A to Z, roughly in the order a guest meets them
Twenty-four terms
Captive portal. The page a phone is sent to when it joins a Wi-Fi network that wants something before it lets the device through: a tap, an email address, a room number. On this site it is called the sign-in page, because that is what the guest sees. The phone detects it by trying to reach a known address and being redirected.
Splash page. Another name for the captive portal’s first screen. Here the term is used only for the optional promo screen shown before sign-in: a photo or short video, a headline and one button.
Walled garden. The short list of addresses a device may reach before it has signed in: the sign-in page itself, the fonts and images it needs, and the sign-in providers. Everything else waits. Every make of equipment holds this list slightly differently, which is why each device page names it.
RADIUS. The protocol most Wi-Fi equipment uses to ask an outside service whether a guest may connect, and on what plan. When a guest signs in, the platform answers the equipment’s RADIUS question with a yes and the speed, time and device limits that apply.
RadSec. RADIUS carried inside an encrypted connection. It lets equipment such as MikroTik talk to the platform across the internet without the guest’s details travelling in the clear. Older firmware sometimes looks as if it supports it and quietly does not, which is why the device pages give version numbers.
Room-and-surname sign-in. The hotel sign-in: a guest types their room number and their surname, the platform checks the live in-house list from the front-desk system, and the guest is online. Nothing else is asked and nothing is captured; what the property knows about that guest already came from the desk.
In-house list. The front-desk system’s record of who is in which room, with the surname and the departure date. Resort Manager sends changes to the platform as they happen; other systems are asked on a schedule the property sets, five minutes by default.
Checkout cut-off. Ending a guest’s Wi-Fi when the front-desk system records their departure, after a grace period the property sets. Some equipment can end a running session immediately; some lets it run to its time limit. Each device page says which.
Grace period. The hours after checkout during which a departed guest stays online, so somebody catching an evening flight is not cut off in the lobby at eleven in the morning. Set by the property; most leave a few hours.
Plan. The rules applied to a class of guest: speed, session length, how many devices, whether the session may be renewed and when. A standard room, a suite, a day visitor and a member of staff can each have their own. Enforced by the equipment, not promised on a page.
Session. One device’s spell online, from sign-in to the moment the plan’s time limit, a checkout or a sign-out ends it. The record of a session is what retention law is usually about.
Device limit. How many devices one guest may bring on one sign-in. Applied per credential rather than per device address, so that a travel router presenting one address to the network does not turn one guest into a dozen.
Bandwidth cap. The ceiling on what one device may draw from the line, set per plan. It is what keeps a Friday evening usable when everybody is streaming, and it matters most on a line that is shared, metered or arriving by satellite.
Contention ratio. The bet that only a fraction of connected devices are pulling hard at any moment. At 50:1, one in fifty. The ratio decides how many devices a line can carry comfortably, and the bandwidth cap decides what happens on the evening the bet fails.
MAC address. The hardware address a device presents to a Wi-Fi network. Modern phones change it, sometimes per network and sometimes per day, which is why limits and records here are tied to the sign-in rather than to the address.
MAC randomisation. The behaviour of current phones in presenting a different hardware address to each network, or a new one after a time. It is why a returning guest is recognised by their sign-in rather than by their device, and why device-based limits on other platforms leak.
SSID. The name of a Wi-Fi network as a guest sees it in the list. A property usually broadcasts one for guests and one for staff, each with its own plan and its own sign-in.
Guest isolation. A setting on the equipment that stops devices on the guest network from seeing each other. Standard on a hotel network, and the reason a laptop in one room cannot browse the printer in the next.
Consent record. The stored fact of a guest saying yes to marketing: when, on which venue’s sign-in page, the exact wording they saw, and whether they confirmed it by clicking the email. Withdrawals are kept the same way. It is what a property produces when a guest or a regulator asks “when did I agree to this?”
Double opt-in. A marketing consent confirmed twice: the tick on the sign-in page, then a click in an email. Switched on by default for properties in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, where it is the expected standard, and available anywhere.
Retention period. How long connection records are kept, set by the country the property is in: five years in Indonesia, ninety days in Thailand, none in Germany. Chosen once at setup. The identifying details can be stripped from a record while the record itself is kept.
Review gating. Asking only the guests you expect to be happy for a public review, or steering the unhappy ones away from the review link. It breaches Google’s and TripAdvisor’s rules, and this platform does not do it: every guest who responds is offered the same public link, and a low score alerts the manager instead.
Promo screen. A full screen of the venue’s own, shown before sign-in: a photo or a short silent video, a headline, a few lines and one button. Off by default. Tonight’s menu, the sunset session, the shuttle times.
Front-desk system. The software a hotel runs its reservations on, usually called a PMS. Resort Manager, Oracle OPERA Cloud, Mews, Cloudbeds and Protel connect to the platform so that a guest can sign in with room number and surname. Any other system that can say who is in which room can be connected.
A term missing? Ask, and it will be added. For the whole sequence a guest goes through, in order, read how it works.
