How can I avoid my competition doing this to me?

Yes, Hide SSID. However, that does not help, if you are offering a self signup service where seeing the SSID is what brings in the subscriber in the first place. I suggest Virtual APs, so monthly subscribers can be transitioned to a different SSID. In other words advertise one, and then after you qualify them and have their contact info, mail them a new preferred SSID to use, that is not broadcasted.

But the only real thing you can do about it is to deploy gear that does not have that limitation. One of the reasons, we deploy Trango, that has connection security built in.

Tom DeReggi
RapidDSL & Wireless, Inc
IntAirNet- Fixed Wireless Broadband


----- Original Message ----- From: "Brian Rohrbacher" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "WISPA General List" <wireless@wispa.org>
Sent: Tuesday, December 27, 2005 11:17 PM
Subject: Re: [WISPA] Virtual AP


How can I avoid my competition doing this to me? Hide SSID and change it every so often?

Tom DeReggi wrote:

I have to agree with John. I can't see the benefit of resorting to those type of poor neighbor policies. First off, I'd be embaressed to admit it openly on the list. Second you are borderlining on legality. You just provided evidence that you purposely attempt to degrade another businesses ability to do business, where you'd likely lose now in a suit for tortuous interference (or what ever that is called), if ever taken up against you. Secondly, anything you do to them, ultimately can be done back to you, if they get work of your tactics.

Its been proven many time over, that friendly neighbor policies far better mutually benefit WISPs. I'd advise re-tinking your strategy.

At minimum, if the goal was to get your competitors's clients to associate to you, the las tthing you'd want to point out to them is that your network would be vulnerable to the same tactics that your neighbor was. You expose the flaws in Wifi, and you ALSO provide wifi. If you insisted on tactics to steal their association, you'd be much better off, having their clients connect to you, and then you pass them to your captive portal signup page, with a splash page for better rates and/or performance options, with an option to continue at low bandwdith. The last thing you want to do is play Thug tactics, (sorta like mafia protection money), stating we are the ones destroying your ability to use the Internet, pay us, or don't communicate at all. No one wants to buy service from someone that they've developed animosity towards.

Tom DeReggi
RapidDSL & Wireless, Inc
IntAirNet- Fixed Wireless Broadband

----- Original Message ----- From: "John Scrivner" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "WISPA General List" <wireless@wispa.org>
Sent: Tuesday, December 27, 2005 12:27 PM
Subject: Re: [WISPA] Virtual AP


Short of frustrating potential customers I cannot fathom what positive effect this process has. Please enlighten me how this is a good thing to do.
Scriv


Kurt Fankhauser wrote:

I do that too, 3 competitors have towers all within ¼ mile of each other, I put their ssid in my AP but turn the broadcast off, their clients associate to me and I deny all their access so when they try to hook up customers it looks like their connected but they cant figure out why it doesn’t work, keeps them from signing up clients in my area.

Kurt Fankhauser

WAVELINC

114 S. Walnut St.

Bucyrus, OH 44820

419-562-6405

www.wavelinc.com

-----Original Message-----
*From:* [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] *On Behalf Of *Rick Smith
*Sent:* Tuesday, December 27, 2005 8:12 AM
*To:* 'WISPA General List'
*Subject:* RE: [WISPA] Virtual AP

actually, I was kidding about the competitor thing, wanted to see if it'd start a fire. It's something I'd thought of, but you can't route based on Virtual AP SSID

Having an invididual hotspot page per virtual SSID would be cool, on a wholesale level...

------------------------------------------------------------------------


*From:* [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] *On Behalf Of *Scott Reed
*Sent:* Tuesday, December 27, 2005 10:44 AM
*To:* WISPA General List
*Subject:* RE: [WISPA] Virtual AP

What happens when a potential customer sees the competition's name? They call the competitor who says, "We don't do that." Then what, do you get called by the competitor? I guess my question is, how does advertising the competitor's name help you?

I like the wholesale idea though. I may have to pursue that in the future.

Scott Reed
Owner
NewWays
Wireless Networking
Network Design, Installation and Administration
www.nwwnet.net <http://www.nwwnet.net/>

The season is Christmas, not X-mas, not the holiday, but Christmas, because
Christ was born to provide salvation to all who will believe!

*---------- Original Message -----------*
From: Rick Smith <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "'WISPA General List'" <wireless@wispa.org>
Sent: Tue, 27 Dec 2005 10:15:08 -0500
Subject: RE: [WISPA] Virtual AP

Yep, I create virtual SSIDs for all my competitors names (they only

do DSL) :)


I also wholesale service off one of my towers via 2.4 and 900 mhz to

a local computer guy that likes to see his name "in the air" -

the virtual SSID thing was a natural win...

Not sure about the broadcast thing...haven't seen a performance hit

because of the virtual ssid's ...

R

-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]

On Behalf Of Pete Davis

Sent: Tuesday, December 27, 2005 9:57 AM
To: WISPA General List
Subject: [WISPA] Virtual AP

Mikrotik APs have the capability to create a "Virtual AP" with a

secondary SSID, but I haven't found much documentation about it.


Has anyone used this feature much? I could see this being useful

during a transitional period, while you are changing the SSID, so

you can access the CPE with the "old" ssid.
I could also see this being useful for colocating two companies on

the same tower/AP, like if you have an ISP geared toward

residential service, and another company name/marketing scheme for

business customers.

I don't know what kind of performance impact there is when you create

a bunch of APs on one radio.


I had a wierd thought about this, however: If I have 40 clients on an

AP, and set up 40 "virtual AP's" on the network with each

client on his own SSID, do they count as 40 PTP links, allowing me to

kick up the antenna gain like with the CPE?


Does the virtual AP really broadcast a secondary SSID, or does it

switch between the two rapidly, kind of like a poor man's Time

Division Multiplexing.

Pete Davis
NoDial.net
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