Meeting house lease Wi-Fi connection duration too short (for someone who goes in a daily basis to the building)

Hi, there.

I'm a seminary teacher, and I use 3 devices most of the times I teach classes. I have an Android phone, an iPad and an HP laptop. And every time, mostly from Mondays to Fridays, and Sundays, I have to renew the connection of those devices. It seems to be the Wi-Fi is set to forget them every less than 24hs. Is it possible to improve that? Best case scenario, for my specific case, is 5 to 7 days.

Any help or guidance will be appreciated.

I am not aware that anyone can change the default lease time for network connections. The only thing your technology specialist could do would be to add your devices to the No Splash policy, so you would never have to see or agree to the terms of service. However, I have heard there is a limit to the number of devices that can be added to that policy, and your meetinghouse may already have a few. So the bottom line is for you to talk to your technology specialist.

Most users are in the building for about two hours once or twice a week. A DHCP lease that extends for five to seven days, as you suggested, doesn't make sense in that scenario.

If a building has three wards meeting in it with overlapping schedules and the lease time is set to 2.5 hours, you could serve everyone with an address space that is a litle more than 2x the peak number of devices in each ward. With a multi-day lease, you would need an address space that is 3x the number of devices in each ward or 4x for a building with four wards.

Your use case is an atypical use case. drepouille's suggestion is your best bet if your technology specialist has available space for you to have the no-splash policy.

carloswm85 wrote: Thu Sep 30, 2021 5:59 am It seems to be the Wi-Fi is set to forget them every less than 24hs.

I believe it was set that way for exactly your situation. Before, it was 24 hours and it was cutting people off mid-lesson.

Just to be clear, there are two separate things being discussed here. One is the DHCP lease duration for receiving an IP address and the other is the church's consent (splash) screen. The DHCP lease duration won't affect your ability to connect throughout the week, as it's auto-renewing when it expires.

Your acknowledgement to the church's "splash" screen is set to expire every 24 hours requiring re-acknowledgement of the church's terms to connect to the internet. This is the problem you're encountering. As mentioned above, the only bypass to this is for the STS add your personal devices to a "no splash" list for that building. This list is usually reserved for printers or other WiFi devices that can't respond to the splash screen. It's currently limited to 10 devices per building.

Mikerowaved wrote: Thu Sep 30, 2021 12:49 pmIt's currently limited to 10 devices per building.

Thanks for the replies, guys.

Ok. I'm now asking people in my stake what can be done about it.

Now, talking about Church at global scale. Can you implement a better policy for this? Really, in my situation, I spend (waste maybe) from 15 to 40 minutes a week (the latter, worst case scenario, which has happened sparsely) connecting my devices (sometimes things can get problematic). I go to the Church building from Monday to Friday, and Sunday, and every time I connect from 2 to 3 devices. That's: 3 taps/slides for my phone, 7 for my iPad, and 3 clicks for my laptop (it would be more in my laptop's case, but I figured out how to do it quicker). And my laptop is getting older and slower, so you can imagine the situation. That's time I lose for teaching the class. And really, my main concern is that many times, students have had to wait for me to resolve this issue at the beginning of the class (which can be several minutes every time, as I've already said).

Maybe my situation is too singular, but I'd like to suggest the implementation at global scale of an smartest policy that does not require regular users continuous log-ins for conditions of use they already know (because they've accepted them the very first time), unless they change of course. I don't know much about networks, but I do know about programming, UX and avoiding repetitive tasks using code. A chunk of code can save hours of repetitiveness and user's headaches.

scgallafent wrote: Thu Sep 30, 2021 8:39 amWith a multi-day lease, you would need an address space that is 3x the number of devices in each ward or 4x for a building with four wards.

Thinking about this, it would be great to allow the system remember devices for, let's say, 72hs. In that case, it would solve my problem, because I don't spend more than that time away from the building, and it would forget any forgettable devices which don't go that often (like people who goes there once a week or mere visitors).

I can provide more information about my user experience with this. As far as I know the only device which ask of me renewing the lease is my iPad.

By the way, I have to use the iPad in class because we have 1 to 3 remote students in the class-room, and the laptop for the display of slides and Zoom sharing, and WhatsApp Web sharing of documents or messages, when necessary.

Mikerowaved wrote: Thu Sep 30, 2021 12:49 pm Just to be clear, there are two separate things being discussed here. One is the DHCP lease duration for receiving an IP address and the other is the church's consent (splash) screen. The DHCP lease duration won't affect your ability to connect throughout the week, as it's auto-renewing when it expires.

Despite I go to the building almost every day, I have to consent with the splash screen every time. So I'm not sure how's that that works.

carloswm85 wrote: Thu Sep 30, 2021 4:35 pm Thinking about this, it would be great to allow the system remember devices for, let's say, 72hs.

I don't think it works that way. It's not a case of "remembering" but how often the splash screen is triggered.

As I said, it used to be 24 hours, but it caused problems for Seminary teachers. Say you arrived late on Monday and signed in at 6:05. You get there Tuesday on time and get everything running by 5:55. But at 6:05, the internet would die and you'd have to navigate the splash screen.

As such, 72 hours just means you get to skip signing in every other day.

I don't know as there is a way set it to for how long a device is remembered after it's no longer active.

Just a couple idea:

1. Use the hotspot feature of your cell phone. You don't need anyone's permission, yet you need to make sure that your phone plan supports it, and doesn't add extra expenses (that you are not willing to pay, if there is one). Other things to consider is if it draws from a data pool the spouse may not like that fact that now they can't stream their favorite show over their phone.

2. Speak with your bishop/branch president, and see if they will grant you access to the leadership/hidden network. This is another WiFi that does not broadcast it's SSID, you need to know about it, along with the password, that is forced to change every 90 days. This is mainly reserved for when your unit leadership is meeting, or on the fifth Sunday and they are sharing a presentation, or even if they are sharing a church broadcast (think fireside or general conference).

3. Speak with your unit leader (bishop or branch president), along with the STS, and see if they can make a case to the FM on your behalf to have an Ethernet jack installed in your classroom, along with a unmanaged, yet mounted, five port switch. Things connected physically are given permission as they are in the building, where as wireless access could be gained from outside in the parking lot. This is a case where if you have physical access it is assumed you have permission to be in the building to begin with, and not just drive-by wifi hacking. If the switch is not mounted then it needs to be secured when not in use, meaning it would be kept either in the media center or a unit leader's office, and you would need to check it out every time you need to use it.

3a. If you already have a room wired to the LAN, and hence the internet, then it may be that you only need a switch to share the connection.

3b. You would have to figure out how to connect the tablet and phone to the switch, yet that should be pretty straight forward nowadays, the laptop is easy as it either has an RJ-45 plug built in or you get an USB to Ethernet adapter.

I think #2 is your best option. Know that your unit leader, and the STS, would most likely want to go over some guidelines or set restrictions, with you. The first being that you are not allowed to share the password with anyone. Next would most likely be that you could only use the hidden network while conducting your class, and agree to use the public network the rest of the time (try telling that to your phone or laptop - good luck). Even if they don't mention it, maybe you should say this is what you are willing to do, and it is to help the youth of the church.

Thank you for taking your calling seriously, and I hope you manage to get things worked out.

awev wrote: Sat Oct 09, 2021 5:28 am 1. Use the hotspot feature of your cell phone. You don't need anyone's permission, yet you need to make sure that your phone plan supports it, and doesn't add extra expenses (that you are not willing to pay, if there is one). Other things to consider is if it draws from a data pool the spouse may not like that fact that now they can't stream their favorite show over their phone.

Keep in mind that many "unlimited" plans will impose a throttle at some point.

awev wrote: Sat Oct 09, 2021 5:28 am 2. Speak with your bishop/branch president, and see if they will grant you access to the leadership/hidden network. This is another WiFi that does not broadcast it's SSID, you need to know about it, along with the password, that is forced to change every 90 days.

Unless something has changed, it is NOT hidden. It just goes away if the password isn't manually changed by the STS every 90 days. It's main purpose is to provide limited WiFi when there's a need to take down the main network to preserve bandwidth - such as when doing a webcast for stake conference when you have a lot of members in the building. As for permission, this is probably more of a stake thing than a ward one.

I have several devices in a meetinghouse that need to be connected to the meetinghouse network. This includes two primary ZOOM clients, two printers, a wall mounted display used for ZOOM calls, a dedicated device that hosts a ZOOM camera.

I have had all of these devices assigned static IP addresses and have their MAC addresses captured in Technology Manager.

This was necessary to suppress the splash page interaction. This worked fine initially but over the last month or so, it has not worked.

I prefer this solution over connecting to the private network, because the 90 day time limit sets a fuse that can expire when no one is thinking about it and then something critical does not work when it is needed. When this happens it is often the case that no one is available who can fix it.

I understand that when the device is registered in Technology Manager that the splash page is supposed to be suppressed. What changed? Can the original functionality be restored? In either case, the behavior should be documented on the TM site.

Perhaps the splash page is suppressed on a set of known device types where a user can’t interact with the splash page but not on others. If this is the case, then I believe there needs to be a new feature where an email notification is sent to all who have TM access privileges for the associated meetinghouse that the “Lehi” password will expire in something like 7 days. If the 90-day passwords can expire without this warning, the feature just can’t be used because the time will come when it will disrupt an important meeting. I also think that the TM user should be allowed to extend the existing password for another 90 days. If the password changes, then all devices that are connected this way must be individually reconnected to the network every 90 days. This is inconvenient and should be unnecessary.

Assigning a static IP is separate from the adding them to the "NoSplash" policy. The NoSpash is set via the "Group Policy Manager" which you can find in the "three dot" menu at the Firewall level.

Please note that NoSpash is only needed for devices that need to reach out over the internet and are connected via WiFI. It's not needed for wired devices, nor is it normally needed for devices that only communicate over the local network (like I'd expect printers to work - unless they are using some web services for connection).

roblad wrote: Mon Dec 06, 2021 12:21 pm I understand that when the device is registered in Technology Manager that the splash page is supposed to be suppressed. What changed? Can the original functionality be restored? In either case, the behavior should be documented on the TM site.

Perhaps the splash page is suppressed on a set of known device types where a user can’t interact with the splash page but not on others. If this is the case, then I believe there needs to be a new feature where an email notification is sent to all who have TM access privileges for the associated meetinghouse that the “Lehi” password will expire in something like 7 days. If the 90-day passwords can expire without this warning, the feature just can’t be used because the time will come when it will disrupt an important meeting. I also think that the TM user should be allowed to extend the existing password for another 90 days. If the password changes, then all devices that are connected this way must be individually reconnected to the network every 90 days. This is inconvenient and should be unnecessary.

Nothing has changed, to my knowledge. I was able to use this process last night to add a TV connecting to Liahona to the NoSplash group policy and it worked perfectly. One thing to keep in mind when you go to the Group Policy Manager page in TM is to be sure to change the Group Policy drop-down on the right (under the pink banner) to NoSplash and not Iot. Also, the device itself needs to be attempting to connect to Liahona and not Lehi.

Lehi is designed to be used by ward/stake leadership on their mobile devices in the event Liahona needs to be disabled in a building (for Stake Conference, for example). It wasn't envisioned to be used for any other device, especially those needing to bypass the Splash screen for sign in to Liahona.

More info about the NoSplash setup is found on the MHTech Help page at https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/hel ... s?lang=eng.

Thanks for your comments, everybody.