This is an old revision of the document!

Throttling and Blocking Users

Introduction

• In February 2023 we introduced an enhancement to MESHdesk and APdesk that allows you to throttle or block selected WiFi clients.
• Sometimes the need arise to block a specified user on the WiFi network without disrupting the other users who are also connected. With this enhancement it can be done in a snap.
• With capped LTE products there is a risk of using 'to much' data when using streaming services like YouTube. A few mouse clicks allow you to put a speed limit on WiFi clients in order to quickly and effectively reduce their data consumption.

Blocking Junior's friend

• Nothing like a real life example.
• So Junior's friend came over and they were going to do some gaming.
• Junior's friend is a nice guy but the laptop he came with looks a bit dodgy.
• Soon after he connects to the WiFi the other siblings started with the Daddy the WiFi is broken drill.

• Now we can try our new feature out to block the chap.
• We go to MESHdesk; select our mesh network and click the view icon.

• Note that the top user is a MAC Address we have not yet give a name to. We can safely assume it must be the dodgy laptop.
• Click on the Pencil Icon in the heading bar of Top 10 Devices to pop-up the Alias for MAC Address window.

• After you created the alias for the device; click on Block Device (far right icon) in the heading bar to pop up the Block MAC Address window.
• Since our suspicion about the laptop seems to be valid we will go to the extreme and add a Cloud Wide block.

• Note we will have a visual indication of the devices that are throttled or blocked.