Browser redirect to wifi login page

flohack

These landing pages or portals are non-standard, so there is nothing that can be done to make it easier from the official functions. Some OSes like Windows and probably also iOS somehow send out queries to detect if there is a captive portal after connecting to the WiFi and offer to open the browser, but ATM I cannot see such functions on UT...

MK73

Hi, I had similar experience pherhaps at MacDonald, having a different starting web browser page to the default Canonical one. When I switched back everything start to work properly. Hope this feedback will help to resolve this issue.

Leppa

From what I can see, android connects to a network, then immediately tries to connect (connectivitycheck.gstatic.com or something). If it takes too long, it just says that it has no internet; if it gets redirected to another website, it gives a notification.

guru

I have here in my town a place where I am from time to time and they offer free Wifi for the guests. The authentication URL of the AP (some FRITZ!Box) is http://192.168.179.1:8186/untrusted_guest.lua and the UT never gets redirected to this. I used an iPhone which magically goes right away after enabling Wifi to this page and I typed the above URL into the UT and bookmarked it. I'm asking me how the iPhone is "guessing" this URL?

bf

@Flohack OK, thanks for taking the time to reply.
I have also had similar problems from time to time with apple devices; Android seems to handle it quite well in my experience. Anyway, I don't see it as a major issue if I have to open the browser myself and try to load a page as long as it redirects me to the login page reliably and repeatably when I do that. However, this was not happening every time and it seemed to me to be random.

The answer provided above by ernest seems to have solved it for me, although I have only tried one guest wifi so far. I have bookmarked http://www.no-ssl.com and if I try to load that I get a successful redirect. Hope it keeps working like that.

Leppa

We could just have UT automatically try to connect to www.no-ssl.com, and if it redirects, show a notification prompting you to connect.

arubislander

There was an article not top long go on OMUbuntu about this exact feature which would be landing in 17.10. Maybe something similar could be backported to 16.04? Battery life would be a concern, though...

ernest

@Leppa We cannot rely on a website that we don't manage.

Ubports could create a http:// webpage to fix that, however i don't know the complexity to implement such feature on the phone side and there are other priorities.

I would say a well organized wiki in open access like OSM or wikipedia with this kind of tips would be easier.

guru

I sniffed with TCPDUMP in my FreeBSD netbook what's going on on
first requesting with firefox some web page:

FF starts and asks the (local) DNS at IP 192.168.179.1 port 53
for the IP addr of A? detectportal.firefox.com
DNS answer: CNAME detectportal.firefox.com.edgesuite.net.,

CNAME a1089.d.akamai.net., A 92.226.1.104
FF makes HTTP request to 92.226.1.104 and sends

HTTP: GET /success.txt
92.226.1.104 (and this is perhaps not the answer of 92.226.1.104, but sent by the local AP):

HTTP/1.0 302 Moved Temporarily
Location: http://192.168.179.1:8186/untrusted_guest.lua.

which FF now let bring up the landing/login page of the AP

But, this (HTTP redirect) is only one of more arts to direct a browser to
a login page; see also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captive_portal

I also would suggest a good organized description in the Wiki about some common methods to try in UT/UB to get to the login page of the local Wifi AP.

matthias

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