Can a hostel make hostel Wi-Fi the only network students can use?

Hostels often want one controlled network for two reasons: cost and control. If every student is on the hostel Wi-Fi, then the network itself can be monitored, throttled and limited at night. Skie helps in two ways.

First, you can store the hostel Wi-Fi as an encrypted profile, so devices join it without anyone typing the password. The password is never shown back to staff or students. When it changes, update the profile once. Second, locking Wi-Fi settings, which is optional, stops students from joining other networks or editing the saved one. Mobile network settings can also be locked, along with airplane mode, network reset and the Private DNS setting.

Be careful with the wording of the goal. Locking settings stops a student from changing the configuration. It does not by itself turn off mobile data on a phone with a working SIM, and fully disabling data is not available yet. For many hostels the practical answer is to lock the settings and rely on the always-on filter and the app list, so even a student on own data has a filtered browser and only the approved apps.

Tablets without a SIM, which are common in hostels, simply have nothing else to join, so the hostel Wi-Fi is the network by default.

Check the school or hostel network with the network check wizard. Some networks block the encrypted DNS port, and the dashboard flags that as a filter gap.

A practical tip: lock the Wi-Fi settings only after you have confirmed that the profile works in every block. Walk the floors with a test tablet first, because a locked device that cannot join the network is hard to fix remotely.