Captive Portal API

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Table of Contents

1. Introduction

This document describes a HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) Application Program Interface (API) that allows clients to interact with a Captive Portal system. The API defined in this document has been designed to meet the requirements in the Captive Portal Architecture [I-D.ietf-capport-architecture]. Specifically, the API provides:¶

• The state of captivity (whether or not the client has access to the Internet)¶
• A URI that a client browser can present to a user to get out of captivity¶
• An encrypted connection (using TLS for connections to both the API and user portal)¶

2. Terminology

This document leverages the terminology and components described in [I-D.ietf-capport-architecture] and additionally defines the following terms:¶

• Captive Portal Client: The client that interacts with the Captive Portal API is typically some application running on the User Equipment that is connected to the Captive Network. This is also referred to as the "client" in this document.¶
• Captive Portal API Server: The server exposing the API's defined in this document to the client. This is also referred to as the "API server" in this document.¶

3. Workflow

The Captive Portal Architecture defines several categories of interaction between clients and Captive Portal systems:¶

1. Provisioning, in which a client discovers that a network has a captive portal, and learns the URI of the API server.¶
2. API Server interaction, in which a client queries the state of the captive portal and retrieves the necessary information to get out of captivity.¶
3. Enforcement, in which the enforcement device in the network blocks disallowed traffic.¶

This document defines the mechanisms used in the second category. It is assumed that the location of the Captive Portal API server has been discovered by the client as part of Provisioning. A set of mechanisms for discovering the API Server endpoint is defined in [I-D.ietf-capport-rfc7710bis].¶

4. API Connection Details

The API server endpoint MUST be accessed using HTTP over TLS (HTTPS) and SHOULD be served on port 443 [RFC2818]. The client SHOULD NOT assume that the URI for a given network attachment will stay the same, and SHOULD rely on the discovery or provisioning process each time it joins the network.¶

For example, if the Captive Portal API server is hosted at "example.org", the URI of the API could be "https://example.org/captive-portal/api"¶

As described in Section 3 of [I-D.ietf-capport-architecture], the identity of the client needs to be visible to the Captive Portal API server in order for the server to correctly reply with the client's portal state. If the identifier used by the Captive Portal system is the client's IP address, the system needs to ensure that the same IP address is visible to both the API server and the enforcement device.¶

If the API server needs information about the client identity that is not otherwise visible to it, the URI provided to the client during provisioning can be distinct per client. Thus, depending on how the Captive Portal system is configured, the URI might be unique for each client host and between sessions for the same client host.¶

For example, a Captive Portal system that uses per-client session URIs could use "https://example.org/captive-portal/api/X54PD" as its API URI.¶

5. API State Structure

The Captive Portal API data structures are specified in JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) [RFC8259]. Requests and responses for the Captive Portal API use the "application/captive+json" media type. Clients SHOULD include this media type as an Accept header in their GET requests, and servers MUST mark this media type as their Content-Type header in responses.¶

The following key MUST be included in the top-level of the JSON structure returned by the API server:¶

• "captive" (boolean): indicates whether the client is in a state of captivity, i.e it has not satisfied the conditions to access the external network. If the client is captive (i.e. captive=true), it can still be allowed enough access for it to perform server authentication Section 4.1.¶

The following keys can be optionally included in the top-level of the JSON structure returned by the API server:¶

• "user-portal-url" (string): provides the URL of a web portal with which a user can interact.¶
• "venue-info-url" (string): provides the URL of a webpage or site on which the operator of the network has information that it wishes to share with the user (e.g., store info, maps, flight status, or entertainment).¶
• "can-extend-session" (boolean): indicates that the URL specified as "user-portal-url" allows the user to extend a session once the client is no longer in a state of captivity. This provides a hint that a client system can suggest accessing the portal URL to the user when the session is near its limit in terms of time or bytes.¶
• "seconds-remaining" (integer): indicates the number of seconds remaining, after which the client will be placed into a captive state. The API server SHOULD include this value if the client is not captive (i.e. captive=false) and the client session is time-limited, and SHOULD omit this value for captive clients (i.e. captive=true).¶
• "bytes-remaining" (integer): indicates the number of bytes remaining, after which the client will be in placed into a captive state. The byte count represents the sum of the total number of IP packet (layer 3) bytes sent and received by the client. Captive portal systems might not count traffic to whitelisted servers, such as the API server, but clients cannot rely on such behavior. The API server SHOULD include this value if the client is not captive (i.e. captive=false) and the client session is byte-limited, and SHOULD omit this value for captive clients (i.e. captive=true).¶

The valid JSON keys can be extended by adding entries to the Captive Portal API Keys Registry Section 8. If a client receives a key that it does not recognize, it MUST ignore the key and any associated values. All keys other than the ones defined in this document as "required" will be considered optional.¶

6. Example Interaction

A client connected to a captive network upon discovering the URI of the API server will query the API server to retrieve information about its captive state and conditions to escape captivity. To request the Captive Portal JSON content, a client sends an HTTP GET request:¶

GET /captive-portal/api/X54PD
Host: example.org
Accept: application/captive+json

The server then responds with the JSON content for that client:¶

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Cache-Control: private
Date: Mon, 02 Mar 2020 05:07:35 GMT
Content-Type: application/captive+json

{
   "captive": true,
   "user-portal-url": "https://example.org/portal.html",
   "venue-info-url": "https://flight.example.com/entertainment",
   "seconds-remaining": 326,
   "can-extend-session": true
}

Upon receiving this information the client will provide this information to the user so that they may navigate the web portal (as specified by the user-portal-url value) to enable access to the external network. Once the user satisfies the requirements for extenal network access, the client SHOULD query the API server again to verify that it is no longer captive.¶

Captive Portal JSON content can contain per-client data that is not appropriate to store in an intermediary cache. Captive Portal API servers SHOULD set the Cache-Control header in any responses to "private", or a more restrictive value [RFC7234].¶

7. Security Considerations

One of the goals of this protocol is to improve the security of the communication between client hosts and Captive Portal systems. Client traffic is protected from passive listeners on the local network by requiring TLS-encrypted connections between the client and the Captive Portal API server, as described in Section 4. All communication between the clients and the API server MUST be encrypted.¶

In addition to encrypting communications between clients and Captive Portal systems, this protocol requires a basic level of authentication from the API server, as described in Section 4.1. Specifically, the API server MUST present a valid certificate on which the client can perform revocation checks. This allows the client to ensure that the API server has authority for a hostname that can be presented to a user.¶

It is important to note that while the server authentication checks can validate a specific hostname, it is certainly possible for the API server to present a valid certificate for a hostname that uses non-standard characters or is otherwise designed to trick the user into believing that its hostname is some other, more trustworthy, name. This is a danger of any scenario in which a hostname is not typed in by a user.¶

8. IANA Considerations

IANA is requested to create a registration for an "application/captive+json" media type (Section 8.1) and a registry for fields in that format (Section 8.2).¶

9. Acknowledgments

This work in this document was started by Mark Donnelly and Margaret Cullen. Thanks to everyone in the CAPPORT Working Group who has given input.¶

Authors' Addresses