The Captive Portal is a webpage that automatically pops up when customers and guests connect to your Wi-Fi or LAN.
Clients can connect using multiple authentication methods, including email, Social media accounts, tokens or even SMS text messages.
A Captive Portal can be configured within InControl to require clients accessing your network to enter a valid logon mode.
The Captive Portal is GDPR compliant and the portal page can be customized.
Captive Portal can be assigned to a VLAN using the VLAN configuration or a SSID (for Pepwave Access Points’s only) using the SSID configuration settings.
Configuration
Open the Captive Portal section from the menu following Group Settings > Network Settings > Captive Portals.
To create a Captive Portal, select the New Captive Portal button and configure the options in the new window.
Click on the information button next to the New Captive Portal button to redirect clients to an external Captive portal.
| Enable | Tick box to enable or disable the Captive Portal. |
| Name | Name of the Captive Portal (identification purposes only) |
| Company Name | Company Name |
| Access mode | Enable one or more access modes as the authentication method. There are several access modes to choose from. |
Access modes
The following access modes are available to choose from for the Captive Portal Authentication.
Social
Allows clients to log on user their Social Media credentials.Supported applications are Facebook, Google ID, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and Sina Weibo.
Tick the appropriate box to enable these logon methods.
A Social Media ID is optional, a customised background image ad logo will be used when a Social Media ID is configured.
Open Access
Open Access allows unrestricted access to the SSID without authentication; however, access can be controlled using a filter or ACL, and a daily quota can be configured to limit usage.
When email authentication is enabled an email is sent to the client’s email address.
The client gains access after confirming the details in the received email within the configured time allowed for e-mail checking.
Token
Access Tokens can be configured to grant clients internet access using the Captive Portal.
After clicking the Generate button you can choose the amount of tokens to generate, the token format (amount of characters and have a choice between numbers, lowercase letters, mixed case letters and letters & numbers) and the amount of time tokens should be valid.
SMS
To enable authentication using SMS you first must configure the SMS service settings for Captive portal in the InControl group settings.
After selecting manage the SMS Settings for Captive Portal you can add the service name and provider details.
Peplink only supports Twilio as a service Provider
This is in fact the phone number that will send SMS messages to your Wi-Fi users.
Once you have added and saved these settings, return to the Captive Portal SMS access mode settings.
The “SMS” options are similar to the “Token” options.
You have an option to set the length of the tokens and the amount of time for SMS checking in minutes.
Your Wi-Fi users will be asked to fill in their phone number and will receive a token to access the SSID in a SMS (text) message as shown in the image below.
Daily Quota
A Daily Time and/or usage-based bandwidth quota is configurable to limit client access to internet.
Reset Quota![]()
Quota can be reset at a configurable time or after a configurable period.
Guests required to sign in…
The amount of time after guests are required to sign back into the Captive Portal.
The options are once only, every day or after a quota reset (which is the default setting) or every time they connect to the SSID.
Allowed Networks and Clients
Access to the Captive Portal can be restricted by only allowing devices with a certain domain name / IP address, IP subnet or MAC address or selecting a ACL (Access Control List) from the drop down list.
Landing Page
A landing page is the URL that is opened after clients connect to the SSID
This feature is not compatible with Android devices.
Clients can be redirected to a URL of choice or shows a start-browsing button instead.
Preview and customization
The Captive Portal can be previewed and customized within InControl
The Splash Screen and Signed-In Screen Text, Language, Colour, Logo and Background Image can be edited by following the Preview and Customization link.
