Internal or External Captive Portal Solution

[mekabe remain]

I know Captive Portal has been asked several times and the answer is "no"
It is not an easy task to add a captive portal to Asus Merlin fw.
I have read about it all.

But I still have hope to achieve it with different approaches.

First, some of you guys have already discussed that Nodogsplash could be compiled for Entware. Has anyone compiled it ? Is there a working binary ?
I believe we could redirect some users to Nodogsplash (using iptables) if it was running on Asus router.
Isn't this possible ?

Second approach, would it be possible to run a captive portal software externally (on a Raspberry PI or a PC server) and redirect some users to this from Asus router ?

 

[bennor]

Second approach, would it be possible to run a captive portal software externally (on a Raspberry PI or a PC server) and redirect some users to this from Asus router ?

Quick internet search turns up the following:

Setting up a Raspberry Pi Captive Portal

Set up a captive portal on the Pi.

pimylifeup.com

How to Turn Your Raspberry Pi into a Captive Portal Wi‐Fi Access Point

Are you looking to provide a Wi-Fi access point for your business? Here you'll learn how to turn Raspberry Pi into a captive portal Wi-Fi access point.

www.maketecheasier.com

Raspberry Pi Captive Portal #piday #raspberrypi @Raspberry_Pi

From PiMyLifeUp: In this tutorial, we will be showing your how-to setup a Raspberry Pi Captive Portal by utilizing the popular nodogsplash software. A Captive Portal is basically a screen that will…

blog.adafruit.com

Or find/use a router that supports OpenWrt 17.01.4/5 and 18.06.0:

Installing Nodogsplash — NoDogSplash v3.3.3-beta

 

[mekabe remain]

I know, there are many sources which explain how to build a captive portal on a raspberry PI.
But can I redirect specific users from Asus router to that captive portal ?

 

[bennor]

I know, there are many sources which explain how to build a captive portal on a raspberry PI.
But can I redirect specific users from Asus router to that captive portal ?

The above examples of setting up a captive portal on the Pi rely on the Pi being a WiFi access point. You would have your WiFi network clients that you want to access the captive portal connect to that WiFI Pi access point rather than the WiFi of the Asus router.

Or are you asking about routing wired LAN clients to a captive portal?

PS: Another option, if you have a DD-WRT supported Asus router, is to use the HotSpot option in DD-WRT.

How To Build an Open Source Wi-Fi HotSpot with DD-WRT - SmallNetBuilder

http://forums.smallnetbuilder.com/forumdisplay.php?f=18

www.smallnetbuilder.com

 

[mekabe remain]

well, I don't want to use an external wifi access point.
I want to use my Asus mesh because I have a large house with several nodes of asus mesh.
I need to forward requests from Asus wifi guest network to the external captive portal.

 

[bennor]

It might help others come up with ideas or suggestions if you provide more information like router and aimesh node models and firmware versions.

 

[mekabe remain]

well, I have an AX88U and zenfwifi mini nodes.
I use Merlin fw on the AX88U

 

[Tech9]

Similar thread from 2021:

Asus Captive Portal

Hey i was wondering if theres an addon for Captive Portal that requires them to login, is that a thing with asus routers and if so could i request this feature?

www.snbforums.com

Similar solutions offered, similar results achieved - you are not getting it on your Asus AiMesh system.

 

[mekabe remain]

it is not exactly the same thread. Similar yes but not same.
And I really regret writing this here. MOst of the time if I ask something here and if it has not been done, then I get a negative answer. BUt if I work on it , I come up with a workaround which actually works.
I was once told that I can't get IP accounting data from new Asus merlin firmeware, but I am now drawing graphs of this on my Grafana server using iptables on the Asus router.