The management of WiFi is a huge challenge for the hotel chain: dozens of shops are located throughout the country, each with its own AP, gateway, certification system if traditional practices are used"Independent management per shop"The IT team at Headquarters is simply not able to effectively monitor and maintain the WiFi system in all its shops, with a proliferation of problems such as inconsistent configurations, slow failure response, high maintenance costs, and inconsistent branding. The multi-portal management function of the WiFi certification system is designed to address these issues.——Through a central management platform at cloud ends, Headquarters will be able to consolidate the WiFi system in all its shops, monitor it, maintain a unified dimension and analyse it centrally."One platform runs the country's door."The structure, functions and values of the multi-storey centralized management are described below.
Challenges of multi-portal management
The hotel chain group faces many challenges in the management of WiFi: one is a large number and wide distribution, a medium brand may have hundreds of shops, a large group has thousands of doors, which are located in cities throughout the country, and IT personnel at headquarters cannot access each shop to maintain the system on site; Second, the configuration is not uniform and, without centralized management, the WiFi configuration (SSID name, Portal page, authentication method, bandwidth strategy, security rules, etc.) may vary from one door to another, with the owner or engineer configurations, leading to a different branding experience, and customers seeing different pages and experiences when connecting to WiFi; Third, the failure response is slow and when a shop ' s WiFi malfunctions, the doorman usually does not know the skills and only calls to Headquarters IT support. The IT staff check through telephone guidance, communication costs are high, recovery time is long and this may affect the guest experience and hotel evaluation; fourth, the cost of carrying the service is high, and in order to maintain the WiFi system, which is scattered around the area, there is a need for more IT personnel at Headquarters or reliance on third-party maintenance services providers, with high human and service costs; Fifthly, security risks are high and decentralized, with inconsistent implementation of the security strategy across the doorways, some having closed firewalls, others using weak passwords, others not updating solids in a timely manner, and security concerns that may affect the security of the brand as a whole if a door is breached; sixthly, data fragmentation, and scattered storage of WiFi operating data (certification logs, web logs, traffic data etc.) at the various doors, and Headquarters ' inability to conduct cross-door data analysis and uniform compliance audits, and to gain an overall view of the WiFi performance of the brand; Seven are new shops that are slow to get online, new open doors where IT staff are required to deploy on-site WiFi systems, and which can take days from installation to configuration debugging, affecting the opening schedule. The root cause of these challenges is that"Decentralization"The model is not adapted to the needs of a hotel chain operating on a scale."Centralized management"The structure is working.
Structure of centralized management
The central structure of the multi-portal centralized is"Cloud management platform plus thin door". The cloud management platform is deployed on the cloud (public or brand-owned) and is the central management hub for the entire system, covering all doorroom configurations, state monitoring, failure alarms, data analysis, solidware upgrades, etc. The advantages of this structure are: simple, low cost and low failure rate for door-to-door equipment, with all complex management functions concentrated on cloud ends, and the IT staff at Headquarters would only manage one cloud-end platform to control all doors. The secure management lane between cloud management platforms and door-to-door devices via the Internet (usually using HTTPS or dedicated management protocols), automatic connectivity to a cloud-side platform after powering the door-to-door equipment, registration and acquisition of configurations, without manual intervention throughout the process. For hotel groups with high data security requirements, private cloud deployment models can also be selected to deploy cloud management platforms to their own data centres or to their own cloud environments, with data under the exclusive control of the group. Private cloud deployment has the advantage of being secure and customized, with the disadvantage that the group itself will need to maintain the cloud platform infrastructure and higher transportation costs. Public cloud deployment has the advantage of having low cost, fast access, no infrastructure maintenance, data storage in third-party cloud service providers, which requires an assessment of data security and compliance risks. Most economic and middle hotel chains choose publicly owned cloud deployments, while high-end hotel groups and brands with higher data security requirements may opt for private or mixed cloud deployments.
Centralize configuration and strategy down
Centralization is the most basic and important function of centralized multi-storey management. The IT administrator at Headquarters can define the WiFi configuration of all shops on cloud management platforms in a uniform manner, including: SSID configuration (wiFi name, encryption method, hidden settings etc.), Portal page configuration (page template, brand Logo, promotional photo, authentication selection, usage terms etc.), authentication strategy configuration (certification mode, certification timeout, session length, waiver setting etc.), bandwidth policy configuration (end-of-bandwidth ceiling per user, application limit stream, peak time period strategy, regional differentiation strategy etc.), security strategy configuration (URL filtering, firewall rules, client end segregation, intrusion detection), VLAN and network configurations (VLAN division, VLAN classification, etc.) IP address planning, DHCP settings, DNS settings, etc... Once configuration definitions are completed, you can send them to all the stores by one key, or choose to send them to specific groups (e.g. by region, brand, sorting) or individual shops. When configuration is done, the door equipment automatically applies new configurations without manual operations on site. The maximum value of a centralized configuration is that it will be performed manually."Brand standardization": All the store names of WiFi, Portal pages, authentication methods, bandwidth strategies are consistent and guests can get the same branding experience when they connect to WiFi in any one of the houses. Meanwhile, whenever configuration changes are needed (e.g. updating of Portal page promotional information, adjusting bandwidth policies, adding new security rules), headquarters only needs to change it once on cloud-end platforms to automatically synchronize all doors, which is extremely efficient. In addition to global configurations, centralized management platforms support."Templates+Variations": The configuration template defined by headquarters contains elements of a uniform brand (e.g. SSID prefix, Portal page frame, security baseline), while the door-to-door variables (e.g. name, address, contact phone, local promotion information) are reserved and each store automatically fills in its corresponding variable values when applying the template. This ensures brand uniformity and allows for a certain individualized space for each store. Configuration version management is also an important feature of the centralized management platform: the historical version of the configuration saved by the platform, where managers can see the configuration change history (who modified what configuration at what time), roll back to the previous version and quickly recover when a configuration problem arises."Grayscale Release"• Modalities: to distribute the new configurations to a small number of pilot shops, observe their identification for a certain period of time before gradually expanding to all stores and avoid large area malfunctions due to configuration errors.
Central surveillance and trouble management
Centralized surveillance is another core function that is centrally managed by multiple shops and allows IT staff at Headquarters to monitor the system's WiFi status in real time on cloud-end management platforms. The monitoring includes: equipment state surveillance (access to each door, AP is online, CPU usage, memory usage, temperature and other operating parameters, solidware versions etc.), network state control (export bandwidth usage, number of online terminals, authentication success rates, network delay, drop-out rates etc.) certification status monitoring (real time requests for authentication, authentication success numbers, certification failure figures, failure distribution of reasons, etc.) end state monitoring (online terminal list, terminal type distribution, system distribution, access AP distribution, etc.) per door shop); alert state monitoring (active warning list for all shops, alert level distribution, alarm processing status, etc.). The monitoring data are presented in visual form on dashboards, top-to-top maps, heat attempts, trend maps, etc., and the administrator can see for itself how WiFi is operating as a brand. When the WiFi system of a door shop fails (e.g. equipment offline, bandwidth overuse, certification success rate drops, APP offline, etc.), the system automatically produces alerts, informing the concerned person by various means: warning centres on cloud platforms, mail alerts, text messages, micro-letters/clining notices from businesses, etc. The alert contains detailed trouble information (screw shop, malfunction equipment, failure type, time of occurrence, possible cause, recommended handling methods etc.) to help the carrier locate and resolve problems quickly.→Alert.→Fault confirmation.→Error Recile→Error repair→Call the police.→The system records the complete process of each failure, forming a database of troubleshooting for subsequent breakdown analysis and prevention."Active": Under the traditional decentralized model, malfunctions are often detected after a complaint from a resident and belong to"Passive response"; under the centralized management mode, the system is able to monitor and automatically warn in real time. Many of the malfunctions are detected and repaired before they affect the occupants."Proactive prevention"This has greatly enhanced the stability of WiFi and the satisfaction of its occupants. For hotel chains, centralized surveillance also helps Headquarters to understand how well the WiFi system is in various shops, focusing on and restructuring frequently malfunctioning doors, learning from experience and promoting well-functioning doors, and continuously upgrading the WiFi performance of the brand as a whole.
Remote transport, maintenance and automation
Remote transport is an important value represented by the centralized management of multi-portals, and IT staff at Headquarters do not need to be present at the gate to operate and maintain the WiFi equipment from the store remotely through cloud management platforms. Common remote transport dimensions include: remote reboot of equipment (relaunching a gateway or AP remotely when the device is dead or abnormal, and in most cases normal), remote configuration modifications (modification of SSID, Portal page, bandwidth strategy, security rules etc., automatic distribution to door shop equipment after modification), remote solidware upgrades (when new solid version of the equipment is available, opt for upgrading at cloud platform, system automatically downloads the solid to door shop equipment and perform upgrades, which allow option for greyscale upgrades)——A few door shops are upgraded to confirm stability before all doors are upgraded to avoid large-scale effects due to upgrade failures, remote diagnostic tools (to provide web diagnostic tools such as Ping, Traceroute, port detection, traffic grab packages and other tools to help handle the network problems remotely), remote log views (to view system logs, authentication logs, security logs, etc. of the door shop equipment, to help locate the causes of trouble), remote configuration back-up and recovery (automated backup store equipment configuration, which can be remotely restored when the equipment is replaced or lost). Automation of the carrier is an advanced stage of remote transport, and the system can automatically perform the service in accordance with predefined rules and reduce manual intervention. Common automated transport dimensions include automatic self-repair (when equipment is detected to die or network abnormality, the automatic reboot of equipment or switch to a back-up link can be automatically restored without manual intervention), auto-syncing (when headquarters changes configurations are made automatically synchronized to all shops without manual shop-to-shop operation), auto-solidware upgrades (in predefined time windows (e.g. early morning peaks) automatically serve as equipment upgrade solids without compromising normal daytime use), auto-performance optimization (automatedly adjust bandwidth strategies and Qos rules to live network performance), automatic reporting generation (regular automatic production of WiFi operations reports). Remote transport of the peacekeeping automated lifts to the relevant managers. The WiFi carriers costs for the hotel chain are significantly reduced: under the traditional model, one IT staff member may only maintain a dozen store-based WiFi systems; under the centralized management mode, one IT staff member can maintain hundreds of store-based WiFi systems through cloud-end platforms with several times more efficiency gains. Meanwhile, remote transport services reduce the number of in-home service and lower travel costs and third party service costs. For the staff of the gate, they do not need to master sophisticated network technology; when they encounter WiFi problems, they simply need to contact IT support at Headquarters; and when IT personnel work remotely, most of them can be solved, with a significant reduction in the workload of the shop staff.
Centralized data analysis and operational insight
Another important value that is centrally managed by multiple shops is centralized data analysis. All the store ' s WiFi operating data (certification data, access data, traffic data, terminal data etc.) are stored centrally in cloud-end management platforms, where Headquarters can perform deep cross-door and time-dimensional analyses of these data to gain valuable operational insight. The data analysis includes: a comprehensive business overview, total number of branded doors, number of online stores, total on-line terminals, total certifications, total flow usage, average authentication success rates, average bandwidth usage rates, etc. real-time displays and trend analyses of key indicators; The second is a comparative analysis of the use of WiFi by the respective shops (number of online terminals, number of authentications, traffic usage, bandwidth usage, certification success rates, etc.), identifying high usage and low utilization rates, analysing the reasons for this; the third is a time trend analysis, with time distribution of WiFi usage (by hours, days, weeks, months) and identification of peak and valley periods, analysing seasonal trends (e.g. holiday holidays, tourist season usage changes); Fourth, end-of-life analysis, with user type distribution (cell phone, notebook, tablet, other), operating system distribution (iOS, Android, Windows, Marcos etc.), browser distribution, average online time and so on, understanding the usage habits of the occupants ' equipment; fifth, application analysis, application type distribution for the users (video, socialization, web page, downloading, games, office etc.), flow ratio of applications, hot-gate application platoons, etc., and understanding the users ' Internet preferences; The sixth is the authentication analysis, which assesses the legitimacy and user experience of certification methods by using various types of certification (cell numbers, micro-mails, home numbers, etc.), their success rate, distribution of causes for certification failure, average duration of certification, etc.; the seventh is a regional analysis, comparing usage with regions (e.g., East China, South China, North China, etc.) or with municipalities ' WiFi use, analysing geographical differences; and the eighth is brand/end line analysis, which provides a basis for comparative analysis of variations in WiFi usage across brands/tails if there are multiple brands or different classes of hotels under the corporate flag. These data analyses can be presented through dashboards, statements, visualization charts and other means to help group management and the operating team understand the overall state of WiFi operations, identify problems and opportunities, and make data-driven decisions. For example, if the analysis reveals a persistent high average bandwidth usage in a region, it suggests that the region may not have enough bandwidth and needs to consider expansion; if the analysis shows that the use of WiFi by the micro-letter company is much higher than the mobile phone authentication, which explains the relative preference of the host for micro-credit certification, one could consider optimizing the experience of micro-blogging certification; If the data analysis shows that WiFi is used significantly more than on working days on weekends and holidays, it suggests that hotel guests are mostly on tourist vacations and can be targeted to optimize WiFi services related to leisure. The central data analysis also allows for a deeper cross-analysis of such data as differences in WiFi use at different membership levels, preferences for Internet access among different house-based customers, and how WiFi usage is associated with individual rates, which supports accurate marketing and personalization services in hotels.
The hotel WiFi certification system is centralized and is a key capability of the hotel chain group to achieve the scale, standardization and efficiency of WiFi."Cloud management platform plus thin door"The structure will allow central configuration, centralized monitoring, remote transport, centralized analysis and implementation of the WiFi system at all shops"One platform runs the country's door."Centralization ensures consistency in branding, centralizes the implementation of proactive peacekeeping rapid-debate responses, automates remote-transporting peacekeeping significantly reduces the cost of carrying out a wi-vitage and provides data support for operational decision-making. For hotel chains, selecting a WiFi certification system with strong multi-door centralized management capabilities not only reduces IT operating costs, enhances transport efficiency, and is more able to harmonize branding experiences, safeguard service quality, tap data values, and provides solid technical support for group scalability expansion and digital operations.