Serving Up Secure Networking for Café Customers

Zyxel_May · May 7

Stables Speciality Coffee Co.

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“Being a business owner, my focus was about building the whole shop – getting up and painting and making coffees. Not being very technical, that support I had from Zyxel Networks in setting the network up, took the things I don't need to worry about, or know anything about, off my hands and it just made the whole process really, really easy.ˮ

Paul Scarrott, Co-owner
Stables Speciality Coffee Co.

Overview

Stables Speciality Coffee Co. had just opened and had lots of customers who came to the café to work remotely. The café set up some charging points so laptops could be used as required, but the available WiFi wasn't secure. They wanted to keep the coffee shop WiFi and guest WiFi independent from each other, and Zyxel Networks helped them achieve this.

Challenges

From a customer's perspective, there's nothing worse than when you go to a location and can't get good WiFi, so it was really important to the café owners that this was installed.

"I needed help with the internet because I'm a dinosaur. I really have little experience with IT, I can do the basics but that's about it. My expertise is on the coffee machine and I just needed to have somebody come in and take it off my hands so that I didn't have to do anything," said Paul Scarrott, Co-owner, Stables Speciality Coffee Co.

Solutions

As entrepreneurs come into the market, their expertise is in what they're doing rather than IT. Zyxel Networks EMEA Wireless Market Development Manager Hugh Simpson said: "The IT setup for a standard café can vary depending upon the size, but generally holds a router, maybe a small switch, and then a number of access points, depending upon where needs coverage."

As good WiFi coverage was essential for the café, a WiFi 6 access point was installed, supported by a PoE switch. The Connect & Protect (CNP) feature was utilized to keep the WiFi secure, and it was all made accessible through the Nebula cloud management platform.

Results

This solution has been a great success for the café, providing good, secure WiFi coverage for both customers and the business. It has allowed café devices to be connected at the same time as guests, while securely isolating them so that one cannot see the other.

CNP allows the owner to know that their network is looking at different malicious attacks and is secure - these functionalities are provided within the access point.

It provides a level of security to both the café and the customers without any invasive process. It also gives the owner the ability to understand application usage on the network, so if any issues are experienced going forward, the application layer could be easily blocked.

Nebula made the whole installation quick and easy, and because it's cloud-managed, it meant that any tweaking of the system could be done remotely.

Paul said: "Nebula gives me full control of the system. The great thing about it is I can log in from anywhere in the world and control it from there."

Most importantly, the user-friendly interface allows ease of management, without needing to be an IT expert.

Products used

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