wireless networking - Displaying ads over WiFi hotspot

I have recently distributed my WiFi network with highpseed antennas to my area which covers almost 300-400 peoples. I am not charging them anything but i would like to generate some revenue through Advertisements placed on the websites that they visit.

Is it possible to display ads from Google (I know i can do redirect the Advertisements, using some cache server or firewall) .

Its just like a free vpn but i would like to have my advertisements above the websites they visit so i can take out the cost for the WiFi that i offer.

Any suggestions would be great!

I highly advise you don't do this as it will most likely lead to a backlash.

That being said, if you want to, this will not work on SSL sites unless you also get everyone to download a custom SSL root certificate (which I really do not recommend you do), but, for standard HTTP, all you need to do is stick a proxy on your router to basically add a bit of content to each page.

This isn't an easy thing to do, but, to get a basic idea on the concept, I recommend you take a look here to a guy who made people's images flip... It should put you on the right track.

You can use dark ways to spoof and change (inject) the contents.
It will require powerful hardware if you want to change 300-400 people's traffic simultaneously.

But:

• Google Ads and a lot of other ad-services will not work (its illegal).
• Assuming that ad-services will see only 1 IP* (router's IP) for all 300-400 people, they will most likely block your ad accounts. So there's no way of using ad-services at all (except your own ad-service).
• Wait for 300-400 people from FBI next day.

However you can think about white ways, for example, create a start-page for your connection and add there your own ads (again, ad-services will not work). It's legal if your ISP lets you do it.

*probably you will not buy and assign 300-400 IPs to all your clients.

You're not going to be able to put anything above the pages they access easily. What about those that connect with not a browser? Or if they connect with their own VPN. The traffic won't cause any ads. One thing you can do is create a captive portal that they have to go through a number of pages before the connection is created by your hotspot.

You can. But please don't.

All you would need to do is put a proxy on your server and modify each page that comes through, injecting one of your ads in to it. It's not terrible hard to do.

But the problems:

1. It will only work over HTTP and other non-encrypted protocols
2. Your users will hate you
3. Tech-savvy users will simply use an SSH tunnel (or a VPN) to make even HTTP traffic encrypted, then you have no way of injecting ads.

So yeah, this is a bad idea which will make people not like you, and the people that will use your WiFi most will probably know of tunneling. So either a user is angry at you or you make no money off them.

I agree that it's a terrible idea.

With that said, here's a way you can do it....
I've never used it, but I have seen on various distributions of the DD-WRT firmware for routers you can have an ad automatically inserted in for you. I don't know the details of how it works, but would probably be a lot easier then setting up your own separate proxy and rerouting everything manually as this would take place directly at the router.

Others have mentioned people getting around it using VPN's, DD-WRT can for the most part prevent these.

There's a demo of the dd-wrt setup here.

You can buy some Routers with DD-WRT already on them, others are advertised as Compatible. For a complete list of devices that support it, go here, you may already have a router that supports it. There are some very good directions on how to change your firmware from stock to DD-WRT, but you will still need a little technical skill and knowledge.

Depending on what router you have or get, DD-WRT can unlock all sorts of potential if it's a powerful enough router. I recently turned a router into a 'wireless bridge' to connect my bluray player to the internet instead of running a cable from my office to the living room or spending $80 on a usb dongle for it.

The only "polite" solution that would display ads on (almost) every page would be to insert the ads via frames; basically run as a transparent proxy that creates a frameset with your ad in a frame at the top and the page content in a frame below. Alternatively, a captive portal page that displays a few ads and terms of service would work, and be far less intrusive/offensive to many users.

You may wish to disable VPN access so people can't circumvent it that way; I'm not sure how it's done, but I know it can be done at least partially (the free WiFi on my commuter train doesn't allow me to connect to PPTP VPN, but I can still connect to OpenVPN, for example).

You will also have to permit HTTPS pass-through, due to the certificate issue, so users browsing solely HTTPS sites (e.g. checking their GMail) would not see ads... but if they wandered off to other sites, your ads would show up.