Snap Box – Stampede Network Application

Today we are launching our “Snap box”, a remotely managed device to provide the best in class captive portal solution. Using the latest standards outlined by Apple and Google utilizing the DCHP option 114 which enforced captive portal compliance and experience.

The Why

Running a captive portal is a must-have for all physical businesses, why? because it will deliver up to 75% of your guest traffic.

Not only this but it also provides a seriously rich dataset which tells you how long someone is in your venue, when they arrived and when they leave.

If you are running a hotel it can also tell you which room a guest is staying in…

So if 75% of your business comes from this data source, why does it still feel like almost all captive portals still SUCK, and why does it feel like that’s getting worse?

Guest Wi-Fi can be so powerful there are now umpteen companies out there who will do you a deal on a captive portal solution. The issue here is building a decent captive portal is really hard – In 2021 I wrote a love letter to building the worlds best captive portal – read here.

Captive portals have a superpower but it comes with a weak point. They give any operator the ability to track any customer within 6m of the device, but this has opened up quite a serious privacy issue.

While most operators make little use of this it is entirely possible. The main reason people can’t utilize it is that this stream of data (by design) is not connected to anything else in a business. It might get exported/imported into other systems on mass but you couldn’t use the data to say “…as soon as someone leaves the building ping them a message.”

The barrier to entry for selling captive portals is very low (given the market, supply of engineers and increasing demand). But the barrier to entry for desired user experience is very high, and has gotten higher. And because of Apple / Google’s privacy concerns, they have begun locking down the triggering of these pop-up screens. Which in the worst case will leave your guests with a broken-looking screen…

Enter Apple

Apple has decided to do its thing and enforce operating system changes to help alleviate the privacy and experience concerns.

Apple released this spec entitled “How to modernize your captive network” back in 2020! Ages ago, right? Welcome to innovation in this space. Later in the year, this proposal was picked up by the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) – read more. It was then implemented in the Release of Android 11

This solution is truly the hallmark of Apple. It can control when the popup should be seen, and how long the guest’s session should last and also has the ability to show the guest how much bandwidth they are allowed to consume – cool right?

Woohoo! A captive portal solution that is bulletproof, privacy first and guest experience-centric.

The Implementation Problem

The issue with the approach outlined by Apple is that it requires a robust network setup, including on-premise infrastructure. In practice, this means you will need.

• Custom domains
• DDNS support
• Localized SSL certificates
• A HTTP Server and web proxy
• Content caching
• DHCP with support Option 114

Apple wants the network owners i.e. hospitality operators to own the networking stack for this new standard to work.

The problem faced now is that very few operators will have the correct equipment on site to support these changes or few will.

And in true Apple fashion, it looks to be mandating this in a future release of iOS.

Your captive portals will ultimately become unstable when this happens, and you may have already noticed an increase in customer complaints and downtime as a result.

Oh, Snap!

This month, we have launched a hardware line called Snap which solves this problem.

This line of hardware can be remotely provisioned in your Stampede dashboard. Out of the box it will ship with all the features needed to run a best in class experience and adhere to Apple’s beautiful captive portal solution.

For guests, this will mean we can serve much richer content (like videos) and deliver zero-second latency performance to local devices.

As we have been providing more functionality “on the floor” it has become obvious we need tighter control of what’s happening in the building. This device will automatically have its functionality extended over time to support a next-generation digital hospitality experience.

Imagine using a table booking system like Stampede that was accessing its information via a Snap box and then relaying that onto an iPad at the front-of-house. Or running promotions in real time to guests who were connected to the Wi-Fi… under the hood this device can be programmed/re-programmed to bring any Stampede service closer to the customer.

To recap, it has built-in redundancy, lower operating costs and performance that’d make your eyes POP. And I really mean that – when you experience response times measured in sub (ms) the guest experience is magic.

The Snap box is a powerhouse, it packs as much power as a desktop PC. Its job? To provide the best possible guest experience with no compromises and no cowboy funny business.

It is future-proofed and will end up being the central hub for all serious hospitality operators.

We are building up a network of Stampede Snap installation partners across the UK who will be able to perfectly implement this solution, with recruitment beginning in Mid-August.