Wi-Fi is now something prospective residents ask about before they even see the room. For a boarding house owner it has shifted from a bonus to a basic requirement, and become the most frequent source of complaints.
And those complaints are rarely about signal. What happens most often: one resident downloads heavily, and the whole building feels the internet is broken.
Estimating what you need
Two numbers decide it: the number of rooms, and how many are active simultaneously at peak, usually between eight and eleven at night.
| Rooms | Sensible subscription | Access points |
|---|---|---|
| Up to 8 | 50 Mbps | 1–2 |
| 8–15 | 100 Mbps | 2–3 |
| 15–30 | 150–200 Mbps | 3–5 |
| More than 30 | Consider a business subscription | 5 or more |
These figures assume general use: social media, messaging, occasional video. If many residents work or study online with video meetings all day, move up a tier.
Don't rely on one router for the whole building. Brick and concrete walls between rooms attenuate signal far more than people expect. One access point per floor, placed in the corridor, almost always beats one large router in the front room. The reasoning is in the guide to router placement.
Per-device limiting is the key
If you only do one thing, do this one.
Without per-device speed limits, capacity is divided by whoever asks for the most. One person downloading a large file can take most of it, and other residents experience that as the internet suddenly dying.
With a per-device ceiling, say 10 Mbps on a 100 Mbps subscription for ten rooms, no single device can dominate the line. Interestingly, most residents won't notice a difference, because everyday use rarely touches that ceiling.
The menu to look for is usually called QoS, Bandwidth Control, or Rate Limit, depending on the brand.
Managing access
Three approaches, from simplest:
- One shared password. Easiest and cheapest, but the password leaves with residents who move out. It needs periodic changing, how to do it is in the guide to changing your Wi-Fi password.
- A portal with per-room accounts. Each room has its own account that can be disabled when the resident leaves. Tidier, and gives you a picture of usage per room.
- A separate network per floor. Makes troubleshooting easier and confines the impact of a problem to one floor.
Separating residents from each other
This part is almost always overlooked, and it matters.
By default, every device on one network can see the others. That means the laptop in room three could potentially reach files accidentally shared from the laptop in room seven.
Enable client isolation, sometimes called AP Isolation or Client Isolation. Each device can then only reach the internet, not other devices. The principle is the same as in the guide to separating a guest network.
Your own operational network, security cameras, the management computer, should sit on a network genuinely separate from residents.
Cost picture
| Item | Range | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Internet subscription | Rp 300k – 1m/month | Depends on room count |
| Router with QoS | Rp 800k – 2.5m | One-off |
| Access point per floor | Rp 700k – 1.5m | Per unit |
| Cable and installation | Rp 1m – 3m | Depends on routing |
For a ten-room boarding house, initial cost is generally between four and seven million rupiah. The line items most often left out of estimates are covered in the guide to guest Wi-Fi costs for businesses.
Avoiding disputes
The resident’s side of this, what can reasonably be expected when Wi-Fi is promised as a facility, is in the guide to internet in rented homes.
Three things prevent most disagreements, and are best stated in the tenancy agreement:
- State that the internet is shared, not a guaranteed speed per room. This avoids demands you can't meet.
- State the per-device speed limit openly. Residents who know the limit from the start rarely dispute it.
- Explain that provider outages are outside your control, and that resolution times follow the provider.
If complaints persist, first check whether capacity is genuinely the cause. Often it isn't, and the order of checks is in the guide to fixing slow Wi-Fi.
One last note: if you charge for internet separately from rent, there are legal considerations worth knowing. They're discussed in the RT RW net guide.
Frequently asked questions
What subscription speed suits a ten-room boarding house?
For general use, estimate 5 to 10 Mbps per active room. Since not every room is active at once, a 50 to 100 Mbps subscription is usually adequate for ten rooms. What matters more is per-room limiting, not the size of the plan.
Is one shared Wi-Fi or one per room better?
One shared network with per-device limits is far easier to manage and cheaper. One router per room only makes sense if residents pay separately and demand a guaranteed individual speed.
Should I change the password every time a resident moves in?
Ideally yes, but it's a nuisance. More practical is a portal with per-room accounts, or at least scheduling a password change every few months, timed with resident turnover.
What if one resident uses excessively?
Limiting speed per device works better than blocking. With a ceiling, one person's large download no longer consumes shared capacity, and nobody feels singled out.
