Being a Good Host, but Keeping your Privacy

Dennis Snider

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Everybody needs Internet access these days, so you’ll frequently find yourself being asked if other people can use your Wi-Fi network. Whether it’s your friends, tradespeople, lodgers, Air B&B guests, you’ll get lots of requests and of course you want to help. The standard way of letting people in your network is to give them your router passcode, but setting up a guest access point could be much more secure.

A guest access point is an entirely standalone network with its own name that has no access to anything else on your network, so guests can’t get to your printer, shared files or anything else. If you have limited bandwidth, you can also use this network to restrict the amount a guest can use, and you can even set parameters for what they can view.

Another advantage of a guest access point is that you don’t need to set a complex password for it as it has no access to your private information; in fact, if you don’t want to you don’t have to set a password at all, although this does mean that people outside your premises can also access it. However, guests will appreciate not having to input complex passwords to access the network.

Setting up a guest access point is usually simple; most modern routers have the capability of creating guest access points – if not you’ll have to add an extra wireless access point or router to your network. This could be a good time to upgrade your router anyway. For virtually every router instructions exist online to help you set up a guest access point, but actually it’s such a simple process most people will be able to figure it out for themselves.