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I told the flight attendant "the WiFi isn't working"

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Re: I told the flight attendant "the WiFi isn't working"

#71

Post by YurgenJurgensen »

laurencei wrote: post #7
ano-ther wrote: post #2

I love that “internet reset” button

We laugh as IT experts. But think about it from the end user perspective. Literally the most simple instruction; near fault proof. On an airplane that is thousands of feet from remote IT support (plus "costs"). The instruction to staff; problem with "the Internet"? - press the "Interest Reset" button. Far better than "router restart", "renew DHCP leases" or "reboot IT" Explicit, non ambiguous and without technobabble…

If that's your attitude, you may as well rename the button "Appease Machine Spirit" and attach a few purity seals to it.

Re: I told the flight attendant "the WiFi isn't working"

#72

Post by wpm »

thyrox wrote: post #18

How does one learn about this stuff? I learned about basic networking in college (the TCP layers) etc but people doing such stuff sounds like Greek to me. If I want to learn more about what the author is doing, is there a resource like a udemy course or YouTube channel you guys can recommend?

I learned a lot at my student job in the university IT department troubleshooting why I could boot from my Xserves NetBoot server in one room but not another.

The rest I learned in the last year by switching to pfSense/Opnsense for my router/firewall.

Re: I told the flight attendant "the WiFi isn't working"

#73

Post by throwawaaarrgh »

thyrox wrote: post #18

How does one learn about this stuff? I learned about basic networking in college (the TCP layers) etc but people doing such stuff sounds like Greek to me. If I want to learn more about what the author is doing, is there a resource like a udemy course or YouTube channel you guys can recommend?

Back in the day you would just follow The Linux Documentation Project's HOWTOs and set up each kind of software on a little computer on your home network and play around with things. Today there's nothing like that unfortunately. HOWTOs were abandoned for individual blog posts written for one specific use case at a time, and I know of no index of such blog posts.

Re: I told the flight attendant "the WiFi isn't working"

#74

Post by jacquesm »

thyrox wrote: post #18

How does one learn about this stuff? I learned about basic networking in college (the TCP layers) etc but people doing such stuff sounds like Greek to me. If I want to learn more about what the author is doing, is there a resource like a udemy course or YouTube channel you guys can recommend?

Read the RFCs.

Re: I told the flight attendant "the WiFi isn't working"

#75

Post by spr-alex »

nixgeek wrote: post #64
spr-alex wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work on SPR, http://github.com/spr-networks/super , we make it easy to use distinct WiFi 3/ WPA2 passwords to authenticate devices on the network for policy based access

Great project, a lot of APs themselves support VLAN segregation using RADIUS, has SPR ever considered the scenario where it might be ideal if it were just the router and it controls APs (and even switches) that way?

SPR supports receiving VLAN tagged packets over a wired LAN interface today.

Soon we are planning to support an OpenWRT package that will allow people to link up into SPR from lots of APs, provided the AP card supports AP/VLAN mode which is critical for the segmentation.

We have no plan to work more closely with managing RADIUS right now, enterprise wifi authentication is difficult to deploy securely without client-side certificates for authentication. So that makes it less appealing due to our goal of supporting any kind of wifi capable device.

Lastly, SPR does have an upsell feature where we support leaf node APs running SPR that have backhaul into a primary instance.

Re: I told the flight attendant "the WiFi isn't working"

#76

Post by i_k_k »

vander_elst wrote: post #30
thyrox wrote: post #18

How does one learn about this stuff? I learned about basic networking in college (the TCP layers) etc but people doing such stuff sounds like Greek to me. If I want to learn more about what the author is doing, is there a resource like a udemy course or YouTube channel you guys can recommend?

I'd suggest a book. I was pretty happy with "Computer Networking: A Top-down Approach" by Jim Kurose. I find it more appealing that it starts with the upper layers (http), because I was more familiar with them.

From the authors’ website:

“You can't buy a hard copy of the 8th edition, but instead can rent (and then choose/pay to keep the hardcopy if you want a hard copy book). You can rent a copy or subscribe to Pearson+ from our publisher, or rent a hard copy or purchase a Kindle version from Amazon, or rent a hard copy from VitalSource.”

That’s just… odd!

http://gaia.cs.umass.edu/kurose_ross/index.php

Re: I told the flight attendant "the WiFi isn't working"

#77

Post by amluto »

spr-alex wrote: post #53
woodruffw wrote: post #36

This is adjacent to the classic free WiFi hack on airplanes, which is to boot another client off of their DHCP lease by spoofing their MAC. It’s unfortunate that, below HTTPS and a light smattering of WiFi encryption, there’s essentially no authenticity controls on LAN management protocols.

I work on SPR, http://github.com/spr-networks/super , we make it easy to use distinct WiFi 3/ WPA2 passwords to authenticate devices on the network for policy based access

Does this usefully support multiple APs with the same ESSID?

Re: I told the flight attendant "the WiFi isn't working"

#78

Post by lupusreal »

nulbyte wrote: post #59
midasuni wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost certainly no. Unlike the assertion made, she didn’t need to escalate it.

Why didn't she need to escalate it? I can imagine the hospitality industry would not want the WiFi sporadically going down for their guests; that's not a very hospitable experience.

She didn't need to escalate it because for her personally there was no downside to simply ignoring the matter.

Re: I told the flight attendant "the WiFi isn't working"

#79

Post by fragmede »

sandworm101 wrote: post #70
placatedmayhem wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time I have to interact with a "captive portal", I'm annoyed at the hack implemented through DNS hijacking, rather than implementing and extending 802.1X and/or another layer-2 authentication scheme. The idea seems to have been tossed aside entirely. Instead, every device has to have a web browser. There's not even a way to do surrogate registration for devices that don't have browsers, with Apple TV and Ninten…

I have a work laptop (government) that hates captive portals. It has a security system that won't let it connect using the local DNS. So it doesn't get captured. Those of us with such laptops all have tricks for getting to a hotel's wifi login page using IP addresses. But we have to do it fast, before the security software fully wakes up and blocks the hack. We used to just login on our phones, then tether the work l…

I don't know if it's more or less ridiculous, but I bring a small travel router running OpenWrt to do said bridging so I don't need to have my laptop running so I can use my Chromecast on the hotel TV.

Re: I told the flight attendant "the WiFi isn't working"

#80

Post by throw0101b »

placatedmayhem wrote: post #47
woodruffw wrote: post #36

This is adjacent to the classic free WiFi hack on airplanes, which is to boot another client off of their DHCP lease by spoofing their MAC. It’s unfortunate that, below HTTPS and a light smattering of WiFi encryption, there’s essentially no authenticity controls on LAN management protocols.

Every time I have to interact with a "captive portal", I'm annoyed at the hack implemented through DNS hijacking, rather than implementing and extending 802.1X and/or another layer-2 authentication scheme. The idea seems to have been tossed aside entirely. Instead, every device has to have a web browser. There's not even a way to do surrogate registration for devices that don't have browsers, with Apple TV and Ninten…

> Every time I have to interact with a "captive portal", I'm annoyed at the hack implemented through DNS hijacking, rather than implementing and extending 802.1X and/or another layer-2 authentication scheme. The idea seems to have been tossed aside entirely.

It has not: it's simply easier (less infrastructure) to not implement 802.1X.

Basically every corporate / enterprise-y password where you use your AD/LDAP credentials to log into Wifi has gone through the effort. Not everyone wants (or needs) to do that. (Source: recently implement 802.1X as IT when we moved to a new work office.)

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