Earlier quoted context omitted.
What would you suggest if someone wants payment for a water tab? Ever seen that? I think we should move towards considering Internet access as a general service that people make available for their guests/customers.
How do you see this scaling? Do you think hotels and restaurants can deliver reliable internet without charging for it? Is it reasonable to assume that companies that don't charge for wifi can afford the staff to make sure that users don't abuse it? I am considering your proposal & I don't see it working at all.
NeverSSL
111–120 of 212 posts
Re: NeverSSL
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
My iPhone constantly misses captive portals and I have to hunt for a non-ssl website. I can't say if it's 5% or 30% of networks, but enough to be frustrating. Does anyone know if it is common for apple.com to be whitelisted for iMessage or something?
The captive portal browser (pop-up on macOS, slide-over on iOS) doesn't support full JavaScript or cookies (or previously didn't, maybe that has changed), so some captive portals specifically allow the captive portal test domains through. There's actually a huge list of domains that macOS/iOS try: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/18891706/ios7-and-captive...
I have never seen a captive portal interceptor on MacOS (much to my disappointment), only iOS. Is there some setting I previously screwed up?
Re: NeverSSL
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
It shouldn't be too expensive for a restaurant to do. Although a restaurant can get by without wifi, most modern restaurants have it for managing OpenTable, monitoring yelp reviews, ordering supplies online, etc. I guess the signal might get a bit worse the farther away you get from the wifi router, but in general, providing wifi to customers shouldn't cost any additional money.
"It shouldn't be too expensive for a restaurant to do." Heck, most McDonalds restaurants have free wifi these days, and that's about as cheap as it comes.
Re: NeverSSL
#114example.com works as well. it doesnt redirect to https://example.com
Re: NeverSSL
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apple uses a large amount of domains to avoid this problem.
Really? My point was, I have no specific idea why, but I /constantly/ have problems. My solution is to go to a non-https website in Safari and use the clickthrough. It seems to be on certain networks (not just a % of the time on all networks). The experience has gotten a lot better. I see Apple's pop up covering a lot more corner cases, but after years I see have problems almost every time I travel.
Re: NeverSSL
#116It's sad, because these are the kinds of things that confuse the hell out of "common folk" and explaining requires explaining HTTPS, HSTS, how captive WiFi portals work, and then ultimately, why there isn't a better solution... which maybe doesn't have a great answer. I feel like this "workaround" site is designed to draw attention to the problem at hand more than it is meant to be useful for the task at hand?
Can I set one up on a home network with a regular router without WifiDog or some other OpenWRT firmware?
Maybe somehow use one of the computers on the network to run a DNS server that all requests go through??
Re: NeverSSL
#117This is handy. I was at an airport and was helping numerous people with android devices get through the wifi portals, and dealing with the same frustrating failure of the captive-portal redirect. Android is supposed to detect that there's a redirect and give you a notification that takes you to the login page, but it's very inconsistent. I usually use Xkcd for that purpose, one of the few lightweight non-ssl sites I…
Re: NeverSSL
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Do you think hotels and restaurants can deliver reliable internet without charging for it? Many do. I've never seen a restaurant charging for Wifi, and I've seen plenty offering it for free. Quality varies, some are good, some suck. Hotels are all over them map, but I just stayed at the hotel that advertises free high quality Wifi (and it indeed was fine) as one of the amenities. US-centric, of course, in some plac…
It shouldn't be too expensive for a restaurant to do. Although a restaurant can get by without wifi, most modern restaurants have it for managing OpenTable, monitoring yelp reviews, ordering supplies online, etc. I guess the signal might get a bit worse the farther away you get from the wifi router, but in general, providing wifi to customers shouldn't cost any additional money.
Re: NeverSSL
#119It's sad, because these are the kinds of things that confuse the hell out of "common folk" and explaining requires explaining HTTPS, HSTS, how captive WiFi portals work, and then ultimately, why there isn't a better solution... which maybe doesn't have a great answer. I feel like this "workaround" site is designed to draw attention to the problem at hand more than it is meant to be useful for the task at hand?
How DO captive wifi portals work? Can I set one up on a home network with a regular router without WifiDog or some other OpenWRT firmware? Maybe somehow use one of the computers on the network to run a DNS server that all requests go through??