Glossary
Captive Portal
A captive portal is a web page a network automatically redirects a newly connected device to, before that device is granted broader network access — a login screen, a terms-of-use acceptance, a payment step. Until the device satisfies whatever the portal requires, its network access is restricted to reaching the portal itself and little else, which is what stops a device from simply connecting and immediately reaching the wider network or internet unchecked.
A well-designed captive portal is only one layer of a properly isolated guest network, not the entire isolation strategy — passing through the portal should grant access to the internet specifically, not incidentally to other devices sharing the same network, which requires the network itself to keep guest traffic segmented from anything more sensitive regardless of what the portal alone checks.