How To: Set up a guest network to protect your home network.

The holidays are coming and friends or family are coming to visit – along with all of their devices. You’re sure you have plenty of bandwidth so everything’s great, right? Unfortunately, accommodating additional users is not simply a matter bandwidth.

It’s a matter of security, too.

• What makes a guest network more secure? Guest WiFi networks provide a separate internet access point on your router from the network you use for your primary devices. By creating that separate entry point, you’re protecting your network and devices.
  
• Why is this important? You probably don’t have access to all the laptops and mobile phones that your visitors use every day—and you don’t know what viruses they may have on them. Creating a guest network allows your visitors to connect to the internet without risking the spread any viruses or malware they may have on their devices across the network to infect your devices.
  
• How do I set up a guest network? Setting up a guest network is as simple as logging into your router, enabling the WiFi option and defining the SSID (the name of the guest network you’re creating) along with a password for your guests. (We generally recommend restricting access to everything but the internet.)

It’s also easy to set up a guest network with the Blackfoot Smart Home mobile app.

• Select Guest Network from the main menu, then “Add a Guest Network” by selecting the plus sign.
  
• From there, fill in the details that you would like to apply to the network.
  
• In the future, selecting this Guest Network from the main screen will allow you to edit or delete it, or send the details to additional guests.

Need help setting up your guest network? Please contact us with your questions.