[SOLVED] Does advertising wifi network diminish performance

Aug 23, 2020
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Generally speaking, our wifi slowed down at our church when we wanted to stream mass. While we're still debugging, I have a generic question. Even if people don't have the password to that network, it's advertised (such as "churchWifi1"). Because it's advertised, will people's phones passively look for it if they have wifi enabled? And if so, could that impact performance? Should I hide the SSID so that people's phones cannot try to connect to it while those phones just sit in pockers/purses? Again, just looking for general thoughts on this. We will be doing the other due diligence with the router and service when I can get back into the church again.
 
Solution
Generally speaking, our wifi slowed down at our church when we wanted to stream mass. While we're still debugging, I have a generic question. Even if people don't have the password to that network, it's advertised (such as "churchWifi1"). Because it's advertised, will people's phones passively look for it if they have wifi enabled? And if so, could that impact performance? Should I hide the SSID so that people's phones cannot try to connect to it while those phones just sit in pockers/purses? Again, just looking for general thoughts on this. We will be doing the other due diligence with the router and service when I can get back into the church again.
You should have multiple SSIDs. At least one private church use only, and...

kanewolf

Titan
Moderator
Generally speaking, our wifi slowed down at our church when we wanted to stream mass. While we're still debugging, I have a generic question. Even if people don't have the password to that network, it's advertised (such as "churchWifi1"). Because it's advertised, will people's phones passively look for it if they have wifi enabled? And if so, could that impact performance? Should I hide the SSID so that people's phones cannot try to connect to it while those phones just sit in pockers/purses? Again, just looking for general thoughts on this. We will be doing the other due diligence with the router and service when I can get back into the church again.
You should have multiple SSIDs. At least one private church use only, and one for members. You can then decide if the members WIFI is open or password protected. And how often you choose to change the member password. Having the member WIFI passworded (with the password in the morning bulletin) would limit the number of parasitic devices.
A device that has successfully connected can use your bandwidth. That phone that is "in the pocket" could still be downloading a Netflix movie for later.
You should also have bandwidth limits on the member WIFI. 2-5Mbit is plenty for e-mail or other uses.
 
Solution