Should your business have a guest WiFi network?
Posted on 25 June 2025 by Beaming SupportIn today’s world, providing WiFi access to guests isn’t a luxury, it’s often an expectation. But handing out the same credentials you use internally can expose your business to unnecessary risk. Instead, creating a dedicated Guest WiFi network is the best approach that offers better security, performance, and overall control.
Here’s why and how you should implement it.
Protect Your Core Network with VLAN Segmentation
Virtual Local Area Networks (VLANs) are a powerful tool for organising network traffic and ensuring its security. By assigning your Guest WiFi to its own VLAN (e.g., VLAN 20) and implementing restrictive firewall rules, you isolate it from your internal business network (e.g., VLAN 10).
This means devices joined to the Guest WiFi can’t snoop on or access sensitive resources like servers, or point-of-sale systems, even if they’re on the same physical network.
Any decent business firewalls and switches support inter-VLAN routing, this will allow you to fine-tune exactly what kind of access, if any, guest users have. In many cases, it’s best to block all cross-VLAN traffic unless there’s a very specific reason its required.
Enforce Client Isolation for Device-Level Privacy
Even on the Guest VLAN, you don’t necessarily want guests to see each other’s devices. That’s where client isolation comes in. This feature, commonly found in enterprise-grade access points, prevents peer-to-peer traffic over WiFi, therefore isolating each guest device.
This protects users from eavesdropping, malware propagation, or accidental sharing of files via local services like AirDrop or SMB, especially in high-footfall environments.
Control Bandwidth with Throttling Policies
Letting guests use your internet is generous; letting them impact your business by hogging it, isn’t great… Bandwidth throttling policies help you get a happy medium. Many access points or controllers allow you to set per-client or per-SSID bandwidth limits.
For example:
- Per-client limit: Cap individual guests to 10Mbps down / 2Mbps up
- SSID limit: Restrict total Guest WiFi usage to 100Mbps shared across all users
This ensures your business traffic—VoIP, cloud apps, remote access—gets priority, while guests still enjoy a smooth browsing experience without impacting you.
In most instances (depending on your bandwidth and footfall expected), it would be recommended to use the SSID limit for your Guest Wireless to ensure no impact to your main business network.
Added Benefits
With proper setup and enterprise hardware, Guest networks can offer more than connectivity. You can:
- Use captive portals with branded splash pages
- Require terms of service acceptance.
As well as many more features such as Active Directory integrations etc.
In Summary
A dedicated Guest WiFi network isn’t just a nice-to-have these days—it’s part of a responsible and scalable IT strategy for most businesses. VLAN separation, client isolation, and bandwidth policies offer security, performance, and professionalism.
If your current setup is running everything through a single SSID, it might be time to rethink your wireless design.