Captive portal & GuestNET
A Captive Portal allows you to force authentication, or redirection to a click through page for network access. This is commonly used on hotspot networks, but is also widely used in corporate networks for an additional layer of security on wireless or Internet access.
Overview and terminology
Typical Applications
Guest Network
Hotel & Camping Wi-Fi Access
Bring Your Own Device (BYOD)
Template Management
OPNsense’s unique template manager makes setting up your own login page an easy task. At the same time it offers additional functionalities, such as:
URL redirection
Option for your own Pop-up
Custom Splash page
Zone Management
Different zones can be setup on each interface or multiple interfaces can share one zone setup. Each Zone can use a different Captive Portal Template or share it with another zone.
Authentication
Secure authentication via HTTPS or splash-only portal with URL redirection to a given page Different sources can be used to authenticate a user in a zone:
LDAP [Microsoft Active Directory]
Radius
Local user manager
Vouchers / Tickets
No authentication (Splash Screen Only)
Multiple (a combination of above)
Voucher Manager
OPNsense’s Captive Portal has an easy voucher creation system that exports the vouchers to a csv file for use with your favorite application. The export allows you to print vouchers by merging them with your Microsoft Word or LibreOffice template and create a good looking handout with your logo and company style.
Timeouts & Welcome Back
Connection can be terminated after the user has been idle for a certain amount of time (idle timeout) and/or force a disconnect when a number of minutes have passed even if the user is still active (hard timeout). In case a user reconnects within the idle timeout and/or hard timeout no login is required and the user can resume its active session.
Bandwidth Management
The Built-in traffic shaper can be utilized to:
Share bandwidth evenly
Give priority to protocols port numbers and/or IP addresses
See also: Traffic Shaping
Portal bypass
MAC and IP addresses can be white listed to bypass the portal.
Platform Integration
Through the integrated REST API the captive portal application can be integrated with other services. See: Use the API
Administration
The Administration menu offers access to zone configuration and template management.
When creating a zone, a couple of options are available which we will try to explain briefly in the grid below:
Enabled |
Enable the zone, which will install a network trap on the interfaces specified |
Zone number |
Read-only sequence of the configured zone |
Interfaces |
Interfaces which should be guarded by this captive portal |
Authenticate using |
Select an authenticator specified in |
Always send accounting requests |
[RADIUS only] This will make the captive portal always send accounting requests, rather than just when there is a need for accounting (e.g. when there is a daily session limit). |
Enforce local group |
Restrict access to users in the selected (local)group, to validate group membership, see |
Idle timeout (minutes) |
Clients will be disconnected after this amount of inactivity. They may log in again immediately, though. |
Hard timeout (minutes) |
Clients will be disconnected after this amount of time, regardless of activity. They may log in again immediately, though. |
Concurrent user logins |
If this option is set, users can login on multiple machines at once. If disabled subsequent logins will cause machines previously logged in with the same username to be disconnected. |
SSL certificate |
Certificate to use on the captive portal login system. Leave empty for HTTP only. |
Hostname |
Hostname (of this machine) to redirect login page to, leave blank to use this interface IP address, otherwise make sure the client can access DNS to resolve this location. When using a SSL certificate, make sure both this name and the cert name are equal. |
Allowed addresses |
Avoid authentication for addresses and subnets specified in this list |
Allowed MAC addresses |
Avoid authentication for MAC addresses specified in this list |
Extended pre auth data |
Offer extended data to the login template before authentication (mac addresses for upstream use). |
Custom template |
Template to use for the login page, specified in the templates tab. |
The file offered is a standard zip file, which can be unpacked locally and modified to your needs, the new contents can be saved into a new zip file and uploaded in a new template ()
Sessions
Basic Real Time Reporting is Integrated using the sessions menu, this shows the following information for each zone.
Live top IP bandwidth usage (Traffic Graph)
Active Sessions
Time left on Vouchers
Vouchers
Here you can create new vouchers for all voucher servers configured in
Examples
To setup a hotspot controller for business or hotel usage see: Setup a Guest Network