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Guest WiFi using a QR code

blog.jgc.org

211–220 of 284 posts

Re: Guest WiFi using a QR code

#211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hadn't even occurred to me since my phone will hand any WiFi it's connected to off to my computer.

What's your workflow for this?

Step one: use an iPhone and Mac.

Basically, no step two. Putting a password into a WiFi network is an at-most-once thing.

Re: Guest WiFi using a QR code

#212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The proprietary Apple way is honestly the best but only works inside their system. You just try to join the wifi network and if the wifi owner has you as a contact they will get a popup requesting permission to the wifi and you tap accept and its done.

To be pedantic, it doesn't require the owner to give permission. It'll get it from anyone else near enough who has it on their device. My kids give away our primary WiFi to their friends with some annoying regularity, even though I keep telling them to scan the QR code on the wall for the guest network.

It definitely asks for permission, and only prompts mutual contacts to begin with, as far as I know.

Re: Guest WiFi using a QR code

#214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Data is expensive in QR land or your resulting QR code becomes larger in size, requiring more physical space to display. URL encoding has a lot of overhead. Also '\' escaping has preceded the existence of URLs. I'm not sure who is doing the reinventing here.

Only encoded characters take up more space and you don't have to escape: quotation mark, semicolon, comma, colon or backslash. So I think the difference is small. QR codes can contain quite a bit more information than what's needed for WIFI name and password.

QR code is not particularly dense (like compared to something like a hard drive) - why waste space that could not be put towards more redundancy (error correction)?

Re: Guest WiFi using a QR code

#215

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Has this really happened to you? I got the WiFi QR printed and hanged in my living room, and to this day nobody has ever had a problem. QR might seem too techie, but they are so pervasive that everyone knows how to use them.

> but they are so pervasive that everyone knows how to use them. Nope. I know people first-hand who don't. Hell, even I don't know how the average person does it. My own phone's camera app doesn't detect them so I had to find a random 3rd party app and trust that it's not stealing the info. In fact I'm not sure I've ever used the stock camera app on any phone to scan a QR code before. For some folks it might be "pres…

Wow, people like to shit on Apple, but this is yet another example of something that just works.

Re: Guest WiFi using a QR code

#216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but they are so pervasive that everyone knows how to use them. Nope. I know people first-hand who don't. Hell, even I don't know how the average person does it. My own phone's camera app doesn't detect them so I had to find a random 3rd party app and trust that it's not stealing the info. In fact I'm not sure I've ever used the stock camera app on any phone to scan a QR code before. For some folks it might be "pres…

Wow, people like to shit on Apple, but this is yet another example of something that just works.

Android phones might all do this now for all I know, I have no idea. My phone is a few years old so hard to say.

Re: Guest WiFi using a QR code

#217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be pedantic, it doesn't require the owner to give permission. It'll get it from anyone else near enough who has it on their device. My kids give away our primary WiFi to their friends with some annoying regularity, even though I keep telling them to scan the QR code on the wall for the guest network.

Why have a non-'guest' network? Force anything secure over a proper VPN E.G. wireguard.

Hadn't really considered that. A bit inconvenient, I don't know that I'd want to VPN inside my own network just to access my servers.

Re: Guest WiFi using a QR code

#218
post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be pedantic, it doesn't require the owner to give permission. It'll get it from anyone else near enough who has it on their device. My kids give away our primary WiFi to their friends with some annoying regularity, even though I keep telling them to scan the QR code on the wall for the guest network.

It definitely asks for permission, and only prompts mutual contacts to begin with, as far as I know.

It asks the sender for permission, which is not the same as asking the WiFi owner. My kids have their friends as contacts, so it happily shares with them.

Re: Guest WiFi using a QR code

#219
post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay so how do I find out the wifi password of a network an iOS device is connected to, using that device? On android it’s easy: go to Wi-Fi settings, hit “share”, show QR code.

That's just a normal security feature, passwords are input only. Just because Android lets you read them doesn't make it an ideal choice or any kind of standard. Besides, I don't want my kids to get the password from their devices and then share with their friends. And how would that constitute lock-in anyway?

you are not my father!

Re: Guest WiFi using a QR code

#220
post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have solved this (and a surprising number of similar problems) by pulling out the powerful camera I carry everywhere and taking a picture of the text I would otherwise need to remember.

I have an iPhone 13Pro Max and this solution is cumbersome. When I walk back to my desk, my phone locks (due to time out or intentional habit of keeping it locked). Then I have to tap buttons to unlock phone, launch the photo app, and find the image I just took. Then I have to spend time later to delete the image. iOS has OCR on images. I can copy and paste the password from the photo, but still not as efficient as n…

a clay tablet perhaps?
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