Captive portal redirection by devices with no internet protocol connectivity in the host virtual local area network

A method for redirecting a user to a captive portal, the method comprising:

• trapping, by network device hardware, an incoming frame originating from a host, wherein the incoming frame comprises a layer 2 (L2) header and a payload, wherein the payload specifies information associated with an external server, wherein the user of the host has not been authenticated by the captive portal at a time when the incoming frame is trapped;
• extracting, by an L2 forwarder, the L2 header, an L3 header, and the payload from the incoming frame;
• forwarding, after the extracting, the L3 header and the payload towards a redirection server executing on the network device, wherein the redirection server is configured to generate a redirection response based on the payload;
• encapsulating the redirection response to obtain an L3 response packet;
• encapsulating the L3 response packet using information from the L2 header to obtain an output frame, wherein the L3 response packet comprises a second L3 header, wherein prior to encapsulating the L3 response packet the L3 header specifies an external server Internet Protocol (IP) address as a source IP address and a host IP as the destination IP address;
• and
• transmitting the output frame towards the host.