DHCP Error with Captive Portal

Product Discussion Peplink Balance
1

Hello Community,

I work for a Company that has a Balance One with pepwave AC One minis. I am trying to utilize Captive Portal for our guests and can’t seem to connect to the public network.

I have followed instructions from the knowledge-base and requested assistance from our distributor, yet I am still unable to connect. It appears that every device connected to the public network is not acquiring an IP address, so I believed that DHCP was disabled. DHCP is enabled on the public network and the event logs shows devices connecting to the public network, even though the devices are not acquiring an IP address. I logged into InControl2 to check to see everything on its end was configured properly, and the configurations made in InControl2 has not changed since our distributor assisted us. Could it be that we have faulty hardware or Captive Portal still isn’t configured properly? I was told from our distributor that Captive Portals must be applied to VLANs and not SSIDs in order for Balance Ones to act as gateway for Analytics.

2

Can you provide the following info for us to assists further ?

  1. What is the firmware version running for the Balance One & APs ?

  2. May i know the physical connections for the APs & Balance One ? APs are directly connect to the Balance One LAN interface ?

  3. Base on the description above, do you mean the main problem is guest users fail to get IP address when connecting to public network (Public VLAN) ? Do you tested with Static IP ? Will the Guest device with static IP get connected to the public network?

  4. Beside that, do you try before disable the captive portal settings ? With captive portal disable the guest devices can get connected ?

3

Thank you for getting back to me!

  1. the Balance One is running firmware 6.3.3 build 2526
    AP is running firmware 3.5.3 build 1607

  2. AP is connected to Balance One via Gigabit switch

  3. I configured the guest devices with static IPs and successfully connected to the network. At this point, I am unable to communicate with the default gateway of the network.

  4. Without captive portal settings, only 1 guest device connected while the rest were not distributed IP addresses.

4

Base on the given answer, guessing the issue are related to the network configuration issue more than the Captive portal issue.

Please provide the below info for us to investigate:

Internet <—> Balance One LAN (1) <----> (2) Switch (3)<—> (4) APs

(1)

  • How many VLANs defined for the Balance One LAN ?
  • Guest/Public Network is under which VLAN ?
  • What is the port settings defined for the Balance One LAN interface that connected to the Gigabit switch ? (Port access/Trunk)

(2)

  • How many VLANs defined for the switch ?
  • What is the port settings defined for the Switch interface that connected to the Balance One ? (Port access/Trunk)

(3)

  • What is the port settings defined for the Switch interface that connected to the APs ? (Port access/Trunk)

(4)

  • How many SSIDs defined for APs and what is the VLAN ID for each SSID ?

To isolate any configuration issue for the Gigabit switch, do you try before connecting the APs direct to the Balance One ?

5

1.)
Balance One has 2 VLANs created and the default untagged LAN. VLAN for testing (tag:5) and VLAN for guests (tag:20). ports 1-3 are defined for the untagged LAN. ports 6-8 are defined for the test network. ports 4 & 5 are trunked for any VLAN. the gigabit switch is connected to port 1 for the untagged VLAN.

2.) & 3.)
There are no VLANs defined on the gigabit switch. all switch ports are defined for untagged traffic.

4.)
2 SSIDs are defined for APs. SSID for the untagged VLAN and SSID for the guest network.

*Did connect APs directly into the Balance One, did not solve connection issue.

6

As mentioned by Sit Loong here, the problem is related to network configuration - Gigabit switch.

If Gigabit switch is a managed switch

  1. Connect the Gigabit switch to LAN port 4 or 5 of Balance One.

  2. Add Vlan 5 and 20 in the switch.

  3. Configure trunk port for the ports that connected to Balance One and AP in the switch.

If Gigabit switch is an unmanaged switch

  1. Connect AP directly to LAN port of Balance One. Ensure you connect to LAN port 4 or 5.

P.s. If switch is needed in your environment, please use managed switch.