It’s been about a year now that I have been working with our Spunik powered access point. Considering this was simply for a small bookstore, we simply selected the appropriate ISP, then hooked up with the Sputnik service itself. At the bookstore itself, we run two Windows computers, a Linux Kiosk and also offer free wireless to the customers.

I have been able to fend off network abuses, gather data on bandwidth usage and really gain some insight as to high and low points on the store’s customer data usage. But without question, the single thing I like the most is the ability to straight up block individuals whom I have deemed responsible for abusing bandwidth privileges.

Another point of interest that Sputnik offers me is the fact that hacking into the router does nothing for an intruder. Seriously, my admin UI is off-site, maintained on a separate Sputnik server. All management, MAC blocking and so on is handled there. And considering the router itself has a physical lock switch that means nothing on the router can be altered without turning this physical switch to “Off”, only adds to the frustration of those midnight weirdos we have parked outside trying to login after having been blocked for other network violations. Seriously, I love this service.

With that said, I see a few extras I would like to see included. For one thing, just to make locating other Sputnik hot spots easier to find, I would think they might look at offering something like this. Just type in your location and find access points at your leisure. Also, how fantastic it would be to be able to receive text alerts or emails when a blocked user has made an attempt to login. And perhaps most importantly, allow me to set bandwidth restrictions for our users! Seriously, this is a must have, along with the long awaited improvements for blocking unwanted MAC addresses. I can do it as things are now, but there is no way “Ma and Pa coffee shop owner”are going to know how to do this on their own.

Outside of those two gripes, I cannot recommend Sputnik enough! I would love for them to hire a technology evangelist, and perhaps work the “new media” angle a little more. But at least they offer fairly decent documentation for their existing customers to fall back on. Well that and they have done a pretty good job with security as far as I am concerned. To be fair though, Greg is much more qualified to make a comment in this arena than I. Might be interesting to here his thoughts on Sputnik’s security?

[tags]sputnik,wifi,router,access point,MAC address,security[/tags]