Would you perhaps be interested in doing a write up about Meraki and why you picked it, how you did it, the benefits etc?

We're in the middle of discussions about the whole "free wi-fi" issue at our church and at a meeting tonight I'm going to share my experience with using Meraki as a solution I implemented at home to setup a neighbourhood network. It isn't free, but it's been solid, super easy to maintain, and comes with a ton of great administrative features.

Keep the posts coming, there are those of us out here who would miss it :-)

- Sam

When I replied to the email I did so out of my own knowledge and a quick and dirty google search – but that was restricted by my own ability to think creatively on the search terms. Professionally I know of kit that does dual SSIDs or can be configured to do so, but they don't come cheap (I'm thinking Cisco here).

Thanks for teh twitter ID – now following you and have added you to my ChurchIT list as well. Also intrigued to hear how you get on with your proposed recommendations … I know what happens to mine!

I work for a church, but not in Church IT (I am a Youth Director). But since Youth Ministry does not pay enough to pay the bills, I work as a Systems Administrator as my "day job".

One of the things we have been using at my office (not the church) is a product called Open-Mesh (http://www.open-mesh.com/). Their pro units cost around $50 each and are great value for the price.

The units have dual SSIDs so you can have one open network and one private network (which is how we have deployed the units). In addition, on the open SSID you can limit bandwidth and firewall so no one can access your main network (or the private SSID). They have been very stable compared to our old Wifi solution which was slowly dieing. I've been very happy with these, and am about to buy more to expand our coverage. In conjunction with a solution like OpenDNS, you could do content filtering very easy.

On a side note, my Pastor is much like yours. Heck, he is not even really a fan of e-mail. If I do need to send him something (I work away from the building a lot), I send it to our office manager and ask her to give it to him. lol. (He did surprise me and bought a Plam Pre over Christmas, so their might be hope for him yet). I do think here in a little bit I am going to give him some recommendations (Open Wifi, Giving Kisoks, and others). Not sure how they will go over, but really are needed around the church.

Anyway, if you have any questions let me know and I will see what I can do to help. You can find me on twitter: @claystorm.

Peace,
Kevin

For my church I've got Xirrus coming to do a free survey so we'll have a much better idea soon of what can be done – however neither Xirrus nor Ruckus are free (as far as I know) whereas PUBLICip is – if we discount the re-used PC and AP :)