HotSpot Portals (CMS)
This section describes the various ways to load landing pages or login portals to users. Briefly, mbox HSG supports the following features:
- Multiple portals, support per landing page (or login portal) per VLAN per SSID
- Supports externally hosted portals, locally hosted portals (within mbox) and cloud-hosted captive portal pages.
- support authentication integration with various external database (eg. CRM, FMS, POS server, Social media logins etc)
Multi-instance and multi-portals support
mbox as a powerful gateway itself can support hundreds of VLANs, and each VLAN can activate a hotspot instance (access controller) and map to different captive portal page with different user access controller etc. For example, some service providers can host one central mbox and provision each VLAN for each customer to provide different hotspot services to different customers with different access profiles etc. See deployment models for details.
Customizable login portals
mbox supports fully customizable login portals. There are 3 options for customers to enjoy customized portal:
- base customization. There are a number of default templates with mbox CMS module, which are suitable for many different types of environments. Customers/partners can choose one of the default templates, and start customization instantly through a web GUI interface (CMS), eg. change some background pictures, logos, text, disclaimers etc. Customers can make easy changes using in-house resources, or leverage RansNet or RansNet partners resources to make the customization at marginal fees.
- advanced customization. Customers can create and customize any portal pages completely to their needs with all kinds of fancy looks and futuristic texture etc, and in order for the customized portals to work with mbox, the index page will need to embed a few simple codes and one simple API file, to work with mbox. This kind of customization is typically done by customer’s in-house web developers. Details guidelines will be given to integrate the portal API.
Sample captive portal login page (Singapore Wireless@SG)
Deployment of login portals
mbox supports very flexible deployment of login portals. The portal codes/pages can be hosted at different locations at customer’s convenience or needs:
- local-hosted. In this case, the portal page contents are hosted on mbox itself. Through mbox GUI/CMS, customers just choose one of the desirable template and start customization instantly, and within minutes the portal will be ready for us.
- cloud-hosted. In this case, the portals are hosted on RansNet cloud portal server. Customers will be given an CMS account to edit/customize the portal contents, and immediately apply the changes. Refer to this link on managing of cloud-hosted portals.
- external-hosted. The portals can be hosted at external web servers, eg. customer’s own webserver or their preferred hosting provider, where customers can edit/customize the portal contents using their preferred methods. see details in this section.
Authentication for captive portals
mbox captive portals can integrate with external API server or social media web sites for guest authentications and offer differentiated service levels. This section provide details on all the supported authentication options.
For more details on what methods mbox can use to authenticate users, please refer to below links: