Setting Up Guest Wifi for Your Customers

Wed, May 12, 2021 9:53 PM

Wi-Fi is extremely popular among customers and clients. They can't live without it. Offering it in your company will draw buyers, retain them longer, and invite them to visit again and stay a while longer while purchasing more products.

Offering a public Wi-Fi hotspot is beneficial to all, whether you operate a café, bar, spa, salon, vacation rental, or even a small office.

Get a Suitable Internet Connection

You'll need a broadband network that can support Wi-Fi before you can offer it to your customers. A business internet connection with unlimited downloads is needed at the very least. With many people connecting and using the internet on a daily basis, you'll quickly exhaust a usage quota, even though it appears to be generous.

Fast speeds are also preferred; if the Wi-Fi is too slow, customers may leave and seek out a location with better service. However, the optimal 'fast speed' varies depending on the type of business. A basic fiber optic line should suffice for a café, restaurant, or bar, as long as it has fast speeds. However, for a very large company, such as a hotel, you might want to invest in more robust options such as a leased line or ethernet, which are much faster.

Establish Guest Network

If you have your internet and router, go into the router's settings and create two different local networks: one for you and your staff, and one for your customers. This will make it a little safer, and you'll be able to customize settings for each network.

You may allocate a section of bandwidth to each network when using several networks on the same broadband link. Set aside a small amount for your business' network so you can accept card payments, send emails, play music, and so on - 2-3Mb should work - and leave the rest for your guests to use. This ensures that you'll still have enough internet to conduct business while also ensuring that consumers aren't turned off by poor Wi-Fi.

Set up Hotspot Getaway

This is the fundamental concept of public Wi-Fi. In industry jargon, a hotspot gateway is how people can connect to your Wi-Fi in a convenient and safe manner. It connects to your guest network and provides users with a virtual portal from which they can access the internet.

Hotspot gateway --> router and modem --> user's laptop/phone/tablet --> Internet

When a visitor connects to your Wi-Fi network via a gateway, their computer is automatically directed to a captive portal web page. Before they can use the internet, they will be asked to enter their email address, pay a fee, have a password, or simply agree to the terms on the connection.

It's much safer, makes life harder for hackers and data criminals, allows you to set up firewalls and content filtering, and, thanks to certain terms and conditions, provides some additional legal security.

A hotspot gateway may be physical hardware or a router with custom firmware and software enabled. Buying a dedicated piece of hardware that does it for you is by far the best way to go about it. They range in price from $50 to $1000, depending on how many people you want to connect - for example, one that links 100 people at once costs about $200.

Ensure that the Network is Secure

Allowing the general public to link to your Wi-Fi exposes it to a variety of threats, but this can be mitigated substantially with the right cybersecurity.

Make sure 'WPA2' level protection is available at the very least - it's the most recent and safest Wi-Fi security standard, and it's included in all new routers worth their salt.

You should also take the following security precautions:

• Additional firewalls

• Frequently changing passwords

• Keeping the router secret so that no one can connect to it directly

• Wi-Fi signal strength can be adjusted so that it just covers your business.

• Disabling WPS, a feature that allows you to attach devices with a single button press

Hotspot gateways have their own security features built-in, and the manufacturer will give you detailed advice on how to improve them, so follow that advice as well.

Your Wi-Fi hotspot is ready to use once it has been properly secured.

Also Read: How to Set Up and Optimize Wi-Fi Network for Small Business Internet

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