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by sjwright 3721 days ago
The solution for all wifi clients is to do what iOS and Mac OS X has been doing for years, which is validate internet connectivity when connecting via wifi. If there's a captive portal standing in the way, it pops up a simple webkit view automatically. You don't even have to open a web browser.

It would be nice to have a more formal standard (e.g. supplying an authentication URL along with the DHCP response) but to be honest, this emerging de-facto standard is perfectly serviceable.
1 comments
afarrell 3721 days ago
> you don't even have to open a web browser.

It would be nice if that worked consistently, but having just spent 2 weeks in airports and ho[s]tels in the UK & Ireland, it doesn't yet.

link
sjwright 3721 days ago
On the rare instances where it has failed me, I have diagnosed the problem to be the router allowing (or faking, not sure) a success response from http://captive.apple.com/hotspot-detect.html

If anyone has coded a captive portal to behave differently when it sees captive.apple.com they should be ashamed. All they're doing is making life difficult for everyone unnecessarily.

link