Underlaying reasons for guest network

[martwetzels]

During the first few days after installing the Nuki Pro 3.0, I noticed a rapid drain of the battery. After having contacted support, I was forwarded to the guest wifi solution (https://support.nuki.io/hc/en-us/articles/4409551823249-How-do-I-connect-my-Smart-Lock-to-a-guest-network-). When asking for the underlaying reason for the solution, I was referred here.

A bit of context, I’m running a Unifi setup and I see a great improvement when moving the Nuki to our IoT VLAN (not the guest network). I assumed the intention of the guest network solution is to isolate the client but I would like to know what type of traffic keeps the Nuki draining battery faster? I suppose there are better, perhaps more advanced, solutions for mitigating the ‘traffic issue’ for draining the battery than the ‘go-to’ guest network one.

[Juergen (Jürgen Pansy)]

The underlying reason is that the Smart Lock 3.0 Pro needs to save battery as much as possible. Having the radio on is a major power drain, therefore it tries to reduce the airtime as much as possible. The more traffic there is on a network (esp. broadcasts), the more the Smart Lock needs to have the radio on. Most of the time the traffic is received and immediately trashed.

Guest networks usually use client isolation and therefore a very calm from a Smart Locks perspective. They carry very little useless traffic, lead to a much less airtime and longer battery life.

You can see how much “useless” traffic your Wi-Fi carries, if you click 7x on the “Network” Label on the Built-in Wi-Fi screen a “Wi-Fi quality” score will be displayed. The ideal value is 2-3 (packets per minute). The higher the score, the more useless packets are received.

If you are on a unifi network your are lucky because you can tweak the network very nicely. Below are the ideal settings for it. They work perfectly for the Smart Lock, reduce latency and power consumption, but you need to check if all your other iOT devices continue to work:

[martwetzels]

Thanks for the explanation. I will modify the settings for our iot network. Currently the score is on 3 (in the dedicated network) but any additional improvement is welcome.