Working on industrial job sites over the past couple of years, I keep running into the same pattern: enterprise-grade network infrastructure paired with a very basic captive portal experience.

You connect to the Wi-Fi and get the default splash page; simple username/password, limited visibility, no real integration points, and awkward session timeouts where unconfigured DNS revokes you from random websites without warning. In 2026, when you’re deploying IoT devices, commissioning controllers, or testing systems on-site, this is just pure friction.

Instead of focusing on automation, integration, and monitoring, I find myself writing these small PowerShell scripts just to handle authentication loops, keep sessions alive, or simulate form submissions for headless devices that don't have a browser to render the splash page anyway. It’s not complex engineering; it’s just unnecessary overhead.

There’s still a massive gap between powerful network infrastructure and developer-friendly access at the edge. For teams working in BAS (Building Automation Systems), industrial automation, or IoT-heavy environments, captive portals should be programmable and automation-friendly by default. Until that becomes a standard feature, we’re stuck scripting around it.

Have you ever experienced that captive portal nightmare for your IoT devices?