Wi-Fi Hotspots & Captive Access

Learn how Nukta manages Wi-Fi hotspots, captive portals, packages, device limits, vouchers, Fair Use Policies, and walled gardens.

Managed Wi-Fi hotspot access

Nukta provides fully managed Wi-Fi hotspot access for your MikroTik routers. When you provision a router, Nukta automatically configures the Hotspot services, RADIUS authentication, accounting hooks, and walled gardens on the device — eliminating tedious manual WinBox setup wizards.

As an ISP, you manage everything directly from your Nukta dashboard: packages, branding, customer limits, payment gateways, and live sessions.

How the customer experience works

Join Open Wi-Fi: Walk-in customers connect to your broadcast Wi-Fi SSID from their smartphone, tablet, laptop, or Smart TV.
Branded Captive Portal: The device automatically opens your branded captive portal displaying your company logo, custom theme, and available internet packages.
Flexible Authentication: Customers can activate access using multiple convenient channels:
- Online Payment: Purchasing a plan via enabled payment gateways (such as Paystack, Kopo Kopo, or mobile money).
- Voucher Codes: Entering a prepaid voucher or SMS voucher PIN.
- Existing Credentials: Signing in with an existing account username and PIN.
- Free Trial: Accessing a one-time promotional trial if enabled.
- Smart TV Pairing: Scanning a QR code on a television screen to authorize browserless devices.
Instant Internet Access: Once authorized, Nukta links the device's MAC address and dynamically enforces the plan's upload/download speed limits.

Hotspot settings in numbers

Nukta gives you precise operational control over hotspot service behavior:

Devices Per Account: Configured on each package in Finance → Packages (from 1 to 50 concurrent devices, defaulting to 1). When the device limit is reached, the captive portal informs the customer to disconnect an existing device or upgrade.
Rate Limits (Upload/Download): Bandwidth limits are formatted upload first, then download (e.g., 2M/10M represents 2 Mbps upload and 10 Mbps download). Nukta dynamically pushes these queues to the router upon login.
Free Trial Eligibility: Free Trial packages can be configured to offer access once per device, or allow re-trials after an interval of 1 to 365 days.
Fair Use Policy (FUP): Apply automated bandwidth throttling or access blocking when a customer exceeds fair consumption thresholds. FUP can be configured to reset with each purchase or daily at midnight.
Accounting Reporting Intervals: Your router reports real-time session bandwidth every 5 minutes for capped data plans, and every 15 minutes for standard unlimited time-based packages.
Disconnect Until Purchase: An operational action on any active session in Users → Active Users. Terminates the session immediately and requires the customer to purchase a fresh plan before reconnecting.

Walled garden & payment reachability

A Walled Garden allows walk-in customers to access payment gateway checkout pages, mobile money APIs, and portal assets before they have purchased an internet package.

With Nukta, you never have to manually write firewall or walled garden rules. Nukta automates this:

Whenever you connect a new payment gateway under Settings → Payments, Nukta updates the permitted endpoints automatically.
To refresh all payment domains and CDN endpoints on your router, open Devices → Mikrotiks, open the router action menu, and click Sync Walled Garden.

Managing active hotspot sessions

From Users → Active Users, your team has live visibility and control over all connected hotspot clients:

Live Speed Streaming: Monitor real-time upload and download speeds streaming from each device.
Session Details: Inspect customer identities, leased IP addresses, physical MAC addresses, and uptime.
Graceful Disconnect (Kick): Cleanly tears down a session. If the customer's package is still valid, their device reconnects automatically within seconds with fresh queues.

Choosing the right access model

Requirement	Recommended Customer Type	Access Path
Public Wi-Fi with package checkout	Hotspot	Captive portal pop-up, online payments, voucher PIN.
Voucher-based guest internet	Hotspot	Prepaid voucher codes issued to walk-in guests or sold via agents.
Fixed devices with reserved IPs (CCTV, printers)	Binding	Uses the Hotspot network path with MAC bypass and reserved IP.
Fixed residential fiber / wireless CPE	PPPoE	Dedicated username/password configured on client home router.