Netsweeper captive portal

[Badaz52]

Hi everyone,

 

We are having a random problem with the captive portal on netsweeper. We use the workstation agent on all of our managed workstations but randomly users get redirected to the captive portal despite being authenticated into the correct group on the workstation agent. Hovering over the icon in the system tray we can see that it is authenticated to the correct group but it still comes up. This stops emails and all sorts of things from running properly in the background.

 

The captive portal should only pop up when the workstation agent is not present.

 

Has anyone else had this issue as support have been unable to resolve thus far.

 

Cheers

[Joanne]

Are you with BTLS? There were rumours that there was going to be a new agent released. Have you tried re-downloading the agent (incase it's different somehow) and testing it on an affected machine?

[Badaz52]

Are you with BTLS? There were rumours that there was going to be a new agent released. Have you tried re-downloading the agent (incase it's different somehow) and testing it on an affected machine?

 

SBB, I'm using the latest agent to my knowledge 3.12.9.9 which was released in March.

[caffrey]

Is that the newer one where you have to rename all the security groups in AD with SBB at the start ?

[Badaz52]

Yes that is correct. We are about a month into our new contract and its far from perfect.

[caffrey]

I haven't even got started as we ran into issues with Radius

[Joanne]

do you use the captive portal for visitors or BYOD? Because if not you could disable it?

[Netsweeper]

Hello, it sounds like there might be a configuration issue with your WAgent installation. From your symptoms, it sounds like the initial client/IP registration is expiring after a period of time. The Wagent is typically configured with a retransmission timer set to half that period, this guarantees that the client/IP registration is always refreshed before the expiry time. The values are configurable. Therefore, you will need to work through your normal support channels with your service provider so that they can diagnose your issue properly.

[Badaz52]

Hello, it sounds like there might be a configuration issue with your WAgent installation. From your symptoms, it sounds like the initial client/IP registration is expiring after a period of time. The Wagent is typically configured with a retransmission timer set to half that period, this guarantees that the client/IP registration is always refreshed before the expiry time. The values are configurable. Therefore, you will need to work through your normal support channels with your service provider so that they can diagnose your issue properly.

 

I did ask for the captive portal to be set to 2 hours, can this be set independently from the wagent or is it one rule for all? The issue does seem to present itself when people have left their computers on and gone home for the evening so I think you are right.

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

do you use the captive portal for visitors or BYOD? Because if not you could disable it?

 

Yes we need it for BYOD.

[Netsweeper]

They are two different things. The captive portal can be thought of as the "backstop" or catch-all. If the connecting client does not have an identity already (because it has expired) it will be matched by its IP address only, usually against a subnet entry. The match against the subnet will place that device into the filtering group that triggers the captive portal. There are many combinations of methods that can be used to obtain "identity", and there are many permutations. Each Netsweeper platform operator will deploy in a slightly different way that they believe is best for their customers and their methods of support. This is why it is important to follow up with your service provider.

[andyfield]

The response I got from SBB is that users are required to login every day as the agent will time out... If you have captive portal enabled like me when the agent expires they are then presented with the portal (as expected)