Managing Wi-Fi for Public in Hospital

[Scorpio8]

Hi All,

I have an unusual issue of managing Wi-Fi in a Hospital environment.

The Situation:

We have free password protected Wi-Fi access for patients in the hospital, however we have a limit (30 IP addresses) set to prevent the bandwidth speed to become unusable. Staff are not allowed to use this SSID as it is strictly only for patients.

The Problem:

Staff gets hold of the password sooner or later and then permanently reserve an IP on their device meaning less IP slots for patients. Every 3 hours or so I have to run a telnet command to clear the DHCPD binding. How can I manage this so staff can't get connect on our patient SSID?

Taking the MAC address for every device of every patient is impossible.

I'm thinking of removing Wi-Fi, because it seems impossible to maintain in a hospital. It's much easier for a coffee shop because they have 20 customers (not 300). And even hotels because they don't have 650 staff.

Any advice should be very helpful

 

[HopelessNoob]

what about taking the mac addresses of the staff?

 

[Scorpio8]

what about taking the mac addresses of the staff?

We're talking 650 staff that works different shifts. Most of them have more than one device. Unfortunately, this isn't a practical solution and even if I get management to force staff to hand in their devices (which will never happen) it would take up alot of time and resources to get all the MAC addresses.

 

[HopelessNoob]

yea cause you said that taking the mac addresses of the patients was impossible but didn't know if you had thought about taking the mac addresses of the staff as well
i dont know what else you could do aside from limiting the down and up speed for every connection on the network

 

[Scorpio8]

yea cause you said that taking the mac addresses of the patients was impossible but didn't know if you had thought about taking the mac addresses of the staff as well
i dont know what else you could do aside from limiting the down and up speed for every connection on the network

This is actually something I was considering. My idea was that patients should register their device when they connect to the Wi-Fi and then their IP will be in use for a certain period of time which it will expire again after that time is passed. Although, this will be a nuisance for patients registering the service every couple of hours or so.

 

[HopelessNoob]

that's a good idea too which wont require limiting bandwidth speeds
but instead of registering each time just have them register once and just use their log in
and when they're done with their stay at the hospital remove them from the system and deactivate their login

 

[Scorpio8]

that's a good idea too which wont require limiting bandwidth speeds
but instead of registering each time just have them register once and just use their log in
and when they're done with their stay at the hospital remove them from the system and deactivate their login

I think this is the best practical solution. Thank you, very much