Information About Central Web Authentication
Central web authentication offers the possibility to have a central device that acts as a web portal (in this example, the ISE). The major difference compared to the usual local web authentication is that it is shifted to Layer 2 along with MAC filtering or dot1x authentication. The concept also differs in that the radius server (ISE in this example) returns special attributes that indicate to the switch that a web redirection must occur. This solution eliminates any delay to start the web authentication.
Globally, if the MAC address of the client station is not known by the radius server (but other criteria can also be used), the server returns the redirection attributes, and the embedded wireless controller authorizes the station (using the MAC filtering) but places an access list to redirect the web traffic to the portal.
Once the user logs into the guest portal, it is possible to re-authenticate the client so that a new Layer 2 MAC filtering occurs using the Change of Authorization (CoA). This way, the ISE remembers that it was a webauth user and pushes the necessary authorization attributes to the embedded wireless controller for accessing the network.
Prerequisites for Central Web Authentication
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Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE)