore fairly customizable as to how the logon process will work and I am sure I can modify this to accomodate this process. However I am not sure of what I shold be looking for in they way of hardware or even what to search for on the internet for this type of setup. Do you know what this type of client detection / identification is called?
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Shane