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: The equipment makes its own encrypted connection out to us and asks about each guest as they sign in. Nothing needs opening up on your broadband.

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

SmartZone 5.1.2 or later. Earlier versions have no encrypted option at all.
Administrator access with rights over the zone the guest network lives in.
Knowing which zone that is. SmartZone's settings are inherited downwards, and something created at the wrong level lands on networks nobody intended.
Command-line access to the controller as well as an administrator login. One setting this needs exists nowhere in the menus — see below.
The controller reachable from us, not only from the access points. On a controller with no address of its own that means a private link, arranged before anything else rather than after the first failed test.

Worth knowing

The things that catch people out

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

The traffic goes both ways on this make. On most equipment only the kit at the property reaches out to us. SmartZone is the other way round as well: our sign-in page hands the accepted guest back to your controller, and a checkout instruction is delivered to the controller too. Both need a way in, which is why a SmartZone site usually runs over a private link.

Signing guests in and recording them are two separate settings. SmartZone keeps them apart, and a guest network can be given one and not the other. The property then works perfectly for months, guests come and go, and the connection record a regulator can ask for was never being written. That is why the final check looks for a live session in your console rather than for a happy phone — the phone passes either way.

One line typed at the controller. Current SmartZone scrambles the guest's device identifier before handing it to the sign-in page, and the page cannot identify anybody without it readable. A single command at the controller's command line turns that off. There is no screen for it, which is why the list above asks for command-line access; the symptom if it is missed is a sign-in page that loads and then reports it does not know what device it is talking to.

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.

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.

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.

Connect it to us

The equipment makes an encrypted connection out to us, proving who it is with a certificate we issue. It dials out, so nothing has to be opened up on your broadband, and the certificate is renewed before it expires with a reminder in the console.

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.

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 Ruckus SmartZone.

Also from Ruckus

Ruckus Unleashed and ZoneDirector

Connects the same way

Equipment that reaches us by the same route, so the same things have to be true at the property: Aruba Central (AOS-10) · Aruba Instant (IAP) · ExtremeCloud IQ Controller · Fortinet FortiGate

All 40 supported makes →