One box per branch, one view from head office

Two needs of a chain

A multi-site business wants two things from guest Wi-Fi. First, each branch running on its own: the internet line is the branch's, the guests are the branch's, the records are the branch's. Second, seeing all of them from head office at a glance: which branch is offline, which one is low on SMS credit, which one has pending timestamps.

Our design meets these two needs in separate layers: one box per branch, a customer portal at the centre.

Why one box per branch?

Law 5651 records are internal IP allocation records: which device took which internal IP and when. That record is local by nature; it is created on the branch's own network. Having the box at the branch is therefore not an architectural preference but a consequence of what the record is.

There are practical advantages too:

• Existing infrastructure stays. The box sits behind the branch's modem, switch and APs; it does not replace the modem and needs no extra licences on existing devices.
• No static IP needed. Connections go outward from the box, so it works behind CGNAT. Even a branch on a 4.5G backup line is fine.
• The branch is independent. If head office loses its line, the branch's portal and logging keep running.
• Records stay at the branch. They do not go to a cloud, abroad or to us. Each branch verifies and exports its own archive from the panel.

Businesses with their own data centre can run the same software as a Virtual Appliance at some sites instead of a box; the architecture does not change.

What head office sees

Each box connects to the customer portal on hotspot-box.com by itself and reports its status. On one central screen you see:

• Devices and licences: Which box is at which branch and the licence status of each.
• Health: Offline boxes, disk usage, timestamp service status, pending-day count, NTP drift.
• SMS credit: Remaining credit per box, with an alarm below 100.

Alarms arrive by e-mail, Telegram or webhook; you can route them to a regional manager as well as central IT.

What head office does not see is just as clear: guest data. The telemetry a box sends to the platform carries no guest phone number, MAC address or session record. The platform never sees SMS content either; the box sends the SMS straight to the provider, and the platform only hands out API credentials and counts credits. Head office sees the health of the records, not their content.

Does a guest verified at branch A need a new code at branch B?

Yes. It is the most common question, and the answer is by design.

• Records are per box. Branch A's box knows nothing about branch B's guest list.
• Device memory is per box too. A phone remembered for 7 days at A is a new device to B's box.

Why? Because the alternative means sharing guest phone numbers and MAC lists between branches, which means data leaving the branch. Keeping data where it is created fits the data-minimisation approach of the Turkish data protection law (KVKK) and is technically simpler. The cost to the guest is small: one more SMS code at another branch.

Businesses that see the same guests often across many sites (a café chain, say) can consider registered-user or voucher logins, but records are still kept separately at each branch.

Planning SMS credit per branch

Credit is tracked per box; plan it per branch too.

Monthly SMS ≈ new guests per day × days open

"New" is the key word: a guest returning within the memory window does not get another code. Memory differs by branch type:

Branch type	Suggested plan	Memory	SMS tendency
Café / restaurant	Standard (10/5, 2 h, 2 devices)	Short	High; new guests every day
Shop	Standard	Short	Medium
Office / business-centre floor	Staff-guest (20/10, 10 h, 3 devices)	30 days	Low; the same people
Hotel / serviced apartment	Long stay (15/5, 24 h, 3 devices)	7 days	Very low with vouchers

Three practical rules:

1. Big pack for the busy branch. Credit packs come in 1,000 / 2,000 / 10,000; a branch with 40 new guests a day uses roughly 1,200 SMS a month, so a 10,000 pack lasts a long time. For a branch with 5 guests a day, a 1,000 pack fits.
2. Take the alarm threshold seriously. Below 100 credits an alarm fires; that leaves time to buy a new pack. If credit runs out, guests cannot sign in.
3. If you have your own provider account, every box can use the same account and you get one bill from the provider. At branches with many foreign guests, set a separate provider for foreign numbers.

At event and accommodation sites, lead with vouchers; the SMS line shrinks.

Multi-site checklist

• Work out line capacity and AP count for each branch separately; do not apply a head-office formula.
• Separate the guest network with a VLAN at every branch and enable client isolation on the APs.
• Choose the plan template by branch type; do not force one plan everywhere.
• Copy each box's archive over SFTP/FTPS to a server at head office. The copy is signed and verifiable with openssl ts -verify. This is head office storing the archive file, not reading the record content.
• Set alarm recipients as the branch manager plus head office.
• Separate panel accounts by role: the branch manager sees their own box, central IT watches health.

Contact us to plan with your branch count in hand, and see Box + Software for the hardware options.