Captive Portal HotSpot Gateway

Captive Portal HotSpot Gateway RansNet HotSpot Gateway (HSG) is designed for large Wi-Fi venues to offer guest Wi-Fi access for Hotels, malls, hospitals, airports, tourism places, F&B, retail chains, or enterprises offering Wi-Fi services to visitors. Help Venues to Get the Most Out of Wi-Fi At Lower Costs Minimize investment cost by fully utilizing RansNet complete Wi-Fi hotspot solutions From the gateway (integrated with WLAN controller), and PoE switches up to Wi-Fi 6 Access points. Maximize user experience, using dedicated computing appliances to manage user access and offload AP to guarantee end device wireless connection. Monetize Wi-Fi infrastructure, with many opportunities to generate additional business incomes throughout the user Wi-Fi journey.

Features Highlights

Captive Portal for Any Wi-Fi Networks RansNet HotSpot Gateway (HSG) can easily overlay any existing or new Wi-Fi/WLAN infrastructure, without significant network changes, at minimum operational impact. All brands of WLAN products are supported as long as the network is properly provisioned to route user traffic to HSG. Immediately HSG transforms any WLAN network to deliver intelligent guest Wi-Fi services, and venue owners can start to customize branding portals and preferred user sign-in options without the need of any html coding.

Wi-Fi Monetisation Opportunities Throughout User Journey

Wi-Fi Monetisation Opportunities Throughout User Journey

Today, good and free Wi-Fi is a default facility that venue owners are expected to provide to their end customers, and Wi-Fi is often perceived as a cost centre by business owners. Now with RansNet HotSpot Gateway (HSG), Wi-Fi is no longer a cost centre, it is an investment. HSG provides many opportunities for venue owners to monetize free Wi-Fi throughout user’s Wi-Fi journey. Having all monetization capabilities built-in as standard features, venues can easily enable the desired options with an intuitive web interface, make unlimited promotional updates and run unlimited campaigns without any hidden costs.

Earn $$ from premium Wi-Fi

Can combine different sign-in options to offer free WI-Fi access and sell premium Wi-Fi for faster speed. Supported payment gateways include PayPal, iPay88, 2checkout, Wirecard.

Welcome customers with more offers

Redirect users to external advertising websites or survey pages upon sign-in. Gateway can schedule different redirect URLs for target user groups or portals at different times.

Online & offline Campaign

Engage users through collected user contacts (via social-media login or self-registration). Schedule email/SMS campaigns to target groups. Customize and create campaign content with built-in CMS templates.

Promote and up-sell your offers

Before the user gets to the sign-in page, an optional advertisement can pop up, and it’s configurable to force the user to watch the ads for x seconds before the can close the ads and proceed to sign-in. Administrators can upload image/video content and schedule ads to push to target locations at preferred times. This capability enables venue owners to extend free Wi-Fi infrastructure as an advertising space for external agencies/advertisers and profit from revenue sharing, turning Wi-Fi from a cost centre into revenue generating platform.

Know your customers better.

After the user’s device connects to SSID, prompt the survey form before the user can proceed further. Different survey forms can be applied to different portals. Survey questions are fully customisable through web CMS.

      Extensive User Login Methods (Authentication) RansNet HotSpot Gateway (HSG) has a built-in RADIUS/AAA server to authenticate user Internet access through the captive portal or dot1x/EAP or MAC authentication. It has an intuitive web interface for administrators to manage user accounts, create vouchers, define access profiles, and generate billing and analytics reporting. HSG also integrates with many 3rd-party systems for flexible user sign-in options, including all common social-media providers, SMS providers, payment gateway providers, PMS vendors, etc. At the same time, HSG also has its own mboxapi, which allows any 3rd-party system to integrate with HSG for user account management, app sign-in and data retrieval for external analytics etc.

Multiple Authentications Supports login via the captive portal or seamless authentication via EAP. Supports MAC auto Login (e.g. machine authentication)

Local RADIUS/AAA Local built-in RADIUS/AAA server with intuitive web GUI to manage user accounts, pin-code, vouchers, create access profiles, run analytics and reports, etc.

Seamless re-login Supports auto re-login for authenticated users for a configurable period, e.g. hotel guest only needs to log in once throughout their stay.

QR Code login Supports QR code auto-login. Users scan the QR code to get instant access

Mobile App Login Supports mobile app login using WISPr protocol. Free SDK is provided to integrate into customers’ apps to provide a seamless user experience.

Direct Login Supports direct login, with an additional option to capture user info, eg. user key in email and click to login

Social Media Login Supports social media login. Auto-pull and store user profiles into a local database for further data analytics and user campaigns. Supported social media: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Weibo, google+, line, WeChat

Self-registration via SMS SMS self-registration (or SMS OTP login) supports many SMS providers, eg. BulkSMS, InfoBip, Nexmo, SendQuick, MD Media, TechStudio, Asia Mediatel, Send Quick (Telarax), Generic SMTP-based gateways

Self-registration via email Email self-registration (or email OTP login) can verify email authenticity. Can allow customers to set up their own SMTP server for sending email OTP.

Customisable profile capture Email/SMS self-registration can capture and store below user profile info (configurable options via CMS), Firstname, Lastname, Email, Mobile, Gender, Address, Country, Zip Code, Race, Religion, Nationality, Profession, Company Name, Interests, Marital Status, Birthdate, Passport/NRIC.

Voucher Management Have a local voucher management system for easy generating vouchers. Vouchers can be printed by an integrated POS printer (eg. EPSON, STAR), or sent via SMS.

API for any authentication Works with external RADIUS server. Integrates with PMS (Opera) and any CRM via their respective API. Allows any 3rd-party system to integrate with HSG via mboxapi.

Granular User Access Controls (Authorisation)

The HSG built-in AAA server comes with fully featured RADIUS authorization capabilities and enforces user access control by speed, time, data volume etc. Business owners can easy define multi-tier privileges to offer differentiated user experience, or sell premium Wi-Fi with different billing plans, or whitelist special network devices or destinations etc. In addition, RansNet patented adaptive bandwidth control feature allows venue owners to fully maximize their back-haul investment to provide best possible user experience.

Allow multi-tier privileges Supports multi-tier privileges and access plans based speed & time. Can set authorisation per account or per profile (per user group)

Bandwidth control Limits speed (QoS) per network, per VLAN, per user, per application, per IP/host

Adaptive Bandwidth Control Can adaptively re-allocate per user speed, varying to link usage, to maximise user experience and efficiently use available link capacity.

Session Management Manages access time per account, eg. idle timeout, session timeout, total access time, access time per day, per week, per month

Time Quota Management Sets absolute expiry date/time per account, eg. valid till dd/mm/yy

Adaptive Time Management Sets adaptive expiry date/time per account, eg. expiry in xx day/hours upon first use

Data Quota Management Manages data usage (quota management), eg. total volume (upload/download), volume per day, per week, per month

Limit concurrent usage Limits simultaneous logins per account

Disconnect Abuse User Kick-out/disconnect/disable users through the intuitive web console

Prevent account sharing Can lock each account to one or multiple sets of authorized MAC. Auto detects and sets MAC upon the first login, important for selling premium Wi-Fi

Delay reconnection Delays reconnection (session wait) for fair free access sharing. Eg, free users are given 30 minutes of free access per session and must wait for 30 minutes before reconnecting for the next free session.

Multiple bypass options Supports multiple whitelisting options., eg. by destination IP/network, URLs, domains; by source IP/network, by source MAC.

Analytics & Compliance Logging & Reporting (Accounting)

Detail Access Logging and Reporting for Analytics and Compliance (Accounting) Regulations, such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, PCI DSS, HIPAA, and many others, require organizations to implement comprehensive security measures, which often include collecting and analyzing logs from many different sources. RansNet HSG tracks all user connection sessions, login attempts and access logs, with detail timestamps and packet header information (source, destination, protocols, port no, etc). The logs are stored in local storage for immediate analysis and investigation and can be archived out to external FTP servers for long-term retention. These features provide venue owners full visibility on traffic usage and comply to security regulations and audits.

• Record login sessions Captures per hotspot session details, minimum including Username, Device MAC, IP Address, Start Time, Stop Time, Total Time, Total Uploads (MB), Total Downloads (MB), Gateway IP (NAS IP), Allocated Speed, Device Type
• Log access details Captures user access logs through firewall logs, web proxy logs or netflow, minimum including timestamps, source IP, destination IP, destination domain (DNS query), protocol, source/destination ports.
• Analyze & Report Analyzes logs against pre-fined rules and alarms for anomalies. Schedule reports daily, weekly, monthly, or any selected time/date range. Analytics reports include Total logins, Unique users, Repeat users, Average dwell time, device types, demographics, locations, Top users by time usage, bandwidth usage, data volume usage, or login methods.
• Real-time live logs Displays live access logs through web GUI at lightning speed. Many filtering options for the admin to troubleshoot any incidents.
• Search historical logs Historical logs are stored in local storage, with an intuitive GUI to search and discover historical activities. Important for security forensic investigations.
• Archive for log retention Able to auto-archive logs to local storage and external FTP server for long-term log retention and audit compliance requirements.

Gateway Model – Hardware Specifications

Network & Security Features

Captive Portal Features