we are currently working with the RUT951 and are trying to create a captive portal for an AcccessPoint using the “Hotspot“ feature.
This does work if used with the standard login for example.
However we want to show a welcome page hosted on a device connected to the router. The IP of this webserver will look something like this 192.168.1.x. This webserver is reachable without problem when connected via LAN for example.
If we set the landing page (in the hotspot settings) to this IP address and try to connect to the acccess point an error will be shown and no connection will be established.
We tried to move the hotspot network from 192.168.2.0/24 to 192.168.1.0/24 and also setting the IP address of the hotspot from 192.168.2.x to 192.168.1.x. Doing this will cause the landing page to be loaded, but then the router will not be accessible via 192.168.1.1 anymore.
Is this even possible or are we trying to force something that is not inteded?
In Services → Hotspot → your instance → General Settings → General, set the Landing Page field to External and enter your web server’s address (e.g. http://192.168.1.x) in the Landing page address field.
Add your web server to the Walled Garden
This is the key step that’s likely missing. Unauthenticated Hotspot clients are blocked from reaching anything outside the Hotspot subnet by default. In the Walled Garden section of your Hotspot instance’s General Settings, add your web server’s IP address (192.168.1.x) to the list. This allows connecting clients to reach that address before authenticating, which is exactly what a landing page requires.
Without the Walled Garden entry, the router blocks the client’s attempt to load the external landing page - which explains the error you’re seeing.
You don’t need to move the Hotspot to the 192.168.1.0/24 subnet. Keeping it on a separate subnet (e.g. 192.168.2.0/24) and using Walled Garden is the intended approach.
For more information you can refer to this wiki article:
thank you for your response. I also thought of adding the IP address to the Walled Garden, however if i try to do that, i can’t safe the changes and instead recieve the error message: Domain names are accepted.
We don’t have a custom DNS, meaning i can’t set a domain name for this specific IP. Do i need to put the IP address in a certain format in order for it to work? (I tried 192.168.1.x, http://192.168.1.x)
are there any updates on this situation? I did some more digging and found the chilli file, where the domain names are stored.
I can manually add the IP-address, but this does not change anything, probably because there are supposed to be 2 files one containing IP-addresses and one containing domain names. But this is just a guess.
However the file and the option is only created dynamically depending on if a entry exists and since there is no option in the UI for an IP-list i still am troubled by this specific problem.
I have found the solution to my problem. If i don’t set a custom success page, just a custom landing page and use my routers IP as the main DNS server it seems to work. I dont know why but this is great news