Bitcoin Forum

I would like have hotspot based on some popular WiFi router, like Linksys or Ubiquiti.
Person pay with BTC and get access to internet.

- Better if hotspot will be self sufficient. Some hardware, like Dlink DIR-320 has USB port. It can be used for USB flashdrive as storage of blocks.

- Better if it will have options, like counting traffic or time, several bandwidth throttling degrees, depending on price.

- Better if hotspot will have 2 SSIDs - one private and one public.

How do you think to start implementing this?

My bounty is small, but I think someone on this forum would need the same and also pay for developer.

How'd they be able to pay with bitcoin if they don't have internet to begin with? :P

I assume that you could restrict the connection in order to allow them to pay, kind of like in the airport hotspots (e.g. Boingo).

Yes, I assume 64 kbit/s session with 15 minutes limit is free.

Bitcoin tunneling FTW

Even a free hotspot usually requires you to give them data to get it opened up. This is obviously possible.

Now what would be really cool is if there was easy software you could run on your home computer or router to give access to others for coins.

I've thought of this one as well, and the simplest way to allow users to pay in bitcoin is to whitelist mybitcoin.com and port 8333, and have a captive portal splash page that is one of those "pay with mybitcoin account or pay with other bitcoin" setups.  There is next to nothing else that users could do without first paying you except update their local bitcoin blockchain or send coins to someone else from their local client.

Take a look at the Buffalo 'Air Station' 300GN wireless router.  It does all that you want except maybe the 2 ssids.  It has three independently functioning transceivers, a fully capable usb port, and dd-wrt.

If anyone wants to do this, they may be able to learn something from the Pirate Box project:
http://wiki.daviddarts.com/PirateBox (http://wiki.daviddarts.com/PirateBox)

Using some custom firmware, you could relatively easily set up a portal where this could be achieved. Hmm...I'll see what I can do.

Off the top of my head, this can be achieved relatively easily with a Squid proxy, but I'm assuming you want something that non-tech can roll out to a place like a coffee shop with relative ease. Modifying the firmware on a Linksys/Buffalo router could be the way to go at that point, but setting up the startup script would be the real trick. There's a lot of homebrew apps you can run like that & couple it with some script-fu you could definitely have this.

I imagine this is going to be a big proponent for the Bitcoin. If coffee shops can freely have this as passive income potential, adoption rates go up & Bitcoin exposure goes up. I am keenly interested in developing for this

I don't think most businesses would be interested in a pay portal for their customers, most already offer free internet as a side benefit to being a paying customer.  I think that will eventually become the norm, much like being a paying customer entitles you to free use of the bathroom, but it's still rude to walk off of the sidewalk to crap without buying anything.

I would find this kind of thing useful at public events, say with a WiMax WAN uplink, some QoS code to keep things even among customers, and a built in Bitcoin client that all attempts to use port 8333 are redirected towards.  I don't want those new BitcoinJ clients trying to repeatedly download even the blockchain headers over the WAN when they would be available locally.  Put the entire system into a large lunchbox or cooler, with a couple of decent antennas neatly sticking out the top.  A decent battery and/or a solar cell on the top of the cooler, and roll it all up to the highest point one can get to early in the day before the (air show, tailgate party, race, outdoor concert, fireworks show, whatever) starts, fire it up and let the crowd discover it.  Some people are going to have 4G/wimax accounts anyway and simply won't care, but if the price isn't too high for a day's casual connectivity or a not-to-bad per MB rate, then those who have metered data plans are going to be intrigued.  And I know that it's downright painful for some young people to have connectivity problems at any event with long periods of calm before the main event.

Sometimes, having it mounted to the top of my minivan would be even better.  Another system with just the piratebox, so that both of these things can coexist in the same space, would be ideal.

Yes, like in Libya, $.1 per litre of gasoline, free electricity, $700/month unemployment compensation.
Compare this to any US airport (I was SF and Washington) - pay 100 times of real price for Internet.
Are we live in communism???

I'm pretty sure there will be huge amount of bitcoin-enabled hotspots, if some simple solution would be available.
Also it will increase awareness about bitcoins and will work for all bitcoin users.

Sorry, I was thinking only of the US again.

Does Internet really cost that much in airports?  I smell an opprotunity.  I have a line of sight from the back of my garage to the local airport, and I could hit it with a high quality beam antenna.

+1

Let's look at it for a moment in a distributed partnership sort of way and see if this works...

Most COTS routers (like Linksys, D-Link, etc) run two things almost invariably: a tftp server and a web server. The tftp server allows the router to be flashed with new firmware and the web server allows the user to configure the router through a nice web interface.

So imagine a centralized site that anyone wishing to run a commercial bitcoin hotspot would join. They would sign up and provide the static IP address of their internet connection (or maybe a dyn domain if their IP changes though this is a bit less stable). The site would send them an email with a confirmation link and a link to download a small package that they would install on their router. All the package would contain would be a script to take input from the central site and update the authorized MAC address table in the router then send the centralized site confirmation that this had been done. Any connection from a MAC address that is NOT in the allowed table on the router would be automatically redirected to the centralized site where they could purchase time.

So a new user rolls up to the hotspot and connects. Since he's a new user and his MAC address isn't in the allowed table, he would be redirected to the central site to purchase credit. Once done, the central site would immediately communicate with the hotspot, update its allowed MAC addresses and the user would then be able to use the router to connect to the internet.

The central site would survive by either taking a cut on time sold or perhaps they would charge a flat fee to hotspot operators per month. The operators would make money by selling time on their hotspots.

All this glorious money, of course, would be Bitcoin.

Thoughts?

Rage

Just give the prospective client splash page access only to his Instawallet and an address to send the coins to .... ???

https://www.instawallet.org

For this you would need to have funds already on this "instawallet" service (which could go down/take your BTC any second they want to). If oyu just have your local wallet.dat, you would need to get the most current blocks before being able to issue any transaction.

If you limit bandwidth there, this would lead to long downloads + frustrated clients who anyways have to wait ~2-3 blocks until they are allowed into the network in the first place!

Bitcoin might be nice for real money transfer, but for small + quick payments (on the airport I want to check mails 5 minutes before the plane leaves, not wait half an hour until my payment is verified!) you would need either a centralized prepay-solution or something else.

It is my understanding that the system verification speed will increase as time goes on, and transaction premiums become more commonplace.

there is quite few hotspot managers build in in dd-wrt already
http://www.dd-wrt.com/demo/Hotspot.asp

not that i ever tried to setup one, but that should be easiest way to go, most likely requiring just minor modifications

if anyone want some dlink 615 routers flashed with dd-wrt let me know (europe only)

Most captive portals allow the owner to permit certain ports at will, so whitelisting port 8333 would allow the user to connect to whatever bitcoin client he desired prior to payment, and then tentatively allow access with the receipt of a valid transaction.  If the transaction turns out bad (double spent, or whatever) during the next 20 minutes, cut the user off.

Confirmations are not required for small value payments.  Take a look at the 'vending machine' threads.  Online e-wallets are one solution, but a double-spend is a tough thing to do, and not something a person is likely to attempt for small value gains.

Until someone can package the exploit and make it trivial to perform such a thing, giving them a skeleton key to all micro payment systems.

Maybe, but then this either becomes a digital 'arms race' as the vendor's programmers come up with new ways of flagging frauds, or simply new ways to identify fraudsters.  If the vendors cannot keep ahead of the fraudsters one way or the other, vendors will simply default to requiring confirmations, and online wallets will truely become required for 'instant' transfers.

It would be cool if wireless mesh networks would come to being financed by the users through bitcoin.
http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=6477.0
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesh_network

https://dev.openwrt.org/

This is most popular alt firmware. Somebody, pls, create a ticket for developers. My engilish is poor to do it.

https://dev.openwrt.org/ticket/11335 (https://dev.openwrt.org/ticket/11335)

done.

this idea will be nice for large Wi-Fi operators,i hate to put my CC # in the airport

Closed without comment  :-[

Seems we have to do it on our own then :)

And they are right. Start a discussion on their forums, with details of how it would work and how it would be implemented. A bug tracker is for bugs, not features.
Also, bitcoin is a buzzword. ;D

I would like to add 10 BTC to the Bounty, providing someone can walk me through making it work without using linux.

I am EXTREMELY interested in seeing this happen...

that's a practical impossibility.

Windows RT router anyone? LOL

good luck with that.

Well, I guess no one is willing to sell me a preconfigured router then..   oh well...  Ill give someone else my bitcoins...   ::)

Preconfigured is a different requirement than doesn't require linux.

I think the biggest concern about being able to set up a mobile hotspot is the possibility of that mobile hotspot leaving/going down/shutting off/etc.  I mean, I'd be pissed if I paid for 60 minutes of access, and then 2 minutes later, the person running the mobile hotspot jumps on a plane and shuts off their device.

So, solve that problem please, then I'm onboard.  ;)

Is that a real worry ?

In the last year I think my router has been off for a total of 3 minutes..  

I would hazard a guess a lot of people are like me.

And on top of that, why not pay in smaller amounts... ?  15 mins..  30 mins... big whoop, I dont think this would be very expensive for the end user paying for access

Sounds a lot like FON (http://corp.fon.com/en/this-is-fon). Haven't looked at it for awhile, so I'm not sure what stage it's at or whether could be tweaked to accept bitcoin.

+1 btc if the software is free
+1 btc for Hotspot or Android firmware/app to profit from.
(while 1 btc < $10 USD)

Well, someone mentioned "mobile hotspots".  If I'm connecting to one, how do I know it's a router, and not someone's mobile hotspot?  Or wireless-sharing mobile phone?

watching

seems like there is some serious interest in this. I might consider looking through my old sources again.

However, you will not be able to do this without a second machine(on the internet or in your local establishment), since bitcoind eats way to much memory even for recent routers. it would be well possible though to have a bitcoind on some cheap vps that the router connects to via RPC to confirm transactions. As for the bitcoin payment itself, it isnt really hard to tunnel bitcoin without enabling malicious users to tunnel voluntary traffic over it.

If that would make anyone of the donors here happy, please respond.

You wouldn't need a full bitcoind, only to be able to do the bootstrapping of bitcoind, find a few valid nodes and send the transaction there. I guess in most cases 0 confirmations would be enough anyways... I don't know if an invalid transaction fails silently though or if the other nodes would complain if you got a fake transaction and relayed them there.

Also a possibility: Let the admin input a list of n adresses that are used for single transactions + a warning when the address pool is starting to run low. Check via blockexplorer or other services for transactions in the network or fulfilled payments.

The best and probably easiest solution would still be the LAN bitcoind I guess though. Please make it send it's traffic as fast as possible (so someone can get the whole block chain quickly if necessary).

+1 BTC from me if the solution: Works on Open WRT and DD WRT, is able to traffic shape the paying users (e.g. at least 50 kB/s per user, up to 500 kB/s for all users) and is Open Source, hosted on GitHub.

Hi, for sending you are right, in theory you dont need to allow a complete tunnelling of the bitcoin protocol. however, what I meant with running bitcoind on the hotspot device was that the owner needs to confirm the incoming transaction. As I also stated, this could be done with some other pc/vps that can be queried via RPC.

As for accepting 0/unconf transactions with this, as long as the tx is valid(it wont show up in the receivers client if it is invalid), I would consider the risk minimal - at least lower than the risk of people performing a chargeback(friendly fraud) when paying with their credit card or gaypal account.

However, long story short, I developed a similar solution about a year ago, on a D-Link DWL 622AP using openwrt. The DWL is a very small device with 2 megs of Flash, and 8 megs of RAM, so my solution should work on any openwrt device, since the 622AP is pretty much as low as it gets when speaking of system resources. I remember I solved the captive portal task back then by adding a firewall rule for new connected clients that redirected all traffic to the router itself, and remembered clients by mac and user/pass combo(having the mac enabled for as long as the wifi connection persists + 2 hours, after that asking for user and pass again). So what needs to be done is adding an little proxy that will connect bitcoind on the client machines to our payment gateway bitcoin, a teensy piece of code to verify incoming transactions, and nicer pages for the frontend(webdesign isnt really my thing). If need is there, an admin panel would need to be written too.

If there is still interest, and the bounties are still up, I might consider reopening this project for BTC.

Or just a port foraeding over a ssh tunnel.

how did you get to ssh port tunnel? that is totally unrelated...

It's a solution to the problem.  Rather than run a bitcoind on the hotspot hardware or use an api to do it with an overlay network, simply forward bitcoin ports from the hotspot hardware directly to a full bitcoind that you control.

Yup. SSH can be used for a cheap and secure VPN.

OP, bump bounty to 30 btc.. Im good for the extra 10.. 

Im actually good for a lot more than that..  but 30 is good for now...  ;)

That bounty thing is encouraging, so today i started working to accomplish this. I'm working on the nodogsplash solution on top of openwrt, so when this is finished we will only need to install a simple package (it should be compatible with openwrt and ddwrt) :)

http://i1200.photobucket.com/albums/bb328/kr105rlz/btcap.png

It is on a very early stage (yet), but it is capable of granting you access to the network using btc :) I will publish all the sources and stuff in the next few days, when i get this to a more mature state :D

Sounds like a cool idea.  is the bounty at 30 now?  I will chip in 5 to make it 35.

I really like this idea.
Suggestion:
As long as the initial connection allows to connect to the bitcoin network (bitcoin ports are open) you could spare some effort by using the bitcoinmonitor.net solution. Setup like 100 addresses in the router that are given to users in a round-robin fashion. Register these addresses with an agent at bitcoinmonitor.net. Receive a http callback from the agent as soon as the coins are incoming. Allow full access to user.
This way the only thing you need on the router is the ability to accept incoming http payment confirmations and some simple logic to connect user sessions to bitcoin addresses - no need to relay transactions or similar stuff related to bitcoin protocol.

Problem i see is that at least in Germany you are legally getting into trouble if someone does illegal things from your wifi - so-called "Störerhaftung"...

Run everything through VPN. Include the feature in the router, that allows automatic VPN usage.

In Germany, VPN is required in every case, since otherqwise the media companies can send you bills for bittorrent downloads :D

to avoid running bitcoind, the wifi router could forward the transaction to an Electrum server, and get confirmations from it.
I am interested in this project and I can provide technical assistance towards such a solution.

first email i get from Fon.com
second email i get from Fon.com

This had crossed my mind also. It is an ideal application for a lite client, like ThomasV's Electrum. Maybe blockchain.info and the iOS app has some merit also.

Maybe a viable business model is to provide multiple bitcoind backends on remote servers, use stratum to communicate with the wifi routers lite clients and take care of install, billing, maintenance, etc for anybody wants to get paid for one-click install public access wifi sharing on their router? The business gets a small cut from many (maybe many many many) routers and the router/access owners get all the "s/ware bitcoin stuff" just done for them and a bitcoin check in the mail every month. Kind of like a wifi router sharing pool.

...or just do it via bit-pay.com. ;)

They charge 0.99% on pure bitcoin transactions though.

Somehow I missed this thread.  Previously on another thread I had posted:


Additionally, there could be a tie in with this to the Free Network Foundation's project, with the hotspot also acting as a node in their mesh network.  That will give privacy at the edge node, encrypted using FreedomTunnel (VPN).

 - http://freenetworkfoundation.org
 - http://chili.freenetworkfoundation.org/projects

So the running total is 35 BTC, right?
+1 BTC if open source
There were some other +1's back there... we're at about a 200 USD bounty right now

Edit: I'm no longer offering this. Let me know if someone seriously attempts this and has escrow set up, though.

I think the OP's offer (20 BTC) was more than a year ago, so maybe there needs to be a check to make sure the offer is still good.  The other (10 BTC + 5 BTC + 1 BTC (conditional) + 1 BTC (conditional)) are more recent.

Depending on what the deliverable is, I know there is interest in this that would raise the bounty a bit.

Nice to see someone taking this seriously..

my +10 is on the condition that even an idiot like me can install it on a compatible router..  and of course the program cost falls under the 10...

I dont care how I get a router working with it, Im flexible..

But my offer stands at a +10 on the bounty..

Would be cool if this was combined with piratebox functionality so you could share files and chat locally.  :)

I will raise my bounty up to 10, but the software will need to be open source.

I would do the payment receiving using the electrum model... And in a way where you have the private keys offline, and you create the bitcoin addresses and public keys only on the router. And then query the balance on electrum servers.

Would it be possible to have a way that people can access the bitcoin network, but nothing else for free?

Maybe some sort of white listing?

Of course.  There are a number of different ways to do that.  Unblock only bitcoin ports & whitelist bitcoin related websites, and simply open wide after payment.  A lot of people would pay just to unblock facebook & twitter, so you could just block those sites until paid.

Is this bounty still in progress ?

Maybe, maybe not.  Build it and find out.

I'll pay up at least...

Quoted for future reference  :)



It's an interesting project and with very high potential, hope we see it done some day.

I am still in for 10BTC

Maybe we should do a bounty question on rugatu, would you still be in ?

I think there are varying requirements for what would earn the bounty so probably what would be useful is to have each bounty offered list the requirements.

I have [Edit: had] a use case where a bounty would be offered [Edit: I'm no longer a backer for a bounty], but I haven't put the specs for it together yet.  It will be along the lines of:

The ability to share a router for use by the operator for internal use as well as offering access commercially.

Software License: [flexible, GPL or BSD]
Hardware supported: [incomplete]  (probably WRT54G, etc., also Ubiquity Nanostation2)
Payment methods: Both Bitcoin or Voucher Code (i.e., a code for a 2 hour pass, 1 day pass, etc.)
Private access: Second SSID for internal use, WPA2 protection
LAN /ethernet: Full access
WLAN DHCP: Supported (optional)
WLAN Static IP: Supported (optional)
Remote admin: Supported (optional)

I'm probably forgetting a few details.

My only requirement is Open Source

Sounds pretty good to me.  Ditto on the Open Source.


Sorry, haven't used rugatu before.  But sure, as long as the code is open source, works, and posted.

+1, really cool project.

Indeed. I always have at least two in stock :P

I have one, and it's pretty cool; but you will be surprised at how many consumer devices will refuse to cooperate with it.  Both Amazon Kindles & Apple products need to be able to communicate with their parent companies servers in order to do much of anything, which kinda makes them useless with the piratebox.  Android phones don't seem to care, and can happily upload & download without complaint.

Bounty created  http://www.rugatu.com/questions/739/wi-fi-hotspot-enabled-by-bitcoin (http://www.rugatu.com/questions/739/wi-fi-hotspot-enabled-by-bitcoin)

Rugatu pledges 1 bitcoin.

If somebody is going to do it, read this first:

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Contracts#Example_7:_Rapidly-adjusted_.28micro.29payments_to_a_pre-determined_party

Sounds very nice, but would require a special client used to meter the bandwidth and to sign/create these transactions, right?

Also, what happens if the Access Point thinks the user has used 100 MB of traffic, the user client thinks he has used only 99 MB of traffic though and refuses to "pay up"? Overprovision by some percentage? Choke (=rate-limit) the client till he pays up? This might lead to some bad user experience if consequences are harsh and immediate or in some not-paid traffic (or whatever) if there iss too much leeway.

It might work perfectly for per-minute flatrates though, maybe even for "per 10 seconds" types of contracts. Even per second maybe, though this might already start to have some timing issues (or packet loss issues!), especially with wireless connections.

Something where this might also work out, would be a bitcoin powered online hosting provider...

For APs the biggest problem might be to get bitcoins you own into that client - either it has to access your wallet file or it has it's own single private key(s) pre-charged with some amount. One could sell pre-charged private keys at the counter in a cafe for example and the added benefit for the customer would then be that they can use up as much as they like of that and transfer the rest to their wallet and use these as "normal" bitcoins after their session ends.

That way, even if you sell access "vouchers" to the local W-LAN for 30 USD or so while 1 hour only costs 2 USD, they still can afterwards keep and use the remaining balance.

It can just be built in to existing Android mobile clients. It's fair to ask that users have this, as that way it can be totally transparent ... users can end up on your wifi gateway without even realizing, if your fees are acceptable.


You buy access ahead of time in small amounts. The user can never be in bandwidth debt. They can have bought small amounts of traffic they didn't use, though.


The proposal on the wiki is per kilobyte. The negotiation is cheap enough for that to be feasible, I think.

Automated payments are not currently possible.  This would likely require a second, independent wallet app made for the purpose.

Further information on this project is now occurring on the thread on Rugutu:

 - http://www.rugatu.com/questions/739/wi-fi-hotspot-enabled-by-bitcoin

Just posting an update on this thread ... there appears to be a party interested in building this:

 - http://www.rugatu.com/questions/739/wi-fi-hotspot-enabled-by-bitcoin/3384

Good luck!

NEat !

Someone with expertise in this area might want to consider creating a business plan to provide this and pitch it to BitAngels:
 - http://www.bitangels.co

can't wait to see someone pull this off sounds wicked awesome  :D

Keeping an eye on this:

Bitcoin Wifi Hotspot running on Raspberry Pi.
 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=277584.0
 - http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1ko3sz

Watching! :)

Watching again.

I think this is a million dollar idea (or a BTC8771.929824561 idea).

Why not just gateway for boingo or ipass or BT Openzone?

I have heard of some of those, but do they take BTC? If so that's great. I just don't like giving my banking info so I can send an email from the airport.

They don't, point being I can set up as a reseller of these, accept your bitcoin purchases, and job is done.  Globally, all airport, hotels, and cities everywhere.
There is no technical problem whatsoever for setting up a global WiFi ISP.  It is a business problem only.

I know product managers at these companies.  It can be done.  It isn't even hard, the question that will make it happen is whether there is a market.  If there are close to 100 subscribers globally, its going to be worth doing.

If we want additional privacy features, all that takes is setting up a RADIUS server and running RADIUS proxy through it for authentication, accounting and billing.

No technical development is needed.  Just business development, a little marketing, a website, a payment gateway.  The technology for this is old and already deployed.

@NewLiberty   Ahh, a reseller system, of course.

I was thinking of some kind of automated wallet running on a hacked-up router. But whatever. I would use this service whenever I travel.

If I can get on boingo with BTC, that'd be great! They are everywhere, it seems.

Yes, I could set this up without much difficulty. 
Have existing high level partnership relationships with these global wifi providers, and the authentication management elements.
The only concern is whether there is sufficient demand and how much I am willing to lose to find out. :)

After a quick look at the available solutions Aruba with Amigopod can do this. If we are thinking in freeware solutions then Packetfence is a good solution. It has built-in billing support, so you just need an external payment processor, what gives the green light for the auth process. I'm going to playing a bit with this :).

After running some numbers, I can do this maybe with even less than 50 subscribers if we charged enough (yuck, I wish there were more of us).  Can do a global rollout, and provide Bitcoin payment for most of the major WiFi providers.  It would take a couple months, a small team of sub-contractors to share the bounty/revenue, and maybe a type-A, B-school grad to manage it as CEO once it is set up.

This is in fact one of the projects I am working on in my spare time.

However, I just finished this BitcoinWifi project!

http://bitcoinwifi.me/

Regards
Kris

The link redirect to something completely unrelated, https://bipsmarket.com/

That link is one and a half years old...

https://github.com/aantonop/wifiportal21 i got a btc addy if you found that useful :D

Requires a 21 Bitcoin computer though.

This is the Github page for BitcoinWifi: https://github.com/ragmondo/BitcoinWifi (https://github.com/ragmondo/BitcoinWifi)
...and this is the project page: http://www.bitcoinwifi.net/ (http://www.bitcoinwifi.net/)

Wow, it is really a ultra nice contribution, really apreciated, i thinkit could be a fantastic bussines model for a international coop, cheap hardware and thousand of millions of potential customers   :)

Last commit over a year ago, a big warning in the readme that it is NOT production ready and not licensed...

Just to be clear, this bounty was posted several years ago, and I am definitely no longer willing to give 20 BTC now.

This post was made by a different account than the one you just posted. Does this mean that this is an alt of yours?

MoonShadow was the 7th poster and followed/contributed all along, they likely aren't the original poster but was a fan of the idea and willing to contribute.

correct

Wow this is a great idea. Good luck to anyone who attempts this.

It really surprises me that this has been an idea for so long by so many different people and has yet to be anything usable. Whats the major holdup?
While I like that there are projects out there for the 21 computer, Id like to see this done on a rpi or even windows/linux desktop on the network.

... lack of talent is the major holdup, imho.

This sounds like a really cool idea. I don't think it would be terribly difficult either. Just have to set up some APIs for making payments and adding some unique identifier for the current device to a list of verified devices. And then of course you'd need all requests to go through your application, and block ones that are not found in the list of verified devices (or have expired or whatever).

I would have to agree. It seems that those who have the talent, don't have the interest in such a project.

Yep, it's not that hard.
I can do it, if the bounty still stands (escrowed :D  ) in this BTC price :D

Back then BTC was ~$5 each. You're not actually asking for 20BTC at today's price, are you?

Maybe not 20 BTC, but I'd still chip in with 1 or 2 BTC for a solution that:

* is free software under BSD, MIT or ISC license (no GPL)
* does NOT require any external API or service provider on the internet, the only service running that can be assumed is a trusted bitcoin-core server on the local network. No "21 inc. computer" either.
* does NOT spam the block chain with useless transactions (can be achieved e.g. by using payment channels or lightning network). At most one connection to the AP = 1 transaction on the block chain (or less, if traffic/time is bought ahead of time or a balance is kept open).
* has good (unit, performance and integration) test coverage
* is packaged at least for DD-WRT and 2 other major Linux distributions
* allows a user who has not signed in or paid to connect to the local bitcoind (to download blocks etc.) or to view the landing page that contains the payment info. Not more, not less.

That part is a little impractical, you'd have to allow users to access the most common spv servers and online wallets since most will not be running around with full nodes. It'd be more likely that a client is running electrum or simply using their circle account than that they'd be going around with bitcoind installed on their laptop or worse cellphone.

I agree with bitspill's point.

I might be able to contribute toward a solution if that was relaxed. My team is currently doing a large dd-wrt project involving bitcoin and ad-hoc mesh networking. I'll talk with them about it if that constraint could be reconsidered.

So a couple points to be a little bit realistic here:

1. The best way to implement a solution for this would be to use one remote server-side application, and a client-side application that would run on a router. The client would basically forward all requests to the server, and the server would handle payments, authentication, and re-routing.

2. If you wanted to implement this as just a client side application where anybody can use it, that would be possible too. However, it would require communication with the internet in order to perform bitcoin transactions. Furthermore, it would be unreasonable to not use an external service for handling bitcoin payments. Building a bitcoin payment system from scratch would be a horrible idea... way too much time and effort to try to reinvent the wheel.

3. I seriously doubt you can find good software engineers who are going to want to build this as open source. Or if they did, the reward would have to be way way way more than 20 BTC. An app like this wouldn't be too difficult to make, but it would be VERY time consuming. There are a lot of moving parts involved. In real life, something like this would most likely cost at least several hundred thousand dollars to develop.

I don't know enough about Electrum (afaik. it requires some kind of custom remote server), but accessing web wallets is out of scope for sure. Proper SPV wallets such as bitcoin-wallet on Android are able to connect to bitcoind instances.

As Bitcoin-core can prune the blocks on disk, I don't see any reason not to use a proper client instead of something that relies on remote trusted third parties. If you want to add extra stuff (such as connectivity to a local Electrum server or similar - or even connecting to web wallets or other external services) be my guest, but it should at least be configurable service by service - these tend to die out from time to time due to security fluctuations (just look at this thread here and check how many links still work)...

At least bitcoind-access-only mode has to be provided and working, if other services are also provided (e.g. you'd likely need to resolve DNS queries to even let users contact circle.com), they need to have an off-switch.


1. I'm not so sure why the server should handle routing, otherwise I don't see how a DD-WRT router shouldn't be capable of most of the legwork (except for handling more complex payments/cryptokeys in case a more modern approach is taken than "pay x amount and once confirmed (or marked non-RBF), you get network access for y minutes or z MB of traffic credits"). In the end it doesn't matter much, since there will have to be a trusted full node somewhere in the local network anyways, so running a small server there won't do much harm I guess.

2. No, read through this thread and on the concept of payment channels. Also the point of Bitcoin is to be able to handle your own infrastructure - bitcoind is more than capable of handling payments securely and it can also submit arbitrary payments to the network. The back-end server would be online anyways of course.

3. Maybe in Silicon Valley it would? I personally don't see a big market behind this, which is why I'm not going to start a company and collect funds to develop this stuff - if however someone wants to: feel free to do so! If you want to receive money from me as a reward/bounty/donation/whateveryoucallit, I think I was quite clear under which circumstances I would be willing to hand over the equivalent of several hundred USD in current value (which is still the SAME amount of BTC by the way that I offered years back when it was about 20 USD!). Joinmarket for example is a project that is getting close to the maturity that I'd expect and I doubt that it cost several 100k of USD... Anyways, thanks for your opinion.

Sorry if my comment came off as negative or discouraging, but I work in this field and I'm trying to give you a more realistic picture of how something like this would get developed.

1. The reason that it would be best to run this as a server side application where the router just handles the ui is because you don't want a router handling business logic. Furthermore, it gives you more flexibility. If the logic is handled on a server, you can control which routers can access the application and you make it more accessible. The software running on people's routers would be much more light weight... all it would be is a ui and some simple logic to route requests to the main server. Like I said, it doesn't have to be done this way, but handling all that logic on the ui side is messy and sub optimal.

2. Once again, you'll be setting up your own payment system, which is what I am saying is a bad idea. You're adding unnecessary work. Why not just use an already existing service?

3. I know a lot of people who develop mobile and web applications like this for a living (I don't live in California and neither do they). The absolute cheapest that these things get developed for is still well over $100k. I work in this industry and I know how much these things cost. Software engineers are extremely expensive no matter where they work. Good software engineers are even more expensive. This is not a small project. That being said, obviously people here aren't going to be dishing out 20 btc for something like this. My point is, though, that this task would take a lot of time, and it will be hard to motivate a software engineer to put their hours towards this instead of, for example, doing some consulting work for like $100 per hour (which is very easy to find).

I think a hotspot concept similar to ones used in airports can be done:

1) User connects to a Wireless network where they can access only one page (login page/payment page). Here the user is instructed to pay to a unique Bitcoin address and a unique reference code is generated to associate/track that reference code to the user who has made the payment. Preferably a Bitcoin address can be used instead of a payment gateway like coinbase or bitpay. Collect the users phone number to SMS the login details.

2) On payment the login details are SMS'd to the users phone number.

3) The user inputs the login details on the login page to be able to browse.

What if a user doesn't have a mobile phone (e.g. on airports you often don't have a local SIM card) or the SMS service provider takes a few hours to send the message? The login details (why logging in anyways if you can already identify someone by MAC address?) are probably better displayed on the splash page or there is no need to "login" anyways as soon as the payment goes through.

Actually, that seems more appropriate. I was at an airport at my place and had an SMS sent, so probably thought the idea was applicable. It would be nice to autologin once the payment is completed, and probably have a timer that the user can see. You could have packages like for 1 hour of usage or 2 hours and different prices.

There are some routers that lets you flash Custom Firmware and they might have an Open Source Custom Firmware that creates an Captive Portal (Thats what you're searching for).  To get the payments in Bitcoin you can use BlockChain API to receive payments on that captive portal system (it needs some changes to work with the API)

Why not just design a computer using pfsense. pfsense you can setup a computer as a router and get more range also with expand ability of adding a application to accept the bitcoin.

Pfsense is a FreeBSD distro, not some magic "hotspot enabler". The often mentioned OpenWRT distribution (Linux based) would be another option. Both of them already have basic captive portal software built in, still nobody bothered to create a proper Bitcoin plugin for them over the past few years.

The way how to do this is actually not very difficult or completely out of the box... it is just hard to monetize and unless you have a lot of people around that have BTC and would use them to pay for WLAN access, it would be very hard to profit from this at all (e.g. a hackerspace - but then again you'd likely offer free WLAN instead of charging money for something as basic as internet). This means you'd have to do this for the bounty here and personal interest. Apparently both are still not high enough to motivate people.

pfsense you can build into a hot spot easily all the options are there. I work with pfsense every day with my server farm.

The peoples on here they are answering to an approach made on May 11, 2011. I wonder if the creator of this thread found the solution.

I dont think so that first of all he is following this thread which he created long back, if he would have not found the solution he would have been in details about it and would have reported or replied the messages.

True,

Besides he was providing that amount when the price was different for a solution.

So a couple points to be even more realistic here:

1. Why would anyone want a centralized single point of failure? The original idea of running the system on the router itself is more than fine, and gives the operator maximum flexibility.

2. Not sure why you would consider a router a "client side application", but regarding the bitcoin transactions I see absolutely no problem. Using simplified payment verification (via Electrum or obelisk servers) it's fairly easy to verify received payments. I would estimate the time to code this to 30-45 minutes. It's no horrible idea at all, Bitcoin was invented to avoid centralization ... using a centralized service is ironic.

3. If Linus Torvald had thought this way, we all would be still using Windoze  ;D


Still not sure why you call it time consuming. I could do it in one 8 hour work day, I think.
Whats so hard to monitor bitcoin transactions and set individual routes for the connected clients (either a route to the internet or a route to the payment site) using a hand full of easy bash scripts that are triggered from either a countdown timer or a SPV client when certain transactions are seen?

Hey all,

My partners and I would like to give this project a go. Over the last few months we have been playing around with some code and looking at other attempts at this project. We currently have a working prototype for a raspberry pi 3.

We have seen the project that 21.co put out but the price point of a 21 computer makes the product a bit to pricey for most. Our software would run on any raspberry pi and would only need a wifi adapter for a pi 1 and 2 to work. (plus SD card, power adapter and network cable)

If anyone in here is still offering a bounty that would be cool, but I'm trying to fully understand what features make this a great product that you all would support. We will likely sell some prototype units to make back our time developing this product.

We also have an opportunity to demonstrate the product at an upcoming even in New Hampshire among bitcoin users. I'll be back to post an update on our prototype sale but please let me know what it is that would make this qualify for any bounty's or your support buying a prototype.

Thanks!

Come on, this is pretty easy and does neither require much funding nor does it require much time.
The least it requires are "partners".

1. Set up regular public access point using open source tools (HostAP?)
2. Create a website that shows a BTC address that users have to pay. The address is deterministically generated from the connected MAC address in the same manner as a brain wallet is created, salted of course.
3. Create hook script to set the default gateway for each MAC address to the payment site (on connection)
4. Set up a SPV client monitoring payment addresses and set the default gateway to the REAL ONE for all mac addresses (i.e., the connected bitcoin addresses) that have been paid.
(Consider checking past payments for old payments if a client reconnects but still has some time left)

One day, max.

We have started a presale and crowd funding campaign for a new bitcoin product, The BEWP: Bitcoin Enabled WIFI Portal. BEWP is software configured as a router for Raspberry Pi 3 and other Linux based mini-computers to serve Wi-Fi through a bitcoin pay wall. Using popular bitcoin wallets, such as CoPay, consumers can use bitcoin to get past the Wi-Fi captive portal and establish an Internet connection.

The limited edition plug-and-play prototype is available through Purse.io as well as our Bitcoin Starter page where we offer a few price points to help support the project with a preorder of the final product or an early prototype to help us beta test the various features we have planned.

We just wrapped up deploying the BEWP at the 13th annual Porcupine Freedom festival and provide great WIFI coverage in the remote white mountains of New Hampshire.

Learn more at our Bitcoin Starter page or below is a link to an article just published by Bitcoin.com

https://bitcoinstarter.com/projects/bewp-bitcoin-enabled-wifi-portal/ (https://bitcoinstarter.com/projects/bewp-bitcoin-enabled-wifi-portal/)

https://news.bitcoin.com/meet-bewp-bitcoin-enabled-wifi/ (https://news.bitcoin.com/meet-bewp-bitcoin-enabled-wifi/)

good work guys.

it's similar idea.. but have been researching; peer to peer/decentralized virtual network, SDN.. now just for wire for test/research, but wireless is part of it since traffics needs to be flush down to internet anyway, land/wire.. is this something still interested or looking for?

Even years later: I'm interested in what is described in the post(s) here - a WiFi (WLAN) hotspot with native Bitcoin payments for traffic/time enabled. How about starting with this instead of fancier SDN solutions?

right, SDK/SDN comes later, just saying since in order to do much more later current exiting network logic/technique in hw needs to be out/extracted and move toward more software defined on modern generic computing hardware, not expensive enterprise hw.. which gives flexibility/scaleability and will allow to create mesh/stable network, everyone's network/internet. also please take a look, my post on https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1650067.0 this research's one of focus is wireless connectives fair sharing with fair anonymity with security.

Technically you could just use an existing 4G portable hotspot device, then pay for the mobile plan using a bitcoin debit card, or if there's enough demand, the distributor will start accepting bitcoin straight.

what do you think about like idea on wireless/wifi as like electricity/on-demand or pay as you go :) and another question brings, it's still centralized structures and under surveillance with any existing infra. and always security is concern with incoming more future wireless devices and bots and I think this area still wildwest and solvable.. also goods for everyone in global if peers can share internet resources fairly, securely. probably it's more efficient for everyone for internet access and information/knowledge sharing..

Locked because of necro-posts. OP contact me if you want me to unlock it.