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Supported equipment

Cisco Meraki MR access points

MR access points, set up entirely in the Meraki dashboard. Nothing is typed at the hardware.

What you get

What this equipment can do

Three things decide what a venue actually gets. The first two are the same everywhere in this list. The third is where equipment differs, and it is the reason each page says so plainly.

Your own sign-in page

Your logo, your colours, your welcome message, in the guest's own language — and every way in you have switched on, from room number and surname to a tap on Google.

Plans that are enforced

Speed, time limit and how many devices each guest may bring, applied by the equipment itself rather than being a promise on a page.

Checkout ends the session

When your front desk reports a departure, the guest is taken offline there and then — not at the end of their time limit. Nobody has to remember to do anything.

How the equipment talks to us: Your Wi-Fi vendor's own cloud service asks us directly, over the internet, on your equipment's behalf. Nothing at your property has to reach us and nothing needs a private link — the connection already exists between your vendor and the internet.

Before your installer starts

What has to be true first

None of this is work we do for you — it is the state the equipment needs to be in before the short part begins. A step that fails for something on this list is a wasted visit, which is why it is here rather than buried in a manual.

Not sure whether your site meets it? Send us a photo of the equipment and we will tell you.

Checklist

  • Dashboard access with permission to change the network.
  • A decision between the two sign-in styles before you start — see below. They are different products from that point on.
  • No particular firmware version to check. This does not depend on anything installed at the property — see below.
Worth knowing

The things that catch people out

Every make has its own quirks. These are the ones that matter on Cisco Meraki MR access points — not because they are problems, but because knowing them in advance turns a site visit into a short one.

Two sign-in styles, and only one of them enforces anything. Meraki offers a click-through style, where it simply hands the guest to us and lets them on when we send them back, and a sign-on style, where it asks us about every guest. Choose sign-on wherever the property needs speed limits, device limits or checkout cut-off, because all three are carried in the answer we give and click-through carries none of them. Click-through is right only where you want a page shown and nothing enforced.
Why Meraki needs nothing on site. On sign-on, the question about your guest is asked by Meraki's own cloud service, not by anything at your property — so there is no equipment to connect, nothing to dial out, and nothing that can be knocked offline by your broadband dropping. Checkout works the same way in reverse. It is the most resilient arrangement on this list, and it comes from Meraki's own design rather than anything we did.
The setup

How it goes on the day

Roughly half an hour on a straightforward site, most of it waiting for equipment to restart. Your console writes out every value for your property in advance — there is nothing to work out and nothing to invent.

1

Add the equipment in your console

You register the router, controller or access point in your Resort Manager Hotspot console. It generates everything the following steps need — the address of your sign-in page, the credentials, the settings — already filled in with your property's own values. Nobody copies a setting out of a manual and nobody types a password twice.

2

Let guests reach the sign-in page

A guest who has not signed in yet has no internet, so the equipment is given a short list of addresses that stay open regardless — the sign-in page among them. Your console writes that list out in the exact form this equipment expects.

3

Nothing to connect on site

Your equipment's own vendor cloud asks us directly over the internet on its behalf. There is nothing to install, dial or open at the property for this step — the connection already exists between your vendor and the internet.

4

Point the guest network at your sign-in page

The guest Wi-Fi is set to open, with your branded page in place of the equipment's own. Usage recording is switched on at the same time — that is both your reporting and, in the countries that require it, the connection log you are obliged to keep.

5

Prove it with a real phone

Join the network on a phone, sign in, and watch the session appear in your console. Then end that session from the console and confirm the phone drops. The last step is the proof — everything before it can look right while the checkout half is not working.

Other equipment

Comparing makes?

Most sites come down to a choice between two or three of these. The pages below cover the ones closest to Cisco Meraki MR access points.

Also from Cisco Meraki

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All 40 supported makes →

Have this equipment already?

Then there is nothing to buy. Tell us what you have and we will confirm the details for your site — or set the whole thing up for you, which is a service we offer.