[SOLVED] Need a wifi router to limit individual devices

[Pozzy]

Hi All,
Can anyone recommend a wifi router or access point/extender that can monitor per-device usage and allow me to disconnect users when they reach a limit? Ideally without requiring a cloud subscription

Thanks

 

[COLGeek]

Is this for a family matter or business interest? What make/model router do you have now?

 

[Pozzy]

It's for a small hotel. Probably a maximum of 15 devices. The internet is provided by a 4g router so i will be disabling the wifi on that and connecting something that gives me more control

 

[jsmithepa]

Not exactly what u asked for so if out of the line, ignore.

By experience, is always better to say YES BUT then NO, SHUT DOOR. Throttling then is a softer approach. U can implement QOS that slows down undesired traffic so much making them unusable, but never stops anybody from browsing as long as they like, for example. Also, is perfectly kosher to tell customers up front VOIP (Skype), video streaming disabled etc (large bandwidth apps) on our WIFI.

 

[bill001g]

The main problem you have is a consumer router has nowhere to keep usage data. It can keep some short term stuff in ram but if you take a power hit its gone. There was a third party firmware called gargoyle that has this ability. I have not followed it much to see what current routers it runs on. It was not a huge list.

If this is a hotel you also likely need what is called a captive portal. This would make them people login so only authorized people have access. Some bright kid will just change their mac address to bypass you limits if you try to limit by ip or mac address. Depends how much work you want to do yourself. There are a couple of providers that sell a turnkey appliance based solution to small hotels. One of those you have to call for the price type things so it can't be cheap. You can do this all yourself with a pc based firewall software similar to pfsense. I think there are actually a couple captive portal softwares you can use on pfsense. Pfsense is a freeware unix based router/firewall so there is not much you can't add. It does not take a powerful pc depending on the traffic rates. The key thing you need is a second ethernet port which you can just use a add in card on any motherboard if it does not have 2.

 

[USAFRet]

Google for - "hotel wifi solutions"
There are multiple prebuilt appliances.

Some things, you contract out. HVAC, plumbing probably, repaving the driveway. Unless you're already a computer/networking wiz, I consider this to be at that same level.

Do you want to wing it and build your own (and maybe get it wrong), or do you want to run the hotel?
And there are multiple levels of getting it wrong. Exposing customer data, exposing your hotel network, consumption overages, etc.

 

[Pozzy]

Thanks for your help everyone. So now I'm thinking dedicated server because I could use it for a whole lot of other things too. Would just need to get the cooling right - it gets pretty hot here