Introduction
There are multiple ways of doing Web Authentication on the WLC. The first one is Local Web Authentication. In this case, the WLC will redirect the HTTP Traffic to an internal or external server where the user will be prompted to authenticate. The WLC will then fetch this credentials (sent back via HTTP GET Request in case of external server), and make a radius authentication. In case of guest user, we need an external server (like ISE or NGS), as the portal can provide some feature like Device Registering, Self Provisionning, ...
The flow would be the following:
-User associate to the Web Auth SSID
-User starts its browser
-The WLC Redirect to the guest portal (ISE/NGS)
-The user authenticate on the portal
-The Guest Portal redirect back to the WLC with the credentials entered
-The WLC Authenticate the guest user via Radius
-The WLC Redirects back to the original URL.
That makes a lot of redirection. The new approach is to use Central Web Authentication. This works with ISE > 1.1 and WLC > 7.2.
The flow in this case would be:
-User associate to the Web Auth SSID
-User starts its browser
-The WLC Redirect to the guest portal (ISE)
-The user authenticate on the portal
-The ISE send a Radius Change Of Authorization (CoA - UDP Port 3799) to indicate to the controller that the user is valid, and eventually push radius attributes (ACL for example).
-The User is prompted to retry his original URL
Setup Used
The version used are:
ISE: 1.1.1.268
WLC: 7.2.110.0
WLC Configuration
The WLC Configuration is pretty straight-forward. We uses a "trick" (same as on Switches) to get the dynamic authentication URL from the ISE (as it is using CoA, a session needs to be created, and the session ID is part of the URL). We need to configure the SSID to use MAC Filtering. We will configure the ISE to return an access-accept even if the mac address is not found, so that it will sends the redirection URL for all users.
In addition to this, we need to enable Radius NAC and AAA Override. The Radius NAC allows the ISE to send a CoA Request to indicate that the user is now authenticated and can access the network. It is also used for Posture Assessment, in which case the ISE would change the user profile based on posture result.
We need also to be sure that the radius server have RFC 3576 (CoA) enabled, which is by default.
The final step is to create a Redirect-ACL. This ACL will be referenced in the access-accept of the ISE and will define what traffic should be redirected (denied by ACL), and what traffic shouldn't (permitted by the ACL). Basically, we need to permit DNS and traffic to/from ISE.
Everthing is now complete on the WLC. Let's configure the ISE
ISE Configuration
On the ISE, we need to make authorization profile, and then we can configure authentication and authorization. The WLC should already configured as a network device.
In the authorization profile, we need to put the name of the ACL has been created earlier on the WLC:
Now, we need to make sure the ISE is accepting all the MAC Authentication from the WLC and return the profile:
We can use the Built-In Wireless MAB condition, which match :
-Radius:Service-Type : Call Check (Mac Authorization use Call Check on WLC and Switches).
-Radius:NAS-Port-Type: Wireless - IEEE 802.11
Now, we need to configure the authorization. One important thing to understand is that there will be 2 authentication / authorization:
-One when the user associate to the SSID, and when we need to return the cwa profile
-Another when the user authenticate on the web portal. This one will match the default rule (internal users), in my situation (you can configure it as you want). What is important is that the authorization part doesn't match the CWA Profile again, otherwise we would have a redirection loop. We can use the attribute "Network Access:UseCase Equals Guest Flow" to match this second authentication.
The result looks like this:
Test
Once we associate to the SSID, we can see the auth in the ISE page:
And if we check the client details in the WLC, we can see the Redirection URL and ACL are applied:
Now, when we open any address on the client, we are redirected to our ISE (be careful to have DNS setup correctly).
Then the user needs to accept the policies, and then it will be granted access to the network.
If we look back at my ISE, we can now see the authentication, the change of authorization, and that the profile applied is permitAccess:
On the controller, the Policy Manager State and Radius NAC State should change from "POSTURE_REQD" to "RUN"
Hello Cristian,
As far as I know, the guest sessions should be visible once the guest users logs in. You may open a TAC case to sort this if you can reproduce this behaviour.
Otherwise, ISE 1.2 has greatly improved the redirection process for external Web Auth on WLC, as it pushes back credentials over POST, and no longer via iFrames as depending on certificate trust and browser configuration, this used to have some issues.
Note: I have also tested this in ISE 1.2, I could see my guest users in the active sessions with CWA:
