[TriLUG] Hotel wireless internet and Linux

[Mack.Joseph at epamail.epa.gov]

Joseph Mack PhD, High Performance Computing & Scientific Visualisation
LMIT, Supporting the EPA Research Triangle Park, NC 919-541-0007 Federal
Infrastructure Contact-Ravi Nair 919-541-5467 - nair.ravi at epa.gov,
Federal Visualization  Contact - Joe Retzer, Ph.D. 919-541-4190 -
retzer.joseph at epa.gov

trilug-bounces at trilug.org wrote on 06/01/2005 09:51:50 AM:


> I had a similar problem in a hotel last month.
>
> The hotel network had a firewall that was blocking all traffic from
> me.  To authenticate, all I had to do was turn on "automatic proxy
> detection" in firefox and then try to hit ANY web page.
> It redirected
> me to a "welcome to our hotel proxy" web page, and then apparently
> added my MAC address to their firewall.  From then on, I could do
> HTTP, SSH, anything I wanted.

Thanks for the heads up. I've just come back from a trip
where I connected via ethernet or wifi at 5 different
hotels/airports and connected just fine, thanks to your
suggestion.

Initially I got an IP and default gw on sticking in my pcmcia
card and assumed I was done. However I couldn't get out.
Then remembering your posting, I fired up netscape and
went anywhere, to instead get a signon form. Supposedly
after that I woudn't have to reauthenicate for my
next session (which turned out to be true). I tried
changing the pcmcia ethernet card (different MAC) to see how they
they recognised me. One place I was blocked, so presumably
they were looking at the MAC address and other place
I connected fine, so presumably they timeout that port
and don't look for the MAC.

At some places the instructions weren't terribly
helpful ie plug in card, connect to the internet
(which presumably for most people is fire up IE).
Other places explicitely told you that you
had to log in via a webpage before being allowed out.

Joe