> > Yes, I do it frequently with my phone. You do it once and it remembers > > it. My phone is more often on wifi than on 4G when I'm in a town. > > And you need to install certificates or enter a password or something? Yes. Just once, then things are remembered and you can seemlessly roam between various APs and networks. > > > > > Because you get faster data rates and in the middle of a big shop you > > don't get a phone signal. > > How do you get faster data rates? In a shop that even has a 100Mbit internet > connection and 50 customers using it, you would get only 2Mbit. 4G isn't ubiquitous, 3G/EDGE is still common - and phone networks are patchy and slow. > > How do the shops prevent you from getting a phone signal? Why "prevent"? I never said that. Shops are essentially big metal boxes covered in wires and fluorescent lights, with the phone transmitter outside and an indeterminate distance away. Phone signals are weak and attenuated by the big metal box so your phone gives up on the network. Shops provide a "free" wifi as a service to its customers (nothing is free, they get the chance to harvest information about your presence in the store - if you don't like it, don't use their wifi, it's not compulsory). > > > In general the user knows nothing about RADIUS - you are presented with > > a username/password box when you first connect to the wifi and that is > > it. > > Those are particularly painful to enter, but I guess it could be used > for some customers. <sigh> yes, mobile devices can be awkward to type on. If they had full size keyboards they wouldn't be easy to fit in your pocket. > > > > RADIUS is a very mature technology and as such there are lots of ways > > of using it. > > Well, I don´t know about any of this. I found out that RADIUS is probably > what I could or should use to get things working as intended, so I tried to > find documentation on /how/ to use it and found nothing but documentation which > says that it could be used, which I already know. > RADIUS is just the authentication mechanism. Often that is a backend process and comes along with something that says "authentication can be provided by LDAP, RADIUS or ....". All the other things like PXE or WPA or 802.1x or VPN or whatever is frontend technology and use a RADIUS server to authenticate. P.