Captive Portals and Hotspots

View information on turning an access point into a hotspot.

Turning an access point into a hotspot allows you to provide time and traffic restricted internet access to guests. The hotspot feature restricts traffic which is allowed by the firewall. Ensure that a firewall rule exists which allows the traffic to be managed by the hotspots. We recommend that you test the traffic with the hotspot feature disabled. Enable the hotspots if the test is successful.

Warning In many countries, operating a public hotspot is subject to specific national laws, restricting access to websites of legally questionable content (for example, file sharing sites, extremist websites). Legal regulations may require you to register your hotspot with the national regulatory body.

Landing Page

Sophos Central intercepts HTTP traffic and redirects users to a predefined page, the so-called hotspot or captive portal. There, users have to use one of the configured authentication methods before they can access the allowed networks, for example, the Internet. The landing page is the first page users will see after connecting to the hotspot.