Connecting to public wifi hotspots

[Jacob Mansfield]

On 19 Feb 2013, at 1:47PM, Cybe R. Wizard wrote:
> On Tue, 19 Feb 2013 10:37:31 +0100
> Patrick Asselman <iceblink at seti.nl> wrote:
> 
>> Does anyone have experience using public wifi hotspots that have a 
>> login page?
>> If so, how do you go about using these?
> 
> While in the wifi area, open a browser.  The login page will
> automagically appear!  Login.
> 
> Yes, that easy.

Evening all,

I have been following this thread for a little while now, quite an interesting progression throughout the day.
I'll make it short. I work for a company that designs and builds these Wi-Fi systems in the UK. Every system I've seen uses DNS or HTTP redirects to capture the user.
Given that Firefox shows a DNS error message, I would guess that the EU has manually set his DNS servers, rather than using the ones provided through DHCP. Unfortunately this will not work as access to everything outside of the Capture zone ("Walled Garden") is blocked.
As for giving support for such an issue, the steps you have all suggested are the exact same that I would follow given this situation. The fact that the user is running Ubuntu rather than Windows is barely relevant, all the relevant information is (and has been for a while) completely standardised, Just look at RFC1035, RFC2616, RFC2131, etc.

@avi: BT actually rent their system from third-party companies (like mine)
@Cybe: yes that's exactly how it should work, some OS's even detect that they do not have full internet access and bring up the login page for the user!

Kind Regards,
Jacob Mansfield
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