The Smart WiFi Dashboard is capable of controlling the ‘Idle Session” timeout parameters for Mikrotik in the Session Profile Area. There IS another setting though that you may want to change called the “Keep Alive Timeout”.
By default, the default keepalive-timeout on Mikrotik devices is 2 minutes.
With the introduction of the Smart WiFi Platform v 2.16, we’ve added the correct script command to change the default keep-alive to 45 minutes.
Essentially, what the keepalive-timeout does is holds the session open for a guest device for whatever period of time you specify EVEN if the guest device detaches from the controller. So as an example: A Guest connects and logs in through the Spalsh page. They walk away and the access point can’t see them anymore (for more than 2 minutes), or they turn off WiFi for more than 2 minutes, as soon as their device tries to connect again, they will need to connect through the Splash page again.
If you want to extend this keep alive timeout, there are 2 ways to do it:
- If you are near the device and able to use Winbox, then simply login to the device and change the setting by going to IP>Hotspot – then double-click “default 0” or the profile you created. Then change the field:
- If the device is already deployed and remote, you can send a command to it through the Smart WiFi Dashboard. Let’s assume you want to set the keep-alive at 45 minutes, the command syntax would be:
/ip hotspot user profile set 0 keepalive-timeout=00:45:00