To be continued...

The blog is continued at help.hotspotsystem.com/updates ! See you there :)

Free Trial Module for Hotspot PRO locations

This is a long awaited and requested feature.

The new Free Trial module allows to give out automatic free accesses (for those who accept the terms).

What is the purpose of this?

1. You can offer an unlimited free access in a Pay-Per-Use location with low bandwidth limits. Other users can pay for faster packages.
2. You can offer a limited free package (for example 10 minutes test drive, or 100 MB free access). After the access expires, users have to pay.

For more information please read our knowledgebase article.

Introducing SNMP Monitoring Service (beta)

Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) is an Internet-standard protocol for managing and monitoring devices on IP networks.  SNMP is supported by lots of routers, switches, servers.

Currently we support bandwidth monitoring of devices that are directly connected to the internet.

Why is it useful?

In a hotspot environment bandwidth has a very important role. It defines the speed which your hotspot users can use the internet thus it defines their satisfaction of the service that hotspot operator provides.

If you could monitor the global bandwidth of your internet line, you would know when it reaches the maximum capacity so you can expand or limit the access of the hotspot.

An example of a 24 hour period based on 5-minute average bandwidth

What devices can you monitor?

Currently you can monitor a device or router which is directly connected to the internet and have SNMP support. It doesn't needs to be a hotspot router, however you need to have a working hotspot router at the location which is sending life signals properly. This is required so we know the actual WAN IP address of the router which you want to monitor.

TIP: If your router is not sending life signals, it means that something is blocking the call from the router to our servers. Be sure to turn off firewalls on your network, especially any SPI firewalls you may have.

How does it work?

Once set up properly, our system is querying your device in every minute to check how much traffic went through in the past minute. From this data, 4 chart is created, a daily chart calculated from 1 minute average date, a weekly from 30 min averages, a monthly from 2 hours averages and a yearly chart from 12 hour averages.

How to setup?

1. First you need to enable SNMP on your device. For example if you are using dd-wrt, this can be found under Services menu.

DD-WRT SNMP Service

2. You need to set a secure Community String for both RO (Read-Only) and RW (Read-Write). Recommended string is minimum 15 characters, combination of uppercase and lowercase letters and numbers. 

3. Be sure that UDP Port 161 is enabled in your firewall.

4. You need to create a new monitor in the Control Center. First you need to select your device and add the network interface you would like to monitor under Reports > SNMP Monitor menu. The IP addresses and locations are collected from the database which stores life signal data from your hotspot routers.

5. Once you select the location (IP), click on "List Interfaces". For the first time, you need to enter the same RO Community String which you set in Step 2.

6. Our system tries to communicate to your device through SNMP to list the available network interfaces. Once you get the list you need to choose the interface you would like to monitor. You should choose the interface which has the highest Total traffic (this is measured from the moment you plug in the device).

You are done. You need to wait approx. 10 minutes for the first data to come in. Under SNMP Monitors you can see the daily chart, if you click on the chart you can see all the 4 charts. You can also find a list of monitored devices on the bottom of the page where you can edit the interface name to a friendly name and you can also remove the monitor. 

How much does this service cost?

Currently the service is free during the beta phase (1st of October, 2012). You need to have a PRO or Hotspot FREE Vouchers / SMS / Social or Basic PLUS subscription for the location you want to monitor. We will announce the pricing later.

HOTSPOT FREE SOCIAL PROMOTION until September, 2012

Get a FREE ROUTER with every Hotspot FREE SOCIAL 600 subscription!

Subject of Promotion:

• - In case of Hotspot FREE SOCIAL 600 subscription you can get a FREE* Hotspot In a Box router (Ubiquiti AirRouter Indoor) with free shipping ($164 USD Value)
• - In case of Hotspot FREE SOCIAL 300 subscription you can get 50% OFF from Hotspot In a Box router (Ubiquiti AirRouter Indoor) and free shipping (Save $82.5 USD from the original $165 USD price)
• - In case of Hotspot FREE SOCIAL 50 subscription you can get 15% OFF from Hotspot In a Box router (Ubiquiti AirRouter Indoor) and free shipping (Save $25 USD from the original $165 USD price)

For more information click here: http://www.hotspotsystem.com/en/hotspot/hotspot_social_wifi_promotion.html

Hotspot FREE SOCIAL (Facebook Hotspot) 2.0

We released an improvement version of Hotspot FREE SOCIAL.

If you are offering a simple click-through authentication where users have to accept the terms, you may want to try out Hotspot FREE SOCIAL where you can get more LIKEs to your Facebook Business page in return for giving out Free Wi-Fi acccess.

WHAT'S NEW ?

+ You can get new Likes to your Facebook Page from your splash page directly. Advantages: Page load times and data traffic is significantly less which leads to more conversions.

+ You can get the email address of authenticated Facebook Users

+ You can post a message to your customer's Facebook Wall so you can reach and drive more people to your business

+ Improved for mobile usage (works much better)

WHAT IS THIS ALL ABOUT AND HOW DOES THIS WORK? You can read all here: Hotspot Free Social: Social Wi-Fi is here!


HOW CAN I SET THE NEW FEATURES? 

In the Control Center > Manage > Locations > click on name > Modify Hotspot Data > Social Settings you can set up your hotspot the way you like.

Social WiFi Usage examples, Marketing Tips for Managing your Facebook Page and more: http://www.facebook.com/hotspotsoftware

CUSTOMER TICKETS: SUPPORT BETWEEN OPERATORS - CUSTOMERS REVISED

Support between you and your customers is an important thing to maintain the quality of your service. Therefore we have revised this area and introducing a new feature in the Control Center called "Customer Tickets".

Before today customers could fill out an online form from your splash page, which was sent to you by email. Then you could reply to the user.

This approach has a big disadvantage: if your customers had problems with accessing your hotspot, they couldn't access their mailboxes to read your reply.

With the new ticketing feature, we store tickets and messages in our database and we provide an URL for the customer so he/she can track your answers on your splash page directly. He/she can also reply there or via email (he/she will reply to a generic hotspotsupport.com email address so we can track the message). 

From the operator's view, when a customer sends a message, we inform you via email when a message arrives. Then you can log in to the Control Center and go to Tools & Settings > Customer Tickets where you can read, follow all messages which are listed by case and reply from there.

We will improve this feature further in the following months, we would be glad if you could send your ideas, suggestions on how we could improve this feature further.

UBIQUITI AIROS SECURITY EXPLOIT - UPDATED FIRMWARE

A vulnerability of AirOS has been discovered recently which may grant remote users administrative access to Ubiquiti equipment running AirOS v3/4 and AirOS v5 without requiring authentication. Therefore a newly updated hotspot firmware has been released for AirMax series (802.11 devices were not affected). 

WE STRONGLY RECOMMEND to upgrade the firmware on your AirMax device (Rocket M, NanoStation/LocoStation M, NanoBridge M, Bullet M, PicoStation M, PowerBridge M, AirBridge M) as soon as possible.

You can download the new firmware from this URL: http://www.hotspotsystem.com/firmware/hss/Ubiquiti/Airmax/