Captive Portal Does not Redirect

If clients are not being redirected to the portal page when attempting to browse on an interface with captive portal enabled, it’s most always one of the following causes:

DNS resolution not functioning Clients on the captive portal interface must either be using the DNS resolver or forwarder on AZTCO-FW software, on the IP address of the interface where the client resides (which is the default configuration), or if using another IP address for DNS, it must be in an allowed IP address entry. If DNS fails, the browser never issues the HTTP request, hence it cannot be intercepted and redirected.

Firewall rules on the captive portal interface do not allow the initial HTTP request If the user is trying to browse to google.com, but HTTP connections are not allowed to google.com, the HTTP request will be blocked and hence cannot be redirected. Under Firewall > Rules, on the interface where captive portal is enabled, the traffic to be redirected must be allowed to pass. This is most commonly HTTP to any destination.

The client has an HTTPS home page The request must be to an HTTP site in order for the portal to redirect the client. If HTTPS is enabled for the portal, this may still work but it depends upon the client browser or operating system automatic portal detection to work.