1

I know this is gonna start a debacle but what the heck.

we have a hundred employees, we don’t have good middle management and a lot of our employees slack off big time. upper management is working on this problem.

IT last year installed a good firewall and blocked off a lot of online crap, and employees are not allowed to bring personal devices (laptops, ipads) to work… So the only escape is cell phones. and cell phone usage has gone up quite a bit since.

so naturally now a lot of employees are asking for access to the guest wifi network to get wifi on their cellphones. they keep trying to come up with fake excuses of why they “need” it and its becoming tiresome.

My view is give them all access to the guest wifi… the real problem is that they are not supervised properly. My supervisors’ view (and probably the better view in this situation) is that we know they are not supervised properly so at least lets not make it easier for them to slack off… so no wifi.

what is your view or your company’s policy?

23 Spice ups
2

We have considered it, only problem we run into is if we do it we will hook up the router to the DMZ but it would only work for us at our main branch, everywhere else wouldn’t be able to do the same so we haven’t done it since it will start an argument.

3

We let em on the guest network. What I want to do is add a pay portal linked to a company PP account for the guest NW so they have to pay the company for the privilege of slacking off and thus it evens out for the company :smiley:

15 Spice ups
4

I tried, failed, never looked back…there are just too many people in power that want the same slacking abilities as everyone else so I can’t block crap.

Netflix, Facebook, Hulu, etc… = all wide open access here and people are not discouraged from using our wireless for their personal stuff. Hell, we had to open a whole new subnet just to support the amount of devices people were bringing in here.

I tried to explain the ugly side of this…(refer to first sentence above).

2 Spice ups
5

Guest WiFi access for the staff is acceptable… if you have someway to monitor and report on their usage. OpenDNS is a really simple and easy way to handle this. You can use it to block and restrict their usage as well as monitor what they are doing on it. Alternatively, you could, with decent access point support, setup a staff only WLAN that can be locked down and monitored.

2 Spice ups
6

We do not have wifi where I work. So if you bring in a personal device, you’d better have 3G/4G or you will not get data at all!

7

We have an admin network and a guest network for visitors which need to have an access code to get online i.e visitors try to access it and a web page will pop-up asking for a code

No access to company wifi for any employees. Only management are given access. MAC filtering is in place.

8

Give me a good reason why they need access to WIFI from their personal device…

We dont have WiFi here because of that reason.

9

We have a guest network, but we don’t let our employees on it without exec approval. It’s only for guests. If they decide to use their phones, ipads, kindles, whatever… they can do it on their own bandwidth.

1 Spice up
10

if i’m gonna lock it down and monitor it just like the PCs then they don’t want that and i don’t want that… If i am to give them guest wifi, it will have to let them get to facebook instagram etc… and i don’t want one more thing to monitor… so its all or nothing!

1 Spice up
11

Why give another avenue to slack off? You said its a major problem.

2 Spice ups
12

Oh Lord why would we give them a greater ability to slack off? If you allow them to use their phones let them do it on their data plans…

1 Spice up
13

and employees are not allowed to bring personal devices (laptops, ipads) to work

My view is give them all access to the guest wifi

I think you contradict yourself here. If the employees are not allowed their personal devices, wouldn’t that include the phones as well? People are asking you to grant them access to the guest wifi and violate your company’s policy.

I think your company needs to clearly define its policy – either ban personal devices or not.

As far as us, we don’t have a policy at all. I have granted people access. The company is small enough (<50 employees) to manage all the BYOD traffic.

2 Spice ups
14

This is a policy question. You need to discuss this with Upper management to see how they feel about this. If they say let them eat cake, then let them eat cake. if they tell you to not allow it unless they approve it, then you tell them exactly where to go for approval.

2 Spice ups
15

Our employees have access to the guest WiFi, and I have bandwidth restrictions set.

This would be a good time for you or your supervisor to check in with upper management, and get their take on things. You can provide both viewpoints and see if they have any thoughts on the matter. First, it will show that you’re really trying to look out for the company’s best interests. And second, when somebody complains about the final decision (and you know someone will, no matter which way the decision goes) you can simply say that you have upper management support in the matter, and the complainer can escalate further complaints to their supervisor/manager, and so on up the food chain.

This way, you get management support and you CYA.

3 Spice ups
16

We… sometimes let them on. Originally our US Admin Planned to change the password every 2 months or so… we’ve been on the second password for… um… 2 years now?

I kind of agree that the issue isn’t the blocked websites or the wifi access it is with the staff. I mean I do my work, and send some time on Spiceworks, and all that. If I’m on my cell phone and not responding to help desk requests someone should give me a talking to…

Though I do feel some sites should get blocked if for no other reason than they can infect the company computers… or the just plain suck. :slight_smile:

17

This is the short version

The long version:

Officially you are more than welcome to bring your own device if you’re willing to let the IT department wipe it, format it as if it were a company device, and prevent you from doing anything fun on it.

Nobody has ever wanted to do this…

Realistically, when people ask, mention that it must go through a member of upper management (e.g. COO) and that they would need to discuss the matter with their immediate supervisor who will then discuss it with IT and Upper management.

People aren’t going to tell their supervisor they want to look a facebook if it means the COO will need to know.

Problem instantly solved. It also permits legitimate use in the rare case that hell freezes over.

2 Spice ups
18

There is really no reason for anyone to have the use of there cell phone except at break or lunch. We don’t even allow them in the work areas. They have to leave them in there lockers. Personal calls are not allowed and they need no access to personal email. They are at work they need to be working. This is from our corporate policy

19

Let them on it, but throttle it down to under 3G speed. Let them ALL on it…

2 Spice ups
20

You’re too kind, the BOFH handbook states that all 100 employees should be sharing a does some quick math 2400 baud connection.

4 Spice ups