Captive Portal for XMS-C EasyPass Guest Self-Registration or Azure

Can someone explain how we can manually sign-on to the EasyPass Captive Portal for either Guest Self-Registration or Microsoft Azure?

When connecting to the Wireless network, some devices don’t automatically come up with the Captive Portal from the Wi-Fi menu of the device. In these instances, I would like to use the browser to navigate to the Captive Portal instead.

I’ve tried navigating to https://guest.cloud.xirrus.com/ but it doesn’t show the login page. Is there a way to bring up the Captive Portal manually?

So if I try to access a random IP Address, I am taken straight to the Captive Portal, as you would expect. However, any web address does NOT redirect to the Captive Portal.

Would this suggest a DNS issue where whatever address entered isn’t being redirected to the Captive Portal correctly?

I’ve tried adding in our DNS Server IP Addresses to the Whitelist that can bypass the portal access but still unable to redirect to the Captive Portal unless I use an IP Address in the URL field.

I have narrowed this issue down to being related to HSTS, as outlined in a similar post on the forums…

I can successfully navigate to a non SSL website, such as http://logos.xeretec.co.uk or a non hsts website, such as https://abc.com and get redirected to the Captive Portal successfully.

How do you therefore suggest I go about configuring our Guest WiFi to allow logins from a browser that supports HSTS enabled websites, such as google.com, which most browsers have search engines configured against?

What client devices and browsers are you testing with? Many devices try to load a well-known URL over HTTP and detect when the request is intercepted.

  • Apple devices try to load http://captive.apple.com/hotspot-detect.html
  • Chrome
  • Firefox

Most of the time the device brings up the captive portal fine but there are a few occasions, that for whatever reason, it just doesn’t load and in those occasions, I’d like to be able to tell the user to visit a webpage to bring up the portal manually.

We already have an instruction leaflet for Guest Wi-Fi so I think the best solution is to add a QR code to a non-SSL website (probably http://neverssl.com because it’s specifically designed for this issue and easier to write on devices that can’t scan a QR code) to that guide and should they have issues loading the Captive Portal automatically on their device, they scan the QR code instead.

That sounds like a good solution. It would be interesting to hear back if you ever figure out the reason why devices don’t always detect the captive portal. (I suppose it’s possible that they won’t be able to load http://neverssl.com when they’re in that state…)

Yes, absolutely. I didn’t previously have a way to manually bring up the Captive Portal but now I do, we’ll see whether that works when it doesn’t automatically connect.

I’ll update as soon as it occurs next.

Hey Jon,
did it worked for you? I have similar issue. redirection to login window doesnt work many times.

Hi Julius,
Very random and haven’t been able to put my finger on it. The simple workaround is to navigate to neverssl.com which works everytime. I’ve ended up creating a subdomain off our main website with our own branding which replicates what neverssl.com does and this is included on the guest wifi instructions.

2 Likes

Dear Community,
I have a similar issue and can not solve it for ages. Support team from Cambium are lost as well.

I have created separate SSID with portal for AzureAD authentication method. On many devices it doesnt load. neverssl doesnt help as well. Most of the time our FW is blocking such activities, but not this time. I have disabled FW and result is the same. Anyone has any ideas?