Wireless Access

We are having an issues where there is a signficiant delay between adding a new device to wifi and the authentication successfully happening so that the device can actually connect to the internet.  Once past the propagation delay (which can be several hours), devices work fine.  Any tips on troubleshooting?  

For the sake of clarity, the typical timeline we see is:
-Associate (successfully) with the wifi
-Web request redirects to the portal
-Enter PIN, portal accepts the PIN.
-Web requests no longer redirect to the portal, but no traffic at all gets out to/in from the internet.
-Wait anywhere from several minutes to several hours
-External network traffic starts flowing and everything works as expected.

Might you be switching VLAN, so you assign a different VLAN before and after the captive portal authentication? In that case, your client is placed in a different VLAN and needs to get a new IP address, however it does not know it has to.. so it will try to use the old (pre-authentication) IP, and only on a DHCP timeout it will get a new IP in the new VLAN.

What also may help others in answering your question is what equipment are you using? WLAN? Captive portal? Authentication server? Versions? What authentication methods have you configured?

Without that info, it may be difficult to provide guidance. May be it is good, if it is Aruba equipment, to open a Aruba TAC case through your partner, so someone from TAC can look with you how to configure this properly.