Protip, try these PSK\u2019s before asking at the bar or restaurant:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
drinkmorebeer<\/p>\n\n\n\n
coldbeer<\/p>\n\n\n\n
icecoldbeer<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Most businesses have guest wifi and it usually works smoothly. However, I\u2019ve identified a design issue for a specific use case. Default DHCP settings and a standard \/24 Subnet work well for many environments. But an area with hundreds or thousands of guests coming and going daily has unique needs. Some guests at my local sports bar had reported that they could not connect to the guest wifi but only on some of their devices. It\u2019s usually a new device or someone who doesn\u2019t visit often. I knew the cause was that we were running out IP\u2019s as I had run into the same symptoms years prior. With a building max capacity of 500 guests, 254 IP\u2019s, and a DHCP lease of 7 days doesn\u2019t meet their needs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Since most non-chain bars and restaurants will likely have limited IT resources I think a software solution from network vendors is needed. During the initial hardware setup, a series of questions should be asked to determine the network’s needs. For these high-traffic environments, I advise the following.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
SSID \u201cCompany Name Guest\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If you\u2019re in a shared building that has overlapping wifi signals consider all companies using the same SSID for easy roaming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Subnet size equal to the building max capacity multiplied by at least 2.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lease timer 8 hours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Name Servers 8.8.8.8 and 1.1.1.1.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Side note: Recently I was wondering why we even put passwords on guest wifi. I\u2019m disappointed that I only now learned that open wifi does not encrypt the traffic. But at the same time, I\u2019m happy as I can freely admit I didn\u2019t know something and I got to learn something. I\u2019ve seen the warnings but thought they were general \u201cbe safe in an unknown neighborhood\u201d and not \u201ceverything is unencrypted\u201d. But that does point to an opportunity to write about why that is and how we can change it. Without investigating, I think a certificate provided by the Access Point similar to how HTTPS works.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Protip, try these PSK\u2019s before asking at the bar or restaurant: drinkmorebeer coldbeer icecoldbeer Most businesses have guest wifi and it usually works smoothly. However, I\u2019ve identified a design issue for a specific use case. Default DHCP settings and a standard \/24 Subnet work well for many environments. But an area with hundreds or thousands […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[42,45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-343","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-troubleshooting","category-wifi"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/andrewjwhittle.com\/wp-lotpnet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/andrewjwhittle.com\/wp-lotpnet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/andrewjwhittle.com\/wp-lotpnet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andrewjwhittle.com\/wp-lotpnet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andrewjwhittle.com\/wp-lotpnet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=343"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/andrewjwhittle.com\/wp-lotpnet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":345,"href":"https:\/\/andrewjwhittle.com\/wp-lotpnet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343\/revisions\/345"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/andrewjwhittle.com\/wp-lotpnet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andrewjwhittle.com\/wp-lotpnet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andrewjwhittle.com\/wp-lotpnet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}