School-wide internet service provider business

[CobyBryan]

Recently, my high school has started to track students whereabouts on the internet when using the school's provided wifi. Today however they are making all students download an SSL Certificate on their computers, or else they will not be allowed to use the internet at my school. This has caused an outcry from the students who do not want the school to watch what they are doing on the internet, nor force the students to download the SSL Certificate. This got me thinking...Why dont I create my own network? I am thinking about buying a few mobile hotspots and having a few friends of mine(myself included) carry them around and charge kids maybe 10 bucks a month each to connect to our private wifi.My question is... Is this a viable option? My school isnt very big, we have just over 1000 students, but it is in Laguna Beach, a very rich community. I need to know what the best way to have portable wifi is, that perferably can sit in my backpack all day (I can keep it plugged in, but not all the time). Is a mobile hotspot my best bet? And how many computers can connect to a mobile hotspot and play agar.io (because, I mean, that is why everyone is complaining). This is a fairly young idea, and I don't know all too much about networking. Any suggestions?

 

 

[tt2468]

9 hours ago, CobyBryan said:

Recently, my high school has started to track students whereabouts on the internet when using the school's provided wifi. Today however they are making all students download an SSL Certificate on their computers, or else they will not be allowed to use the internet at my school. This has caused an outcry from the students who do not want the school to watch what they are doing on the internet, nor force the students to download the SSL Certificate. This got me thinking...Why dont I create my own network? I am thinking about buying a few mobile hotspots and having a few friends of mine(myself included) carry them around and charge kids maybe 10 bucks a month each to connect to our private wifi.My question is... Is this a viable option? My school isnt very big, we have just over 1000 students, but it is in Laguna Beach, a very rich community. I need to know what the best way to have portable wifi is, that perferably can sit in my backpack all day (I can keep it plugged in, but not all the time). Is a mobile hotspot my best bet? And how many computers can connect to a mobile hotspot and play agar.io (because, I mean, that is why everyone is complaining). This is a fairly young idea, and I don't know all too much about networking. Any suggestions?

 

 

That's an interesting idea! I usually cheat by using a raspberry pi with a couple wifi cards and a remote openvpn server, but doing it my way is technically breaking the 'contract' with the district, and therefore illegal, but whatever, they can't do anything about it. How would you meter data usage? What you are setting up is a business, and you have to think about is cost. Say you get 10 people using your hotspot at $10 a month. That's a $100 budget to spend monthly on data. Since it's a hotspot, data is almost never unlimited, so you will have to find some way to give people a certain amount of data per month, otherwise people wil, put you in debt quickly.