User Manual

What is a Captive Portal?

You’ve probably encountered a captive portal plenty of times without knowing it — it’s the customized login page

that businesses require users to pass through before connecting to the Wi-Fi network. Airports, coffee shops,

and hotels are the most popular places to ﬁnd them, but any type of business can beneﬁt from using a captive

portal. It’s an elegant solution for both heightened security and marketing.

Captive Portal Beneﬁts

Typically, a captive portal presents the user with terms of service, which they must agree to before accessing

your business‘s Wi-Fi hotspot. In some cases, the captive portal might require a password (which you can give

to veriﬁed customers, for instance, on their coffee receipt). Measures like this help free you from liability in the

event of illegal or otherwise destructive online behavior, while similar security features keep company assets

safe. Using a captive portal also gives you increased control over your bandwidth, offering customizable time

limits for how long each user can stay connected to your network.

On the commercial end, captive portals present an excellent opportunity for seamless marketing —

they facilitates user engagement at a critical point during their Internet experience, and is a very powerful

medium that can be used for a range of business needs. Use a captive portal to have users ﬁll out a survey,

view a sponsored advertisement, or highlight current promotions.

Setting Up a Captive Portal

The process of setting up your Wi-Fi hotspot’s captive portal varies depending on your business’s network

setup. Though the details differ, you’ll always start by making sure your ﬁrmware is up to date and accessing

the Web-based setup page for your network’s access point — from there, the process should be fairly similar

across devices. It looks a little something like this:

1. Enable a captive portal for your network. You’ll usually ﬁnd this option under a “captive portal”

heading on your access point’s setup menu, or under “global conﬁguration.” If your access point

does not support the captive portal feature, you’ll need to upgrade.

Business Solutions

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What is a Captive Portal? Business Solutions You’ve probably encountered a captive portal plenty of times without knowing it — it’s the customized login page that businesses require users to pass through before connecting to the Wi-Fi network. Airports, coffee shops, and hotels are the most popular places to find them, but any type of business can benefit from using a captive portal. It’s an elegant solution for both heightened security and marketing.
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. Customize the portal’s settings under a sub-menu such as “Portal Profiles” or “Portal Settings.” From here, you’ll typically be able to: a) name your portal; b) choose to password-protect your portal, under an “Authentication” or similar option; and c) opt to redirect the portal to an existing Web page, if you’d rather not create a custom page. 3.