A private network for every resident, on one shared building network

Private Area Networks give each student their own isolated bubble for every device they bring, from laptop to PlayStation. Move-in runs itself, move-out revokes itself, and it all layers on the access points already in your buildings.

• A Private Area Network per resident
• Consoles and smart TVs on their own key
• Cloud RADIUS with a 99.9% uptime SLA
• No rip and replace

A typical residence today

• One building passphrase, shared on a flat network every resident can see across
• Consoles and smart TVs that need a MAC address emailed to the helpdesk
• AirPlay and casting that find every TV on the floor, or none at all
• Former residents whose devices still connect after the tenancy ends

With Purple

• Each resident gets their own Private Area Network, invisible to their neighbours
• Browserless devices join the resident's bubble with their own iPSK, no ticket needed
• mDNS reflection keeps casting working inside the bubble, and only inside it
• Access is revoked one resident at a time, synced to a live directory

The at-home experience, with enterprise isolation

Purple creates a Private Area Network for each resident the moment they sign in. Their phone, laptop, console and smart TV can find and talk to each other, and stay invisible to everyone else in the building, all on a single SSID with the 802.1X and WPA3-Enterprise architecture intact.

• Micro-segmentation per resident: the student in Room 101 never sees the devices in Room 102
• The bubble follows the resident from their flat to the study room, gym and between your sites
• mDNS reflection keeps AirPlay, Chromecast and printing working inside the bubble
• Each resident's key can carry its own VLAN, firewall rules and bandwidth role

Unlike a VLAN per room, a Private Area Network is created per person at sign-in, so it moves with the resident instead of being pre-provisioned against a door number.

Hundreds of arrivals on one weekend, and no queue at reception

Intake is the hardest week of the year for any residence network. Residents sign in once through the Purple app, get a personal WiFi Pass, and every device they own reconnects automatically from then on. Onboarding and offboarding sync to a live directory, so access starts with the tenancy and ends with it.

• Phones and laptops onboarded in about 60 seconds with the Purple app
• Passpoint profiles reconnect automatically and survive iOS MAC address rotation
• Joiners, movers and leavers handled without manual credential management
• University halls can sync residents from Microsoft Entra ID, Google Workspace or Okta over SCIM

Keep site teams and building devices off the resident network

Reception, maintenance and cleaning teams need their own secure access, and so does the kit that runs the building: door controllers, cameras, laundry systems and sensors. Staff sign in with their work account, and every device that cannot sign in gets a private key and VLAN of its own.

• Staff sign in with Microsoft Entra ID, Okta or Google Workspace, and leavers are revoked when their account is disabled
• Door controllers, cameras and sensors each on their own xPSK key, revocable one at a time
• Time-limited keys for contractors, with no device management needed
• Every session logged against a named person or device, time and location

Guest WiFi that helps fill next year's rooms

Parents at move-in, prospective residents on a viewing and summer guests all need to get online, and every one of them is a lead for next year's lettings. Purple gives them a branded captive portal, separate from resident networks, with the questions your lettings team wants answered. Kexgill in Hull asks visitors whether they study at the University of Hull and sends lettings offers by SMS through a Twilio connector.

• Branded captive portal with UK GDPR consent and a full audit trail
• Custom questions at sign-in, such as university or year of study, sent to your CRM
• 400+ data connectors for CRM, SMS and marketing platforms
• DNS content filtering on the guest network, IWF and Friendly WiFi certified

Intake without the ticket queue

In one US university housing deployment across 40 buildings, moving students onto per-resident iPSK bubbles with self-service sign-in cut move-in helpdesk tickets by 60%. Across Purple, removing shared passwords reduces IT helpdesk requests by up to 80%.

Figures from a Purple partner deployment in US university housing, Purple platform data and service terms.

Free brochure

Take this page into your next budget meeting

Everything on this page as an eight-page PDF brochure, ready to share with the people who sign off your network spend.

See your residences on one network platform

Tell us about your buildings and bed numbers, and we will show you how Private Area Networks, staff and device access and visitor WiFi would run on your hardware.

• Works with Cisco Meraki, HPE Aruba, Ruckus, Juniper Mist, Ubiquiti UniFi, Cambium, Extreme and Fortinet
• Per-resident iPSK under your vendor's name: iPSK, DPSK, MPSK or PPSK
• ISO 27001 certified, UK GDPR compliant, UK RADIUS region