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Captive Web Portal

The captive web portal is used to authenticate users and their devices to the network through a set of supplied web pages. The particular captive web portal used can vary for each of the Connection Profiles.

There are two principal locations where the captive web portal is specified: in Configuration > Policies and Access Control > Connection Profiles and in Configuration> Advanced Access Configuration Overview > Portal Modules. The relationships are shown in the figure below:

Portal modules

Connection Profile Settings

Two particular settings are significant in this example:

Root Portal Module: the name of a root module in the Portal Module Settings. This refers to the top of the button sequence tree for the Connection Profiles.
Logo: the name of the file in the A3 file system where the organization's logo is located. The logo file is displayed at the top of most authentication pages.

Portal Module Settings

All elements of a captive web portal are called modules, which consist of the following types:

Root: defines the basic sequence in a portal.
Chained: uses choice or standalone modules that are executed in sequence. For example, a user can register through Google and then pay for the access through PayPal.
Choice: offers the user a set of authentication and provisioning choices. These choices can in turn use chained modules.
Authentication: a set of modules that implement multiple authentication types. The default set includes authentication modules for login, guest access, OAuth, billing, SAML, and Blackhole.
Provisioning: set assorted information, including role, access duration, and bandwidth limitations.
Messages: these modules display messages to the user.
URLs: direct users to external web pages used to gather additional information that is returned to A3.

Chained, authentication, and provisioning modules include the ability to perform a range of actions that fine-tune the behavior of the captive web portal.