Limit Each Hotspot Voucher to One Device (The Easy Way)

Running a Wi-Fi hotspot can be very confusing when your room is full of happy people browsing the web, yet you barely made any money. 

Nothing seems to have gone wrong, and you have no idea why.

It usually comes to a sneaky little trickery. One person buys a single voucher for the internet and shares the code with his four friends. Now you have five people browsing the web on your internet but only got paid for one. It is not that bad of a leak, but it certainly takes its toll on you.

Solving the technical part of things is simple, as the main issue is the real-world-life problems that come with it.

It gets tricky when a customer locks their phone to go grab a soda and the network logs them out by mistake. You also have to think about that student who actually needs their phone and laptop open at the same time to finish a school assignment.

If you deal with those situations well, you will protect your earnings without alienating your customers.

Two Ways to Count a Device

There are two ways your system can count devices, which have very different outcomes.

Counting Concurrent Logins (Highly Recommended)

This method counts how many people are logged in on your Wi-Fi at one time. 

Setting it to 1 means that the second someone tries to log in whilst on another device, their request will be denied. It does not matter who pays for the voucher; as soon as someone logs in from one phone, they may log in from another or even their laptop if they logout of the phone or wait for it to timeout. 

In short, it is very easy to trick the system but will mostly stop people from simply passing the code to their friends.

Locking Hardware IDs (Not Recommended)

The second method is much stricter, as it counts how many different hardware IDs have been seen in your network. Each phone and laptop has a unique identifier for their wireless connection, a MAC address.

You can have the system lock the voucher code to a single device forever.

Although it sounds like a fantastic way to limit oneself to one device, this is not the case. Modern phones have an in-built feature that actively hides and randomizes their MAC address from different networks to avoid tracking. As soon as a user tries to log in with a new random ID, your system will invalidate their voucher code. Your customer support will be swamped with phone calls asking what is happening with their voucher. 

For a smooth experience, go with the concurrent logins method and avoid hardware locking methods.

How to Set It Up on a RADIUS System

When managing your hotspot with an external RADIUS billing system, all the limiting of devices must be done in the billing dashboard and not in the router itself. Copy-pasting user limitations into a MikroTik router will create constant conflicts between the terminal and your billing system, which will crash the network.

All you need to do is change one setting in your billing manager (RadiusManager, Splynx, MikroTik User Manager, etc.).

1. Log into the billing dashboard and go to your User Profiles or Tariff Plans.

2. Find a setting titled Simultaneous-Use or Max Concurrent Connections.

3. Change the number of allowed simultaneous connections to 1.

This will make the RADIUS server act upon the voucher code and not allow a second connection to be made. The second your customer tries to log in elsewhere with the same voucher, the RADIUS server will inform the MikroTik router that their connection is denied.

The One Router Setting You Do Need

The only code you need to copy into your MikroTik router is a rule to keep in contact with the RADIUS server every few minutes. This is necessary to avoid "stuck sessions," situations where a customer leaves the hotspot without logging out, and the server does not notice for a few minutes.

Run this code in your MikroTik terminal to keep the server updated on current sessions every 2 minutes:

/radius set [find] interim-update=2m

This code will make the MikroTik terminal update the RADIUS server on active sessions every two minutes. This way, the second a customer leaves without logging out, the server will realize it after two minutes and allow that voucher to be used again.

Handling the Honest Customer

The last issue to solve is handling the honest customer with two devices. 

A student needs to use both their phone and their laptop, and when your system denies their request, they will either buy another voucher or simply leave.

A lot of intelligent hotspot owners turn this opportunity into a sale and offer a one-device pass and a two-device pass for a slightly higher price.

In your billing system, this is as simple as making a second profile with a Simultaneous-Use = 2. You have turned a customer complaint into extra earnings with a fair solution to an honest problem.

Check That It Worked

Always track your numbers before and after implementing changes to see if they had any effect.

Let's take a simple example: if you usually sell around 80 vouchers on a busy night, yet your active devices have a peak of 120, that means that on average, each person has 1.5 devices connected to the hotspot. After a week of tightening your security, if the numbers peak around 85, you know it is working!

To avoid confusion from customers, write the rule down clearly on your voucher cards and the login page. 

"One device at a time. Need two? Ask for the 2-device pass." 

Customers are fine with limitations they know about beforehand but will complain furiously if they find out about them in the middle of an online game.