Ok I have wireless internet set up in my home and office ( only two or three people in the office) and the same at home, The systems work fine. Use Belkin Router.

But what do places like the local coffee house or wifi café use, they may have 10 to 20 people online at a time, Do they have to have special service to the business ? Special routers ?

There are hotspot routers. e.g. this one: New Router Can Turn a Small Business into a HotSpot - www.smallbusinesscomputing.com

But a simple free hotspot would likely be a wireless router that's firewalled and another that's for employee use.

Not sure how they do the weird things:

1. Log in page with a 1 hr pass or how
say t-moble has the login page as well.

At hoe Verizon sometimes lets their search page in edgewise somehow.

Bandwidth determines how many people can be on with reasonable speeds.

The wifi hotspots would likely use an access point for wireless.
The "router" could be a Linux box.

We had a weird system and I don't know how they did it. We had fixed addresses on a subnet(A). Then we had DHCP addresses on subnet (A). If the mac address was "registered" with the system, you would get subnet (A) otherwise you would get an entirely different private network where basically what you could do is register a machine.

Conjecturing: registered MAC address return legal IP addr
Unregistered mac address return something on say 10.0.1.x.
The gateway could be a port on a machine. Once you registered, eventually your IP addr would change to the real one. It probably has a short lease.

Never could figure it out.

Yet another: Free Wifi Hotspot Routers for Cafe's, Restaurants and More..

We were recently talking about increasing bandwidth with multiple ISP's. That's possible too.

We hear: dialup, ADSL, cable, and satellite.

They here: T1, T3, OC3, OC12, OC48 and OC192 Research Information

And on top of that is Sonnet ring. I think that's the OC connections.

And "Dark Fiber". Dark fiber is rented fiber in the ground between two places.

Sonet ring topology: http://www.pcmag.com/encyclopedia_te...i=51741,00.asp

There is little known Internet2.

The better, faster Internet you can't use. - By Alexander Russo - Slate Magazine

What is it you would like to do? Then maybe we can give you a solid answer. Most newer routers can support many people. Is there a number you have in mind? Also if you open the connection to the public you have to remember that nearly anyone can use it. Even without your permission unless you use a router between that has a permissions statement in it. But if there is a signal it can be used even a long distance away.

I have a music room, people come to play, listen to music and to relax.
We want to have free internet, for ourself and for others

I'll offer two suggestions. I know there is a product designed for the occaisional sharing, but can't remember what it is.

What I would do to make it sweet and simple is make it a network with a hidden SSID and no password or a password protected network.

To afford the protections, I'd implement it with an ACCESS point in addition to your current wireless router and just turn the power on the access point when you are having company. You could set it up as a totally different network ID so none of your computers are exposed.