Patent ID: 8230516

Claim:
An apparatus for network authentication and content distribution, the apparatus comprising: a firewall module that is part of a local area network (LAN) and configured to receive network requests for the Internet from a remote computing device connected to the LAN behind the firewall module, and to redirect at least one redirected network request from the remote computing device to an authentication module that is part of the LAN and behind the firewall module; the authentication module configured to: receive the redirected network requests over the LAN from the firewall module, present a user license agreement on the remote computing device, without requesting user-identifiable information, in response to receiving the redirected network request, install a client module comprising executable code on the remote computing device in response to a user of the remote computing device accepting the user license agreement, and to initiate the client module such that the client module displays advertising content on the remote computing device, deny the remote computing device Internet access in response to the user rejecting the user license agreement; and a content distribution module configured to transmit the advertising content to the client module and to redirect network requests to the firewall module upon losing sync with the client module, wherein the authentication module is further configured to terminate the remote computing device's access to the Internet in response to a user terminating the client module on the remote computing device such that the advertising content is not presented to the user on the remote computing device; wherein the apparatus comprises at least one of hardware and non-transitory computer readable storage media.