Portal Captive page does not appear except with Firefox

nicolas.pissard

Hi,

We are having a problem with the captive portal on pfsense 2.7.

When you connect to wifi, the captive portal page is offered with Firefox.
With Chrome or Edge, it is not offered.

If I enter an HTTP URL in Chrome or Edge, the captive portal page is displayed.

Can you help me find out where the problem is?

I thank you in advance for any help you can give me.

Sincerely

Gertjan

@nicolas-pissard said in Portal Captive page does not appear except with Firefox:

Can you help me find out where the problem is?
If I enter an HTTP URL in Chrome or Edge, the captive portal page is displayed

DNS seems to work.

When you connect a device to a network that is also a captive portal, right after the DHCP sequence, it will emit a http (not https) request. Every OS uses its own http URL for that. This will happen in the background, without any action from your side (no browsers running at that moment).

You should see that URL request here : Status > System Logs > System > GUI Service.

I will have to bring in my laptop tomorrow, a Windows 11 device, and it has "Edge" as far as I can tell.
( Chrome : sorry - not for me. I love Google, but not at that point )

I'll do some test tomorrow morning, and report back here.

nicolas.pissard

@Gertjan

Thanks you for your help

Gertjan

@nicolas-pissard

I didn't forget your question. I did forget to bring my laptop. I'll get back to you.

Gertjan

@Gertjan

I had my "Windows 11" laptop this morning, so I could do some testing.

I connected to to the portal wifi, and the login page showed up right away, using my default browser, Firefox.
Humm. Great, but not what I wanted to see. Other might have another browser after all.
I fired up Edge manually. The good new was : I saw the portal login page right away.
I told Edge that he was now the elected Default browser, and restart the PC.
I connected to the portal wifi again, and now Edge opened with the portal login page right away.

My browser us the PC's DNS obtained by DHCP. No DoH or something like that.

I don't have / want / use other browsers.

nicolas.pissard

Thank you for this feedback.

Correct me if I'm wrong but the normal process for the captive portal is as follows (on Windows 10 22H2) :

step 1: action of connection to public wifi
step 2: the PC obtains an IP address from DHCP
step 3: the Windows system attempts to connect to a url "www.msftconnecttest.com" with the LNASvc service (NCSI probe)
step 4a: the captive portal "captures" the previous HTTP connection attempt and opens the default browser. The captive portal login page opens.
step 4b: launch the browser by entering an HTTP URL and the captive portal page is displayed

My problem is that step 4a is not done. The default browser does not open. Unlike I can successfully perform step 4b.

The fact that the browser does not open is a problem for BYOD.
We cannot configure user devices...

I don't know if this is a problem related to PfSense...but in other establishments, it works with the same configuration...