What you get

What this equipment can do

Three things decide what a venue actually gets. The first two are the same everywhere in this list. The third is where equipment differs, and it is the reason each page says so plainly.

Your own sign-in page

Your logo, your colours, your welcome message, in the guest's own language — and every way in you have switched on, from room number and surname to a tap on Google.

Plans that are enforced

Speed, time limit and how many devices each guest may bring, applied by the equipment itself rather than being a promise on a page.

Checkout ends the session

When your front desk reports a departure, the guest is taken offline there and then — not at the end of their time limit. Nobody has to remember to do anything.

How the equipment talks to us: The equipment makes its own encrypted connection out to us and asks about each guest as they sign in. Nothing needs opening up on your broadband.

Before your installer starts

What has to be true first

None of this is work we do for you — it is the state the equipment needs to be in before the short part begins. A step that fails for something on this list is a wasted visit, which is why it is here rather than buried in a manual.

Not sure whether your site meets it? Send us a photo of the equipment and we will tell you.

Checklist

FortiOS 7.4 or later for the encrypted connection. Earlier releases can only be given a shared password.
Administrator access with rights over the authentication settings, and command-line access — some of the settings this needs are not in the graphical interface.
The guest network existing and handing out addresses. A sign-in page on a network with no working address service fails in a way that looks like a portal fault and is not one.
Knowing whether guests are handled by the FortiGate or by the access points. Everything here assumes the FortiGate, which is the usual arrangement.

Worth knowing

The things that catch people out

Every make has its own quirks. These are the ones that matter on Fortinet FortiGate — not because they are problems, but because knowing them in advance turns a site visit into a short one.

Part of this is typed, not clicked. FortiOS does not put the encrypted-connection settings on any screen — they exist only at the command line. Your console writes out the exact lines for your property, but somebody still has to be comfortable pasting them into a FortiGate. On a site with nobody like that, this is one of the makes where it is worth asking us to do the setup.

Two settings that only work as a pair. The name that tells two buildings on one property apart is sent only if a second setting is also moved off its default. Change one without the other and the FortiGate ignores the name without complaining, so both buildings report under whatever the box is called instead — and the numbers for the beach bar and the main block arrive as one figure.

Rule order decides whether a signed-in guest gets online. A FortiGate reads its rules from the top down. If the rule that lets signed-in guests out to the internet sits below the one holding everybody at the sign-in page, the guest signs in successfully and still has nothing. No portal setting will fix it; it is the order of two lines, and it is the usual reason a FortiGate site looks broken while the sign-in itself is working perfectly.

The setup

How it goes on the day

Roughly half an hour on a straightforward site, most of it waiting for equipment to restart. Your console writes out every value for your property in advance — there is nothing to work out and nothing to invent.

Add the equipment in your console

You register the router, controller or access point in your Resort Manager Hotspot console. It generates everything the following steps need — the address of your sign-in page, the credentials, the settings — already filled in with your property's own values. Nobody copies a setting out of a manual and nobody types a password twice.

Let guests reach the sign-in page

A guest who has not signed in yet has no internet, so the equipment is given a short list of addresses that stay open regardless — the sign-in page among them. Your console writes that list out in the exact form this equipment expects.

Connect it to us

The equipment makes an encrypted connection out to us, proving who it is with a certificate we issue. It dials out, so nothing has to be opened up on your broadband, and the certificate is renewed before it expires with a reminder in the console.

Point the guest network at your sign-in page

The guest Wi-Fi is set to open, with your branded page in place of the equipment's own. Usage recording is switched on at the same time — that is both your reporting and, in the countries that require it, the connection log you are obliged to keep.

Prove it with a real phone

Join the network on a phone, sign in, and watch the session appear in your console. Then end that session from the console and confirm the phone drops. The last step is the proof — everything before it can look right while the checkout half is not working.

Other equipment

Comparing makes?

Most sites come down to a choice between two or three of these. The pages below cover the ones closest to Fortinet FortiGate.

Connects the same way

Equipment that reaches us by the same route, so the same things have to be true at the property: ExtremeCloud IQ Controller · MikroTik hAP or cAP — one box for a small site · MikroTik (RouterOS) · Ruckus SmartZone

All 40 supported makes →