Captive Portal & Automated Subscriber Suspension for ISPs
Chasing overdue subscribers and manually disabling accounts is one of the least productive tasks in an ISP's day. A captive portal combined with automated suspension handles the entire expiry lifecycle — fairly, consistently, and without staff intervention.
How Automated Suspension Works
When a subscriber's service expires, the system moves them into a blocked state at the router level (for both PPPoE and DHCP customers) and redirects their traffic to a captive portal. Instead of simply losing connectivity, the customer sees a clear payment page explaining what to do.
- Expiry detection runs on a schedule and flags subscribers whose plan has lapsed.
- Verified block — the customer's IP is added to the router's blocked list, and the block is confirmed before the account is marked suspended.
- Captive portal intercepts web traffic and presents payment options.
- Auto-reconnect — once payment is received, the block is removed and service restores automatically.
Grace Periods That Keep Customers Happy
Rigid cut-offs frustrate good customers who are a day late. A configurable grace-period extension lets a subscriber grant themselves a short reconnection (for example 24 hours) directly from the portal, after which the system re-blocks automatically if payment hasn't arrived.
Reconciliation Keeps DB and Router in Sync
Networks drift — routers reboot, entries get lost, customers renew. A reconciliation job continuously aligns the billing database with the router's blocked lists: renewed customers are unblocked and cleared, while genuinely expired ones are re-synced if their block went missing. Manual admin blocks are always respected and never touched.
The Result
Collections improve because reminders are impossible to ignore, support load drops because customers self-serve payment, and staff stop spending hours toggling accounts by hand. The whole expiry-to-reconnect cycle runs end-to-end on its own.