Create a Free Home Wireless Hotspot With Login Page

What is an internet hotspot? Most people with even a small amount of technical knowledge will be able to answer that question in this day and age. An internet hotspot is simply a broadband/fibre connection that offers wireless internet access, and they are literally everywhere these days. Many shops/shopping centers, food and drink outlets, hotels and various other businesses/industries offer free or paid internet access via a hotspot. Even ISPs sometimes offer nationwide hotspots as an inclusive or optional part of your internet package.

Creating a hotspot on your computer is actually quite easy but with an ordinary hotspot your protection consists only of the WEP or WPA WiFi key, you have to tell everyone the key to give them access. If you want to refuse someone access, the wireless key needs to be changed and a new one resent to those other users who still are allowed to connect. Have you ever wondered how to create a login page on your hotspot like businesses and commercial services do? This way everyone will be able to connect to the hotspot but when they try to browse the web, they’ll be presented with a page that requires a username and password login before the wireless internet can be used.

There are various methods to create wireless hotspots that incorporate a login page (also known as a captive portal) but many of them are complicated to set up. Some require you to use Linux, others need extra access points connected via a second LAN adapter. You can also use specialized routers for this task or use a router that has a customized firmware but not everyone can use this method. There used to be a Windows application called 2Hotspot which made it very easy to create a login page for your hotspot, sadly that project died many years ago.

In this article we’re going to show you how you can easily create a wireless hotspot with a login page, but the great thing is you need nothing special apart from a WiFi enabled PC or laptop and and a wired/wireless connection to the internet! It does require 2 pieces of free software installed on your computer but needs no special networking knowledge to setup. The guide below is for Windows Vista, 7 and 8 only, it’s not really a good idea to use a hotspot like this on Windows XP because it will be more vulnerable to exploits after support ends in April 2014.

Installing A Hotspot Onto Your Computer

This first step is needed to turn your computer into a wireless hotspot that the other computers on the network will connect to. It basically takes the place of a hardware access point meaning you don’t need to use any extra hardware. Other hotspot creation software may work but we found this program the easiest to setup and use.

1. Download WiFi Creator and then install it.

2. Launch WiFi Creator and making sure Automatic configuration is selected, either leave the settings at default for now or give the hotspot a new name and a new 8 character or more password. Then select the network adapter that connects to the internet from the dropdown, this can be either a wireless or wired adapter.

3. Click “Set up and Start Hotspot”. A new virtual network adapter will be created using the Microsoft Virtual WiFi Miniport Adapter and and the adapter that connects to the internet will now be set up to share the internet with the new connection.

If you didn’t want to actually setup a login page, you could stop here and give users the network key entered into WiFi Creator, although that obviously defeats the object of the article. Do note that WiFi Creator uses WPA2-PSK WiFi encryption which some older wireless adapters might not work with.

Installing Software To Create A Login Page

Setting up an additional login page requires the software to sit in between the adapter that acts as the access point and the adapter that accesses the internet to intercept web traffic and redirect to the login page before allowing access. There are very few free Windows applications that can do this without the need of external access points or extra hardware, here are the quick setup guides for three applications that can do the job, each has its own plus and minus points.

ARPMiner

What makes ARPMiner useful is the fact it’s very easy to configure while offering enough to get a simple login page up and running. There are more advanced options such as RADIUS accounting but they are only available in the paid versions which start at $220.

1. Download ARPMiner and then install it. After installation, launch ARPMiner making sure the WiFi Creator hotspot is already running. You need to make sure TekpSpot.exe is allowed in your firewall from the ARPMiner Program Files folder which is the proxy/DNS service used. Or for testing, temporarily disable your firewall.

2. Go to the Users tab and create a new hotspot user. In the boxes at the bottom enter a name, password and session duration in seconds. Although the user will get logged out after the time is reached, they can simply log back in, so the timer will not block expired users. Press Add/Update to add the user to the system.

3. Click on the Settings tab then click NAT underneath. This sets up the Internet Connection Sharing which was done by WiFi Creator earlier, but if ARPMiner tries to set things up differently, it won’t work. Make sure the adapter which connects directly to the internet is set as the Public Network and the Virtual WiFi Miniport adapter created by the hotspot program is the Private Network. Click Save and then click the Start button icon to start the ARPMiner service.

4. Now go to a computer you want to connect up to the network and look for the hotspot you created earlier, then connect to it, the default SSID is “MyHotspot” and the default pass is “12345678”. You can also of course connect to the hotspot from other internet enabled devices like smartphones and tablets.

5. Now open a webpage in a web browser and you should be redirected to the ARPMiner login page instead, where any credentials can be entered that were created in the Users tab in step #2.

6. After pressing Login you’ll be redirected to the Session Information page which will tell how long the session lasts and when it was created. The web can now be browsed until the time runs out when you will be asked to login again.

The state of user sessions can be viewed from the Sessions tab in ARPMiner where you can see the MAC/IP address, which username is in use and when the current session expires. To disable the login box simply use the Stop button in the Settings tab. Custom login pages can be created if you know html and a file called login.html needs placing in the ARPMiner Program Files folder, read the docs for more details.