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Meraki Captive Portal with Azure Active Directory

This Node.js app was created to facilitate the authorization of users registered on an Azure Active Directory with Meraki wireless infrastructures. Instead of using a RADIUS server for the authentication, you can spin up a web server that will be serving as your Captive Portal, which will then authenticate the user using OAuth

References

This application and the step by step below were created / cloned based on the code provided by Microsoft, hosted here. Additionally, the information available at Meraki's documentation about building your own JavaScript captive portal. For the sake of simplicity, I removed any MongoDB action, but if you want to store user information somewhere, the original service provided by Azure gives you that flexibility.

Quick Start

In order to work with Meraki's captive portal, your server will need to run on a publicly available IP, i.e., you will need to host it out in the Internet. There are several alternatives to address this. For development purposes, I recommend using ngrok, which will create introspectable tunnels to your localhost. For production environments, I'd use Heroku, which is a PAAS that has a free tier of service. For the Heroku option, I'm including the required configuration file (ProcFile).

Getting Started on Heroku with Node.js - Getting started guide
ngrok - How it works

If you're using ngrok, run this command:

$ ngrok http 3000

Once you have the public URL where the server will run, take note of that. I'll refer to it as http://public-url.example.com on this document.

Meraki Dashboard Setup

The steps below were copied from Meraki's official documentation Configuring a Custom-Hosted Splash Page

Configure Access Control

In Dashboard, navigate to Configure > Access control.
Select the SSID you want to configure from the SSID drop-down.
Under Network access > Association requirements, choose "Open", "WPA2," or "WEP."
Under Network access > Network sign-on method, choose "Click-through splash page" or "Sign-on splash page."
Enable walled garden (located under Network access > Walled garden) and enter the public IP address or domain name of your web server.
Click "Save Changes."

Enabling a Custom-Hosted Splash page on the Meraki Cloud

Navigate to Configure > Splash page
Select the SSID you want to configure from the SSID drop-down.
Under Custom splash URL select the radio button Or provide a URL where users will be redirected:
Type the URL of your custom splash page:
http://public-url.example.com/login
Click Save Changes.

Azure Setup

As seen on https://github.com/AzureADQuickStarts/WebApp-OpenIDConnect-NodeJS

Step 1: Register an Azure AD Tenant

To use this sample you will need a Windows Azure Active Directory Tenant. If you're not sure what a tenant is or how you would get one, read What is an Azure AD tenant? or Sign up for Azure as an organization. These docs should get you started on your way to using Windows Azure AD.

Step 2: Download node.js for your platform

To successfully use this sample, you need a working installation of Node.js.

Step 3: Download the Sample application and modules

Next, clone the sample repo and install the NPM.

From your shell or command line:

$ clone this git https://github.com/rafael-carvalho/meraki-azure-ad
$ npm install

Step 4: Configure your server

Provide the parameters in exports.creds in config.js as instructed.
Update exports.destroySessionUrl in config.js, if you want to use a different post_logout_redirect_uri.

Step 5: Run the application

Run the app. Use the following command in terminal.

$ node app.js

You're done!

You will have a server successfully running on http://localhost:3000.

User Experience

When the user selects the configured wireless SSID, a splash page will be shown prompting for their Azure AD Credentials.

Written by

Rafael Carvalho
2018
http://www.linkedin.com/in/rafaelloureirodecarvalho