What’s a Guest WiFi Network?

We live in an era where handing out your WiFi is like offering a guest a cup of tea or a glass of water. It’s something that we do without even a second thought. A lot of times, a guest expects to get invited to jump onto the WiFi network.

It’s only right to want your friends and family to stay connected to the outside world while at your house. You want to give them access to the Internet, but you should think twice about how you do it. Each time you grant access to a new device on your network, you end up exposing your entire network and everything on it. Unfortunately, there is no limit to the damage that can be done if you allow infected devices onto your network. However, a lot of these threats can be mitigated with the correct use of a guest network.

What’s a Guest Network?

Any device that is on your home network is likely connected to your Local Arena Network or your “LAN”. This is the main network. When you set up a guest network, it’s completely separate from your LAN. The process essentially creates a new network that accesses the Internet independently of your main network. Therefore, when a new phone logs into the guest network, it’s not going to have access to your LAN. Instead, it will be accessing the Internet separately which can protect any devices on your main network.

Likely, you’ve already been on a guest network and you didn’t even know it. If you’ve ever connected to a local coffee shop’s network, you’ve likely been ushered to their guest network. This is a way for them to segregate the traffic on their network so they aren’t exposing their internal devices to external threats. You may have been able to access all of the stuff you wanted on the Internet, but had no access to the internal devices like their WiFi printer.

Why Have One in Your Home?

You may see the benefits of having one for a business, but you may be wondering why you should create and maintain one at home. While you may not necessarily mind your friends having access to your main network, it doesn’t mean that you want everyone to have access to it. It also doesn’t mean you want every device on it.

Setting up a guest network is a good way to be friendly, but not overly inviting. Picture it as letting someone into your home, but not giving them free rein to go anywhere they want. Likely, you don’t allow people to go wandering about your home without restrictions. Why would you do the same with your network? Anything that they bring into your home (network) could harm your network and devices. They could bring in malware or viruses without even knowing it. Here are some of the biggest reasons you need to consider setting up a guest network in your home right now.

Reasons to Setup a Guest Network

Protection

The number one reason to set one up has to do with protecting your network and everyone on it. It’s easily one of the best ways to protect yourself from external threats. You can better protect your network from getting exposed to botnets, worms, and other malware. If someone brings an infected device onto your primary network, there is no telling the extent of damage that can be done. Having them isolated on a second network, it’s going to limit the damage that can be done. Your main network would be protected. It’s like having an additional layer of security on your network.

Password Privacy

Another reason has to do with protecting your passwords. If you happen to be someone that reuses your passwords for a lot of different accounts, you could be leaving many of your accounts vulnerable if you give someone your WiFi password. After all, they could end up using it to log into one of your other accounts that share the same password. Also, if they are on your network, they could potentially install or have keyloggers installed onto it. This could end up exposing all of your passwords for your most sensitive accounts. To find a reliable telephone system is easy all you have to do is a google search with your location area for example reader in Guildford searches something like ‘telephone systems Guildford‘.

Device Isolation

A guest network is one of the best and easiest ways to isolate certain devices on your network. You need to isolate less secure devices. A lot of people have Internet of Things devices on their networks. While these are incredibly convenient, they are also less secure than other devices. You don’t have these devices getting routine security updates and patches like a computer or mobile phone. Thus, they are going to be more vulnerable which is why you see a lot of hackers targeting them. If you use a guest network and separate them from your primary network, you cannot get as easily exposed when they are exploited.

This is especially true for those that are now working remotely. While you could be using a Virtual Private Network to access your corporate network, it’s still easy for your work devices to get infected by other devices on your network. Minim ended up creating a unique Work Life WiFi device that helps employees protect their work devices from these kinds of threats. It allows you to create separate and isolated work networks to mitigate risk.