Captive Portal Policies

Captive portal is an access policy that provides guests temporary and restrictive access to a managed network.

Captive portals provide authenticated access by capturing and re-directing a wireless user's Web browser session to a captive portal login page where the user must enter valid credentials to access to the network. Once logged into the captive portal, additional Terms and Agreement, Welcome, Fail , No Service , etc. pages provide you options to control the captive portal screen flow and user experience.

Captive portals are increasingly used to provide authenticated access to private network resources, when 802.1X EAP is not a viable option. Captive portal authentication does not provide end-user data encryption, but it can be used with static WEP, WPA-PSK or WPA2-PSK encryption.

Captive portals use a Web provisioning tool to create guest user accounts directly on the controller or service platform. The connection medium defined for the Web connection is either HTTP or HTTPS. Both HTTP and HTTPS use a request and response procedure clients follow to disseminate information to and from requesting wireless clients.

To access the captive portal configuration screen:

Go to Configuration → Services.
The Captive Portal main screen displays. Review existing captive portal configuration to determine if a new configuration warrants creation, an existing configuration warrants edition, or an existing configuration warrants deletion.
To add a new captive portal policy, click Add.
To edit or delete and existing captive portal policy, select the policy from those listed on the screen and click Edit or Delete as required.