Scheduled Access Option

Your Ideas Under Consideration
1

Hi,

I've stumble upon this request from our end user for cnPilot

They wanted to have SSID to show at a certain time. Their request is to show SSID from 7pm to 7am EVERYDAY, means from Monday to Sunday they want to have that SSID show at that time only.

In the setting, I cannot set time to 19:00 to 07:00 since 00:00 to 07:00 is consider the next day. Example in the current setting;

Sunday : 19:00 to 23.59

Monday : 00:00 to 07:00

Then on Monday the SSID will not show ath 19:00 to 23:59

Then i got me thinking why not try SAME SSID, but AP cannot have the same SSID, so as for right now i only can give them different SSID name to match their request time. Example;

  1. SSID 1 - 7pm to 11.59pm
  2. SSID 1.1 - 12am to 7am

I would be great to have the option where you can set the Scheduled Access to be at day time or night time or custom time setting which ever that meets our requirement.

3

(I am less than 24 hours into cnPilot testing)

Has this been updated/added?

The inability to do granular scheduling has had me ripping out competitors UniF--k for years. That whole... "Well the Guest Network has to Shut off at 12AM becasue you have one 'active period per day'" mess.

I can schedule access in Ruckus in 15 minute units all through out the 24 hours of a day.

In Mikrotik I can use schedule/script down to the second.

4

Hello,

I have a similar issue. A customer of mine, is asking me to power off SSID at 01:00 am and then power it on again at 06:00 am. This is not possibile from your Sheduled Access Options in cnPilot e410 and e600 since you can set only start time and end time for single days. it would be a great idea if you could add an intellgent granular scheduled access option, where you can set the end time and the start time so that scheduled time is coherent.

Competitive produtcs can do it and this is, I think, a small implementation for a great result.

Please, let us know when we can tell our customers that there will be granular Scheduled Access.

Best regards.

Andrea.

5

P.S.

It should be an even bigger idea, if you could implement the granular Scheduled Access also on cnMaestro.

Best regards.

Andrea

@slayerette wrote:

Hi,

I've stumble upon this request from our end user for cnPilot

They wanted to have SSID to show at a certain time. Their request is to show SSID from 7pm to 7am EVERYDAY, means from Monday to Sunday they want to have that SSID show at that time only.

In the setting, I cannot set time to 19:00 to 07:00 since 00:00 to 07:00 is consider the next day. Example in the current setting;

Sunday : 19:00 to 23.59

Monday : 00:00 to 07:00

Then on Monday the SSID will not show ath 19:00 to 23:59

Then i got me thinking why not try SAME SSID, but AP cannot have the same SSID, so as for right now i only can give them different SSID name to match their request time. Example;

  1. SSID 1 - 7pm to 11.59pm
  2. SSID 1.1 - 12am to 7am

I would be great to have the option where you can set the Scheduled Access to be at day time or night time or custom time setting which ever that meets our requirement.

6

All

you have outlined the requirement very well.  I understand the issue with the current scheduler as explained by Slayerette.  I'll check with Cambium engineering to see if they considered it, since the original request is a few years old.  I would like to understand the use case and market a bit more.

Is this for:

Education Market.  7AM to 7PM is a logical "available" time.  Furthermore, such a on/off feature should have a temporary Override for a particular classroom.  sort of like a Teacher Control app that has a "turn off WiFi now for 30m" button, and a "Turn on WiFi now for 30min" button.  These would be overrides to a default Scheduled Policy.

Hotel Market.  I have been doing hotels since 2000 and haven't seen this.  for Conference Rooms, there are many access solutions that have a very finely tuned time/configuration scheduler designed to configure/enable a Conference Room at 9AM on Monday and tear it down 5PM on Tuesday.  These schedulers are done on an external application server and they set up/tear down the configuration on both the L2 Access Points, and the Guest Portal itself.

MDU Market.  Not sure it would apply here, but would like to hear ideas.

Retail Market.  In the past, I've had retail customers request a way to disable access at night to reduce energy consumption.  Doesn't save much, but it was requested.

any other markets or use cases?

7

Hi,

we also have customers who ask us to activate the guest wlan ssid over the day, for example.:


the guest wifi wlan network must be active all day on the weekend (saturday and sunday) all other days from 2.30 pm to 7.00 am.

Customers would also like to be able to manage specific holidays.

Best regards,

8

I also need a more specific schedule. For example, 7:00am to 12:00am, and 6:00pm to 10:00pm, or different times on public holidays. What can we do?

9

At this time we do it on the local firewall and just block traffic on schedule but I would prefer to this based on SSIDs being advertised at certain times.Without fail customers will get calls and trouble tickets logged about wifi being down or not passing traffic as chancers try and use corp wifi to sit and do browsing.

We have a common request at clinics with waiting room/lobby public wifi and reception/guest room SSIDs should be switched off after hours.

10

Use monitored host. If the host goes offline the SSID shuts down. When you “firewalled” whatever to make the traffic fail… Use a host. Like the guest gateway IP address. Schedule the firewall rule… And the SSID shuts down.

It’s good because I can also set it to shut off the guest network when the restaurant is limping along on the backup cellular.

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11

Haha that’s pretty ingenious thanks.

Time to bulk order some Mikrotik HexS for this.

12

It was a “how do I get around this”… That turned into… Hold up… This gives me something pretty cool.

Tested it at my home and it worked like I expected.

As soon as cambium can figure out this key exchange time out issue I am having… I will be moving over to Cambium.

But on the Tik thing.

I never use the hEXs. The hAP AC2 has a much better processor and does a better job routing. The SFP in hexS doesn’t offset the fact that if you have to skip fast track for your routing… The hEXs really becomes a bottle neck.

Also… The hAP AC2… Having a built in radio…
I have a Bar In Washington DC that has “too many steps in management”. This results in things not getting paid on time that are on auto. Combine that with DC construction… And I have to get creative.

Example.
Main internet is 300/300 Comcast Business.
Second internet is Verizon Cellular (not the Comcast add on as not paying Comcast would shut down both.)
Third is the hAP AC2 is set to use a managers hotspot from their phone.

So days when it just hits the fan… Manager turns on his hot spot and plugs it into power in the back.

The hAP AC2 blocks the guest network when ever Comcast is down. Then sends a message to the Digital Loggers WebPower switch to turn on outlet 4. Outlet 4 has a lamp with a red light. So at a glance… You can see the red light without going into the managers office.

Since the wifi is from Ruckus… The SSID is still transmitting… And customers are asking why wifi doesn’t work… (If I flip to Cambium… The SSID goes off, I built this in Caps-Man before finding out just how poorly Mikrotik wireless performed in Washington D.C.)

But back to the hAP AC2 since it’s already blocked the guest network… It’s trying to use VZW. If that fails… I make it blink the light. This tells the manager to turn on his hot spot.

I have already configured the hAP AC2 to try to be a client to that hotspot in the event that 1 and 2 are down.

As their Point of Sale system is all cloud based… This was a required work around for an outage over a long weekend.

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