Having a guest Wi-Fi network in your home is very useful to decrease the chances of hackers infecting your PC or smartphone. Here's how to create a guest Wi-Fi network
How many times has a friend of yours asked you for your Wi-Fi password when entering your home? How many times, when entering an accommodation facility, have you intercepted two separate Wi-Fi networks, one for staff and one for guests? We already know that the answer to both questions is "almost always".
Accommodation facilities are already doing what you should be doing: enabling a guest network on your home router. What is a guest network? Simple: a network dedicated only to who comes to visit us or who, as in the case of hotels and B&B is guest for few days. A separate network, therefore, that will allow you to divide your Internet traffic from that of anyone who passes by your home and wants to connect via Wi-Fi. The advantage? Security, above all: by creating a Wi-Fi network for guests you can, at the same time, be polite to those who ask you for your password and safe in your navigation. Here are all the advantages of this solution and how to put it in place.
Why create a guest network
A normal home Wi-Fi network is not very advanced and secure: the router has its own password and encryption, but once you overcome these two obstacles anyone can do almost what they want of all the devices connected to the same network. On the cell phone or tablet of someone who enters your home and asks you for the Wi-Fi password there could be a virus, and if we allow it to enter our home network, the malware could attack everything it finds connected to the home Wi-Fi network. If, on the other hand, we allow that cell phone or tablet to connect to another network, the one for guests, the possible virus will only attack the devices of any other guests connected to the same network. But that's not all: if we give our Wi-Fi password to someone who visits us, it will be stored on their device. And if someone attacks that device, he could also steal the security key of the Wi-Fi network and many other data related to our network.
The Dark Web is full of databases for sale containing the data of hundreds of thousands of Wi-Fi networks that have been stolen illegally. Finally, on some advanced routers, it is also possible to limit the maximum surfing speed on a guest network in order not to impact the performance of the main network.
How to create a guest Wi-Fi network
To create a dedicated network for your guests, you have to act on the router's settings. You don't need to pay anything extra or contact your Internet Service Provider. Just enter the router setup, via the web interface, and look for the option "Allow guest access" or "Guest network" (the name may change, but it will still be similar). Then we must choose the name to give to the network (also called SSID) and set the password and security protocol (better not to go below WPA2). At this point all Wi-Fi devices within range of the router will also detect the second network and you can grant your guests access to it only.