When a captive portal is enabled on a network, a user trying to access that network will first be directed to a web page. That web page, at a minimum, will usually require the user to agree to the terms of service for a network, and may require some form of authentication. Although captive portals can be used with both wired and wireless networks, they are more commonly used to provide a gateway to a wireless network.
Implementing a captive portal is potentially beneficial for several reasons. First, they provide an easy way of separating guest traffic from other network traffic, thus keeping guests away from sensitive company data. Second, we can collect data on individual captive portal users, making it easy to identify users that are over-utilizing resources (for example, users downloading large files or constantly streaming video). The captive portal page is...
