In many environments offering short-term or temporary Internet access (such as coffee shops), it is common to start new connections in a captive portal mode. This highly restricts what the user can do until the user has satisfied the captive portal conditions.

This document describes a DHCPv4 and DHCPv6 option and a Router Advertisement (RA) option to inform clients that they are behind some sort of captive portal enforcement device, and that they will need to satisfy the Captive Portal conditions to get Internet access.