HandyCafe Docs
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Wi-Fi Setup

Most cafes already have Wi-Fi and give the internet on it away. The gateway turns it into something you control, and internet access you can charge for. This page is the network side: getting the Wi-Fi onto the gateway and deciding who gets through. The selling side, access packages and codes and the till, is Wi-Fi Vouchers.

What you need

  • An access point. Any normal one. The Wi-Fi built into a router works too, as long as that router can be put into access point mode so it stops handing out addresses of its own.
  • A cable from it to the cafe switch. The access point sits on the same network the gateway feeds, like any other device.

Two devices handing out addresses on one network is the mistake that costs an afternoon. If the Wi-Fi box was the cafe's router before the gateway arrived, turn its DHCP off.

The guest network

Guest Wi-Fi is a network of its own, so a phone in the corner is not sitting on the same network as the till and the stations.

  • SSID. The name guests see.
  • VLAN. The tag that keeps guest traffic apart from the cafe's own. Set the same tag on the access point and on the gateway, and the two agree on what is guest traffic and what is not.

An access point that cannot do VLANs still works. You lose the separation, not the portal.

The portal

With the portal on, a phone joining the Wi-Fi gets a page asking for a code or a member sign-in before it reaches the internet. With it off, the Wi-Fi is open and anyone in range is on it.

Turning it on is one switch on the Guest Wi-Fi tab of the Wi-Fi page. The Server asks you to confirm, because from that moment every device that is not a HandyCafe client needs a code or an account.

The portal answers on a port of its own. Ports 80 and 443 cannot be used, and there is rarely a reason to change the one it comes with.

What a guest sees

  1. They join the Wi-Fi, the same as anywhere else.
  2. The portal page opens on its own, the way a hotel's does.
  3. They type the code from the counter, or sign in as a member.
  4. They are online for as long as the code or their account allows.

A member signs in with their own HandyCafe account and gets whatever their membership carries. They do not need a code at all.

Codes

Codes are created and sold on the Wi-Fi Vouchers page. What matters here is the shape:

Every code is some letters followed by six digits. More letters make a code harder to guess and longer to read out over a counter. Change the shape in Wi-Fi settings when the cafe is busy enough to care; codes already printed keep working either way.

Keeping the guest side from taking the cafe down

The guest Wi-Fi is the part of the network you have least control over: it is other people's phones, syncing whatever they sync. Two settings keep it from costing your paying customers anything:

  • A speed cap on the guest group. See Devices and speed.
  • A shared ceiling for the guest network as a whole, so twenty phones together cannot take more than you decided.

When the portal is off

The Wi-Fi page says so plainly: guests are not asked for a code. That is a fine way to run a cafe that gives Wi-Fi away with a coffee, and it is worth knowing rather than discovering. Devices still show up in the device list and still obey their speed limits.