Guest WiFi Time and Speed Limits, Explained
One guest with a laptop open for six hours and one guest running a large upload are two different problems. Time limits solve one. Speed limits solve the other.
Ask most cafe or co-working owners what their guest WiFi limits are and the honest answer is usually “there aren’t any.” Whatever speed the plan provides gets split, unofficially, among however many people happen to be connected at once, with no time limit, no per-guest speed limit, and no daily cap. That works fine with ten guests. It stops working the moment one person parks a laptop for a full workday, or one big download slows things down for everyone else, and by then there’s no setting to reach for, because none was ever set up.
Access Rules is that setting, and it’s actually two separate things, not one, because “one guest using too much speed” and “one guest sitting there for six hours” are different problems with different fixes.
Speed & Devices: the speed problem
The first half of Guest WiFi Limits is Speed & Devices: a speed limit per guest, and a limit on how many devices any one guest can connect at once. The speed options run from 10 Mbps up to 80 Mbps, or unlimited, chosen per location to match what that location’s plan can actually support. A cafe on a modest connection setting a real per-guest limit means one person running a large upload doesn’t quietly use up most of the available speed while everyone else’s video calls stutter for no obvious reason.
The device limit matters just as much and gets overlooked more often. Without one, a guest connecting a phone, a laptop, and a tablet under the same login triples their share of the network. A device limit, from one device up to five, or unlimited, closes that gap directly: the speed limit applies per guest, not per device, so connecting extra devices under one login doesn’t quietly get around it.
Time Limits: the “how long” problem
The second half is Time Limits, and it answers a different question: not how much speed someone gets, but how long they keep their spot. A session time limit, anywhere from 30 minutes to 24 hours, decides how long a login stays valid before a guest has to reconnect. A separate idle limit can disconnect a guest who’s connected but not actually doing anything, from 5 minutes up to an hour, or left with no limit at all if that’s not a concern for the location. And a daily cap, if you want one, sets a maximum total connected time per guest per day, from one hour up to eight, or no limit at all.
These settings don’t touch speed at all. A location can run a generous speed limit and still enforce a short time limit, or the other way around, because the two are completely independent. A co-working space might want long sessions and a real speed limit; a cafe with limited seating might want a stricter time limit, so the WiFi doesn’t quietly become a reason someone occupies a table for six hours after finishing their coffee.
Set once per location, applied to every guest the same way
Both halves of Access Rules are set once per location, not once per guest, so every guest who logs in there gets the same real limit, instead of whatever’s left over after everyone already connected split it informally. That consistency is the actual point: nobody has to notice a problem and step in, because the limit was already set before the problem could even start.
Choosing numbers that match your actual location
None of these settings have one universally correct value: a 10 Mbps limit that’s generous for a small cafe would frustrate a co-working space full of people on video calls all day, and an 8-hour daily cap that’s reasonable for a members’ space would be pointless for a restaurant where the average visit is 45 minutes. The right numbers come from how the location is actually used: how many guests connect at once, what your plan can realistically support, and how long a typical visit actually runs. Set the limits too strict, and you get complaints that “the WiFi doesn’t work.” Set them too loose, and you never actually solved the problem you set out to solve.
The honest way to think about these settings: they aren’t really about being strict with guests. They’re about making sure the network behaves predictably for everyone connected, instead of quietly getting worse for whoever happens to be unlucky enough to be online when one person’s laptop, or one person’s six-hour visit, takes more than its share.
