We have an old SSID we want to get rid of but unfortunately we still have thousands of users connecting to it. We are looking at ways to get users off this SSID and on to the new one and things we can do other than just emailing users (most will ignore) or just simply turning it off and letting users deal with it (management will never agree to that so please don't suggest this). The problem we have is we have hundreds if not thousands of new users every year and even with guidance a lot will still connect to our legacy SSID so the problem won't just go away over time.
One thing we thought of doing was to look at hiding the old SSID so that existing users can still connect but no new users could see it and attempt to connect. I am aware it can easily be seen and connected to by anyone with a bit of knowledge but most new users on our sites will just connect to our new SSID and be done with it. I have tested hiding the legacy SSID whilst connected and find that while my devices stay connected once the SSID is hidden if I turn my WiFi off and on again it won't reconnect. If I forget the network then reconnect and auth to it while hidden then cycle my WiFi it is able to reconnect after. I presume there is a setting on the OS that specifies whether an SSID is hidden and whether to actively try and connect even if it isn't visible? I'm testing on OS X and IOS so I think these settings are not visible to the user and are only set when you setup your wireless connection while the SSID is hidden.
Is there any way to lessen the pain of moving users off this legacy SSID or have we just got to suck it up and cause some pain?
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