Technical WiFi guides
Deep, expert-led technical guides on guest WiFi, analytics, captive portals, and venue technology.
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451 guides
Staff presence analytics: who is in the building, how often, and for how long
Use this guide to decide whether your existing WiFi authentication can measure who is on site, how often they attend and how long they stay. You will be able to set up 802.1X or iPSK identities, turn on RADIUS accounting, agree session rules, complete a DPIA, and report staff presence as a count while keeping guest figures as a trend.
Cisco Meraki location analytics: what you get built in and where it stops
You will be able to decide which Meraki presence questions the built-in dashboard can answer, when to stream raw observations through the scanning API, and when you need a captive portal for identified visitors. You will also know why loyalty figures mislead, and which figures you can safely put in front of your board.
Passpoint and guest marketing: keeping first-party data when guests auto-connect
Decide how to keep consented first-party data when guests auto-connect through Passpoint or OpenRoaming. You will be able to move consent from the splash page to enrolment, bind unique credentials to consented profiles, and choose a captive portal, venue-issued Passpoint or OpenRoaming model for your venue. You will also learn to separate marketable audiences from anonymous visits in reporting.
KCSIE and school WiFi: combining secure access with content filtering
You will be able to decide how to meet the DfE filtering and monitoring standards on staff, pupil and guest WiFi. You will see how per-person authentication and DNS filtering combine so every log names an individual. You will also get a sequenced plan, the limits to plan around and the questions to put to your filtering provider.
Hotel WiFi RFP checklist: authentication, content filtering and guest marketing
Use this checklist to write one hotel WiFi tender that scores vendors on staff authentication, content filtering and guest data capture together. You will be able to set pass or fail requirements, run six proof of concept tests at one property, and compare procurement models on contracts, hardware and data ownership before you sign.
Retail WiFi procurement checklist: guest access, filtering and footfall analytics
Use this checklist to score retail guest WiFi vendors on five areas: guest access, content filtering, footfall reporting, security and compliance, and estate fit. You will know what groundwork to complete before tender, which questions to ask, what a pass looks like, and how to prove the shortlisted platform works in a three to five store pilot.
Airport WiFi platform providers: what to require in the RFP
You will be able to choose between a hardware-agnostic cloud overlay, a bundled managed service and a concession model before writing scoring criteria. You can then set testable RFP clauses for peak concurrency, Passpoint and OpenRoaming, accessible multilingual portals, UK and EU GDPR, zone dwell analytics, app integration and service levels. A weighted table scores each vendor only on documented evidence.
Paid WiFi monetisation: vouchers, tiered access and payment gateways compared
Compare five ways to charge for WiFi - vouchers, tiered access, hosted card gateways, PMS posting and sponsorship - on PCI DSS scope, refund route, network requirements and running cost. You will be able to match your venue's money flow to a model and model the break-even against free WiFi with first-party data capture.
Managed WiFi for serviced offices and coworking: tenant isolation and billing
You will be able to choose a tenant isolation model for your serviced office or coworking space and keep the estate to three SSIDs. You can then design the VLANs and firewall rules behind it. You will also be able to set billing tiers the network enforces and trigger access changes from your workspace management system.
Footfall analytics for shopping centres: WiFi, cameras and sensors compared
You will be able to decide which footfall method your shopping centre needs first: entrance counters for a defensible door count, WiFi presence analytics for dwell and zone movement, or mobile data panels for catchment. You can also cost each option per entrance, meet UK GDPR duties and benchmark against national footfall series.
GDPR data retention for shared WiFi operators: how long you can keep guest login data and network logs
Set a documented retention period for each category of shared WiFi data, from connection metadata to RADIUS accounting logs, and justify it under GDPR Article 5(1)(e). You will also be able to decide whether you are a controller or processor for each tenant, and whether the Investigatory Powers Act 2016 actually obliges you to keep records for 12 months.
Multi-site guest WiFi for franchises: central control with local branding
You will be able to choose an operating model for guest WiFi across your franchise estate and decide who controls guest data under GDPR. You can then lock brand and consent centrally, give franchisees venue-scoped access and plan a vendor-grouped rollout. The approach runs as a cloud overlay on mixed Cisco Meraki, HPE Aruba, Ruckus and Ubiquiti UniFi hardware.
Per-unit VLAN and PSK architecture: a design walkthrough for MDU networks
You will be able to choose between a VLAN per apartment and policy carried by each resident's unique key, using four factors: wired ports, churn, segment count and hardware support. You can then size DHCP scopes, count segments against your real platform limits and estimate running cost for BTR, PBSA and aparthotel sites.
Council public WiFi providers: procurement routes and what to specify
You will be able to pick the right procurement route for council public WiFi, splitting the cloud platform from the physical build. You will also be able to write a specification bidders can price against and you can test at handover. It covers coverage, peak concurrency, IWF filtering, WCAG 2.2 AA, a UK GDPR lawful basis and evidence-based supplier scoring.
Per-resident WiFi billing for MDU and student accommodation: platform options
You will be able to choose between bulk inclusion, landlord retail, third-party ISP retail and base-plus-upgrade WiFi billing for MDU, BTR and PBSA schemes. You can then check the UK VAT position of each model. You will also know which per-unit key, PMS integration and automatic revocation features to require in writing before you shortlist a platform.
Retrofit vs new build: planning MDU WiFi cabling and access point placement
Decide whether an apartment building needs corridor or in-unit access points, and plan the cabling, risers, fire-stopping and PoE budget each path demands. You will be able to scope an occupied-building retrofit around access limits, or bring network design into a new build by RIBA Stage 3 so every AP sits within the 90-metre permanent link.
HIPAA Technical Safeguards for Hospital Staff WiFi: What the Security Rule Actually Requires
You will be able to map each of the five HIPAA technical safeguard standards at 45 CFR 164.312 to a specific staff WiFi control. You can then decide which SSID configurations survive an OCR audit, retire shared passphrases and assemble the evidence an auditor asks for before your next risk analysis.
Managed WiFi cost per door: a worked model for MDU operators
You will be able to build a defensible managed WiFi cost per door for an MDU scheme, line by line across cabling, access points, switching, licensing and support. You can then normalise managed service bids, test how scale and asset lives move the figure, and compare the fully loaded monthly cost with a retail broadband benchmark.
802.11r and 802.11k on Android: fast roaming deployment on Cisco Meraki, HPE Aruba and Ubiquiti UniFi
You will be able to decide whether to enable 802.11r, 802.11k and 802.11v for your Android fleet on Cisco Meraki, HPE Aruba or Ubiquiti UniFi, and which 802.11r strategy to run. You will also be able to pilot the change safely, confirm each handset model in a packet capture and fix the six most common association failures.
Cisco Meraki 802.11r adaptive vs enabled: fixing roaming on MR access points
You will be able to choose between disabled, enabled and adaptive 802.11r on each Cisco Meraki MR SSID, based on your device mix and security mode. You will also diagnose join failures and slow roams with a test SSID, the event log and a packet capture, then segment SSIDs by device class.
Microsoft Cloud PKI for WiFi: EAP-TLS certificate deployment with Intune and Entra ID
You will be able to decide whether Microsoft Cloud PKI, a Cloud PKI root or bring your own CA (BYOCA) fits your estate. You can then deploy EAP-TLS WiFi certificates to Intune-managed devices without NDES. The guide also covers making RADIUS trust the chain, revoking certificates through the CRL and fixing the eight most common failures.
FortiGate captive portal setup with an external portal server
You will be able to configure a FortiGate to enforce an external captive portal hosted by Purple, with RADIUS authentication and accounting, a working exempt list and a trusted certificate. You can also decide between the built-in and external portal, test on real devices and fix the faults that most often block guest logins.
Configuring 802.1X on Juniper Mist with cloud RADIUS
You will be able to configure a WPA2 or WPA3-Enterprise WLAN on Juniper Mist that authenticates against cloud RADIUS, decide between UDP RADIUS, RadSec and a Mist Edge proxy, and map RADIUS attributes to dynamic VLANs. You will also know where Mist's client insights timeline and Marvis show exactly where a failed authentication broke.
White label captive portal software: what MSPs and resellers should check before signing
You will be able to choose between full white label, co-branded and referral models, then score vendors on multi-tenancy, branding depth, hardware coverage, billing, GDPR consent records, APIs and support escalation. The guide ends with 15 RFP questions and a red-flag table you can send to every shortlisted vendor before you sign.
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