Chromecast personalization in hotel room

SOLVED
ozgurguler
Meraki Employee
Meraki Employee

Chromecast personalization in hotel room

Hi

 

We are positioning MR30H in every hotel room and we want hotel guest to be able to connect only its room's AP. For now it is ok. 

However we also want hotel guests to be able to connect only the Chromecasts in their room, not the other Chromecasts. How can i configure this?

Thanks

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION
jdsilva
Kind of a big deal




@ozgurguler wrote:

Hi

 

We are positioning MR30H in every hotel room and we want hotel guest to be able to connect only its room's AP. For now it is ok. 

However we also want hotel guests to be able to connect only the Chromecasts in their room, not the other Chromecasts. How can i configure this?

Thanks


 

This has been my own personal hell for the last six months. What you are asking is not trivial and requires a lot of moving parts. 

 

Given that Chromecasts use mDNS to advertise their services to client devices, and you don't want guests to "see" or cast content to every CC in a hotel you're pretty much forced into a one VLAN per room model. You could stand up one SSID per room, but besides being just plain stupid you can't configure that many SSID's in a single network in the Dashboard. You could go with multiple networks, but that's even stupider 😉

 

With one VLAN per room, and ideally one SSID, you need a way to get clients authenticated and into their room's VLAN. Welcome to RADIUS authentication with dynamic VLAN assignment.  While we're talking about authentication... What are you authenticating? You can't do dynamic VLAN assignment with PSK, so you're doing either MAC based or 802.1x (You need a RADIUS response that contains the VLAN id). Ideally I would think you'd want something like lastname and room number... But how do you get that info to authenticate against? It's all in the PMS for the hotel... 

 

If there's ever a howling pit of despair in the IT world, it's deep inside hotel Property Management Systems. I wish you luck here my friend if you wish to go after pulling info out of this massive black hole of torment. 

 

And there's A LOT more things to consider here as well. I've only just scratched the surface. Perhaps I've given you a couple ideas that you can use to stand up something simple enough to get you going, but more likely I've just complicated things and not helped you in any way. I apologize for that. As I started with, what you're asking isn't easy to do at all. You're better off finding a vendor who does just this as their core business. They exist out there, and getting them to do this for you will make your life a lot easier.

 

🙂

View solution in original post

5 REPLIES 5
ww
Kind of a big deal
Kind of a big deal

i don't know what your setup is like.

but chromecast is by default limited to the vlan that its in. so maybe you can config every room with a different vlan.

cta102
Building a reputation

What mode are you running in as NAT mode immediately rules out connectivity to the Chromecast unless you have a wired connection for the Chromecast (and permit the guest clients to connect to LAN resources) and then you will run into the multicast problem.

 

You will also have issues with forcing clients to only ever connect to the AP in that specific room unless you are going to insist upon a wired connection?

Unless you use a multicast reflector (Ahahi for example) you are tied to having both devices on the same VLAN (as mentioned earlier in the thread) even if you use a ethernet connected Chromecast you will leave you with the same problem.


It's an awkward one as Chromecasts would be great due to the low cost and working across multiple platforms.

 


Chromecasts do use ultrasonic pairing to permit connectivity in Guest mode (hence the PIN on the idle screens) which may provide a way forward.

jdsilva
Kind of a big deal




@ozgurguler wrote:

Hi

 

We are positioning MR30H in every hotel room and we want hotel guest to be able to connect only its room's AP. For now it is ok. 

However we also want hotel guests to be able to connect only the Chromecasts in their room, not the other Chromecasts. How can i configure this?

Thanks


 

This has been my own personal hell for the last six months. What you are asking is not trivial and requires a lot of moving parts. 

 

Given that Chromecasts use mDNS to advertise their services to client devices, and you don't want guests to "see" or cast content to every CC in a hotel you're pretty much forced into a one VLAN per room model. You could stand up one SSID per room, but besides being just plain stupid you can't configure that many SSID's in a single network in the Dashboard. You could go with multiple networks, but that's even stupider 😉

 

With one VLAN per room, and ideally one SSID, you need a way to get clients authenticated and into their room's VLAN. Welcome to RADIUS authentication with dynamic VLAN assignment.  While we're talking about authentication... What are you authenticating? You can't do dynamic VLAN assignment with PSK, so you're doing either MAC based or 802.1x (You need a RADIUS response that contains the VLAN id). Ideally I would think you'd want something like lastname and room number... But how do you get that info to authenticate against? It's all in the PMS for the hotel... 

 

If there's ever a howling pit of despair in the IT world, it's deep inside hotel Property Management Systems. I wish you luck here my friend if you wish to go after pulling info out of this massive black hole of torment. 

 

And there's A LOT more things to consider here as well. I've only just scratched the surface. Perhaps I've given you a couple ideas that you can use to stand up something simple enough to get you going, but more likely I've just complicated things and not helped you in any way. I apologize for that. As I started with, what you're asking isn't easy to do at all. You're better off finding a vendor who does just this as their core business. They exist out there, and getting them to do this for you will make your life a lot easier.

 

🙂


@jdsilva wrote:



Given that Chromecasts use mDNS to advertise their services to client devices, and you don't want guests to "see" or cast content to every CC in a hotel you're pretty much forced into a one VLAN per room model. You could stand up one SSID per room, but besides being just plain stupid you can't configure that many SSID's in a single network in the Dashboard. You could go with multiple networks, but that's even stupider 😉

 

With one VLAN per room, and ideally one SSID, you need a way to get clients authenticated and into their room's VLAN. Welcome to RADIUS authentication with dynamic VLAN assignment.  While we're talking about authentication... What are you authenticating? You can't do dynamic VLAN assignment with PSK, so you're doing either MAC based or 802.1x (You need a RADIUS response that contains the VLAN id). Ideally I would think you'd want something like lastname and room number... But how do you get that info to authenticate against? It's all in the PMS for the hotel... 

 


@jdsilva  Out of curiosity, have you had any luck on this front via the following?

 

I'm assuming their is going to be a limit on this feature no?

 

23232323.JPG

Nolan Herring | nolanwifi.com
TwitterLinkedIn

@NolanHerring You don't need to configure any of that if you return a VLAN via RADIUS. The AP receives the attribute, assigns the VLAN to the client, and Bob's your uncle.

 

https://documentation.meraki.com/MR/Client_Addressing_and_Bridging/Tagging_Client_VLANs_with_RADIUS_...

 

Or, you can return a GP name, and assign the VLAN through the GP:

 

https://documentation.meraki.com/MR/Group_Policies_and_Blacklisting/Using_RADIUS_Attributes_to_Apply...

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