Use a Mikrotik and VLAN configuration with your access points
If we are unable to deploy our Guest WiFi service on your existing hardware natively, but your hardware does support VLAN configuration we can supply a Mikrotik device.
Our Mikrotik is designed to act as the Guest WiFi hotspot on your network. It is supplied pre-configured with our captive portal settings; such as our RADIUS servers, walled garden domains and redirect URLs.
We use a VLAN tag to separate the Guest WiFi traffic, so the Mikrotik will act as the gateway router for members of the public; restricting access to the internet before they have logged in via the captive portal and allowing full access afterwards.
📌 Note: We use VLAN 50 by the default, but this can be changed to match any existing VLAN on your current public SSID.
Our Mikrotik will need to be connected via our WAN port to an available LAN port on your switch, so that it can receive a DHCP lease from your gateway.
You will then need to make sure your switch ports are allowing our VLAN through so that we can communicate with the access points also connected to the switch.
The Mikrotik is configured so that it only processes assigned public VLAN traffic and any other traffic will be invisible. Therefore, your other internal networks will remain separate to the guest traffic.
Once the Mikrotik is installed and the guest VLAN configured, customers will receive an IP from the Mikrotik on the range 10.5.200.X and then be presented with our splash page to sign up to the guest WiFi and gain access to the wider internet.
Configuration steps
Below is a breakdown of the basic configuration steps needed from your side once the Mikrotik has been installed:
Allow the Mikrotik to take a single IP via DHCP on the standard/non-VLAN range. This should be the same as you access points.
Disable DHCP operating on VLAN 50 to allow our Mikrotik to issue leases.
Trunk VLAN 50 to the access point ports and the Mikrotik port on your switch - this is to allow the VLAN to pass from the access points to our Mikrotik.
Disable any existing captive portal settings on your controller - if applied.
⚠️ Important: VLAN 50 is the default VLAN tag we use. We can change this to match any existing set up, but you'll need to remember to disable DHCP on your guest VLAN to allow the Mikrotik to take over.