Pepwave MAX WiFi WAN Captive Portal Feature Request

[gradywhite]

Hello -

Presently the WiFi WAN in the PepWave units does not allow you to take advantage of any ISP, which requires authentication thru a captive portal (webpage) to access their Hot Spots. Would love the ability to configure the WiFi Wan, so it will present credentials to the ISP’s captive portal webpage, thereby authenticating and granting access to their network. Sign in to Xfinity

[amaranth]

@gradywhite

Hello -

Presently the WiFi WAN in the PepWave units does not allow you to take advantage of any ISP, which requires authentication thru a captive portal (webpage) to access their Hot Spots. Would love the ability to configure the WiFi Wan, so it will present credentials to the ISP’s captive portal webpage, thereby authenticating and granting access to their network. Sign in to Xfinity

I’d like to see this too. With the present firmware (6.3.3) the SSID is blanked out for any Wifi network that requires a portal page. This is pretty useless. The portal URL is, presumably, available to the firmware if you permitted connection. Why not simply put a “Login Portal” button up next to the connect button in that case? We pay for high-speed outdoor service at Flying-J and it’d be a LOT more useful if we could use our roof antenna and the BR1 to connect to their Wifi rather than using our laptops to connect directly to the Flying-J network. Lots of other examples of the same kind of thing.

For some captive portal sites, like ones that do a redirect if you try to go anywhere on the web but do show in the Wireless Networks page, you can work around the firmware’s limitations by disabling health check for the Wifi-as-WAN, connect to the desired network, then open another browser window from your computer that’s using the BR1 to talk to the world and authenticate (or click OK to agree to usage rules or whatever that page is saying). That’ll get you online and all devices behind the router will be online without any others needing to authenticate. It’s clunky but works.

[sitloongs]

Hi,

@amaranth

I’d like to see this too. With the present firmware (6.3.3) the SSID is blanked out for any Wifi network that requires a portal page. This is pretty useless. The portal URL is, presumably, available to the firmware if you permitted connection. Why not simply put a “Login Portal” button up next to the connect button in that case? We pay for high-speed outdoor service at Flying-J and it’d be a LOT more useful if we could use our roof antenna and the BR1 to connect to their Wifi rather than using our laptops to connect directly to the Flying-J network. Lots of other examples of the same kind of thing.

We do have similar request from other forum users. For more information please refer to the forum thread below:

Peplink | Pepwave - Forum

@amaranth

For some captive portal sites, like ones that do a redirect if you try to go anywhere on the web but do show in the Wireless Networks page, you can work around the firmware’s limitations by disabling health check for the Wifi-as-WAN, connect to the desired network, then open another browser window from your computer that’s using the BR1 to talk to the world and authenticate (or click OK to agree to usage rules or whatever that page is saying). That’ll get you online and all devices behind the router will be online without any others needing to authenticate. It’s clunky but works.

I would say this is a workaround to make the WIFI WAN get connected. Health check can be disable if you know after the WIFI WAN is get connected there is no internet access until you get a PC pass-through the captive-portal authentication.

Again, this is depend the service provider. Some service provider may not work as this ways.

Thank you

[amaranth]

@sitloongs

Hi,

We do have similar request from other forum users. For more information please refer to the forum thread below:
Peplink | Pepwave - Forum

I would say this is a workaround to make the WIFI WAN get connected. Health check can be disable if you know after the WIFI WAN is get connected there is no internet access until you get a PC pass-through the captive-portal authentication.

Again, this is depend the service provider. Some service provider may not work as this ways.

Thank you

I already have Health Check disconnected on Wifi-as-WAN and doing so permits logging in to many captive portal Wifi networks, essentially all of them other than the ones where you purposely obliterate the SSID because the AP provided a captive portal URL. We’re asking you, as your customers, to provide a feature, and that is to provide the SSID rather than obliterating it, and provide the URL so that those of us who DO want to work around this limitation in your product have the tools to do so. We’re making a customer request. It’d be really nice if it were considered and not dismissed out of hand. It is something that WOULD be useful and would be used.