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Do you travel? I often have problems and am running out of non-https sites to test against. Best I can figure is that they're whitelisting certain domains so
by pfranz 10y ago
Do you travel? I often have problems and am running out of non-https sites to test against. Best I can figure is that they're whitelisting certain domains so the captive portal detection isn't triggered. I think this is so certain things like iMessage or email work (hence, whitelisting apple.com), but blocking out the rest of the web.
I don't travel often (Christmas and maybe once or twice a year outside of that), but it's when I encounter this. It's very frustrating because I'll be walking, pass a store I've previously connected to Wifi, and suddenly lose Internet, then hunt for a website to get the portal to pop up.
I'm annoyed that captive portals have been commonly using DNS hacking since 802.11b and I'm surprised a better solution hasn't been standardized. I have no idea where in the stack it should go (DHCP, wireless standards, or whatever) but DNS hacking drives me nuts.
- Gaelan 10y agoApple uses a large amount of domains to avoid this problem.
- pfranz 10y agoReally? 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.
- HappyTypist 10y agoSome networks started sniffing for the user agent 'CaptivePortalAssist' instead of domain.
- jandrese 10y agoI just make up fake sites to see if I'm stuck behind a captive portal because too many times I've accidentally loaded a cached version instead and not realized that I'm being blocked. fjiodfakliew.com or something. The most sensible option would be a DHCP extension that indicates you are behind a portal and gives the IP to load, but this requires updates to every DHCP server and client, so it would take many years before it works reliably. Also, it fails for IPv6, but a modification to the Router Advertisement message could maybe do the same thing. It's a little scarier in this regard because it would be even easier to abuse.