Hotel WiFi - Browser Login?
 

I planned on traveling lightly, using only my N800 instead of my laptop. So I ran a test at the hotel before ditching the laptop. The hotel has free wifi, and with the Windows laptop, I open IE, and I'm redirected to a sign-on page. I assumed that Mozilla on the N800 will work the same way. But when I tried it, no redirection happened. Is there a setting somewhere? I tried with and without the proxy option.

Any advice? I did search the forum before posting a newbie question. The only advice I found was a setting for Opera, and I'm using OS2008.

Allen

Re: Hotel WiFi - Browser Login?
 

My employer uses such a login system, and it my N800 has no trouble with it. That doesn't help you beyond letting you know that it may be something particular to your hotel's system.

What happens when you attempt to view to a web site, say Google, on your N800?

Re: Hotel WiFi - Browser Login?
 

Open window one. Enter login id for hotel, password, etc.
Click on open new browser window, navigate to desired website.

Re: Hotel WiFi - Browser Login?
 

Unfortunately, there is no window one. There's no place to enter the login id, no place to enter the password -- when I use my N800.

The "normal" thing, with my laptop is, no matter what web page URL I enter, I get redirected to the hotel login page and I'm fine. But with my N800, there's no redirection, so there's no way to enter the login and password.

I even copied down the redirected web page address (the URL that my laptop browser was redirected to) and typed that in manually into the web browser on the N800. No page opens. Blank web screen.

Re: Hotel WiFi - Browser Login?
 

Are you saying that the redirection to the sign-on page didn't work? Or the redirection to the page you wanted after you signed on? If it is the latter, mircofab's advice should get you going.

If it is the former, you should be able to just go to the signon page directly if you can get the URL for it. If not, then figure out the IP address that the wireless access point gave you (*) and try browsing to a similar IP number but with the last number replaced with a 1 (eg. your IP 10.1.45.58 ... browse to 10.1.45.1 or 10.1.1.1). That is usually the gateway machine and hopefully hosts the login proxy page too.



(*) There are a few apps that give you this info: iphome and homeip being two that I know about. If you are able to get root access with your terminal 'ifconfig' will give you that info too. There may also be a way to dig that info out of your wireless properties through the normal built-in interface but I have forgotten and don't have wireless access right now to check for you.

edit: ... Was typing this while you were responding essentially answering my questions. With your laptop, try to find the direct IP that the URL refers to and manually type that in. It could be that your DNS isn't working right for some odd reason.

Edit edit ... the quickest way on a Windows machine is just to open the command line (Run... "cmd") and 'ping <hostname part of URL>'

Re: Hotel WiFi - Browser Login?
 

good luck with this. I have yet to find an answer to this question and i have given up trying, seriously.

The one useful suggestion I have found in all the posts on flaky wi-fi connectivity is to mess with the power setting of the connection setup. Even though this did not work for me, it was at least something to try.

Re: Hotel WiFi - Browser Login?
 

Let's slow down a bit. When you click on the connectivity icon on the top and then hit select connection do you see the hotel wifi
listed? Does it have an unlocked lock next to it? The hotel may have more than one wifi stations and you have to select the right one. When you select, does it tell you that you are now connected to station such and such? Now try to open a known web page. Does it try to connect? if it does and say server not found try to enter now the url from your laptop. Does it say server not found?

Re: Hotel WiFi - Browser Login?
 

Speaking of connecting; make sure and wait till it stops scanning, before picking the right one.

Re: Hotel WiFi - Browser Login?
 

I've used my N800 in hotels/b&bs in the UK/Ireland and the US without much problems.
Recent non work trip - left the laptop behind.

Process is as described above... that is, select unlocked sid, make sure you get an ip address, start web browser. Enter roomnumber/key/login info they provide you... or buy the time.

With the desktop tools like iphome you can easily see if you have an ip.

Re: Hotel WiFi - Browser Login?
 

Yadin,
Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes, it tries. Yes, I did that, see above "URL that my laptop browser was redirected to".

Thanks for the questions, I am looking for troubleshooting, and I know you are trying to help. I did post this in a newbie section, because I'm a noob with the N800, but not a noob with hotel wifi :-). In fact, I'm the guy my coworkers come to at new hotels and say "oh, you got it working, show me how".

I get connected to the wifi, there's no WEP or WPA password. The authentication is done with a web page with username and passwords. I just do not get redirected to the page where I would type in the username and password.

I've described as best I can the situation, I need redirection to work. Unfortunately I have now returned home and posted my question. I thought it would be something simple to enable redirection.

Allen

Re: Hotel WiFi - Browser Login?
 

Ummm, ok, newbie question. I type iphome and homeip into my N800 and get

-sh not found

error. Do I have to be root? (I'm back home now, using my home wifi router, so I can't check the hotel, it's 2000 miles away, but still . . .)

Re: Hotel WiFi - Browser Login?
 

No idea. Mine works the way it's supposed to. Are you opening a new browser window, and entering a URL? Or something else? I'm not clear on exactly what you're doing in which order, unfortunately.

Re: Hotel WiFi - Browser Login?
 

iphome is here -
http://maemo.org/downloads/product/OS2008/iphome/
homeip is here -
http://maemo.org/downloads/product/OS2008/homeip

They both are widgits that sit on your desktop.
Just install the package. No root or pills of any kind required.

Re: Hotel WiFi - Browser Login?
 

If you don't feel like installing anything.

Re: Hotel WiFi - Browser Login?
 

Maybe it is one of those 'internet explorer only' pages that failed web designers like making?

Re: Hotel WiFi - Browser Login?
 

Quite right. I did suggest that but mistakenly thought that you needed to be root to execute it. Apparently you just need to be root to have the /sbin/ in your path so you can lazily just type 'ifconfig'. If you type in the whole path it works just fine as a regular user and you IP shows up under the "inet addr" line in the "wlan0" section.

Thanks Benson.

Re: Hotel WiFi - Browser Login?
 

Ya ... what ebrindele said. ;]

I have them both installed.

homeip is a very simple, nice looking, small footprint desktop applet. That is the one I have on all the time. I found it tricky to install though. Hopefully the author has worked out all the dependency issues.

iphome is a simple but larger footprint applet that gives a little more info. I switch that on if I am having issues as it tells me the Tx and Rx errors and indicates whether my issues are due signal reception or bad configuration somewhere.

iphome has been around as long as the Nokia tablets have existed. homeip is pretty new but has nifty transparency.

Be aware that some APs do get into some confused state that allow you to connect with them but don't let traffic though. I have had that situation where the only thing to do was to reboot the AP and all was good again. It sounds like this was not the scenario in MP2100's case since you could connect fine with a laptop but something to watch for that has nothing to do with the tablet but rather buggy AP firmware. I have had a lot of luck in connecting my tablet to strange APs.

Re: Hotel WiFi - Browser Login?
 

I have had occasional problems logging into sites that have the login as a popup window. I have no idea what the solution is, bein a noob myself.

Re: Hotel WiFi - Browser Login?
 

A very good point. Some of those security proxies would popup a separate window for authentication. If you has Javascript disabled or pop-ups blocked, you would just get a blank screen.

Something to check next time would be your browser settings in the menu:
Tools -> Settings ... "General" tab (at least that is where it is on the default MicroB browser in OS2008). If Javascript and pop-ups are disabled there, you would *definitely* have issues with authentication screens silently not working sometimes.

Re: Hotel WiFi - Browser Login?
 

I am afraid that this is the problem. I have used my N800 on quite a few of those "login" pages. Usually it works, sometimes it does not. Under OS2007, I had a choice of browser and when it did not work with Opera, it worked with microB (or vice versa). Under OS2008 you are stuck.

You can call this a bug with micro browser or a poor implementation of the login page if you wish.


Note that this problem sometimes also happens with the configuration pages of some routers and on some web sites (a car rental company used to be my major gripe). It also happens with Safari, which I use on my Mac. I have been told it even happens on older versions of Internet Explorer.


Considering that the best help you are going to get from the web site designers themselves is a canned answer like "download and install the last version of Internet Explorer" (even if you ask for the N800...), I would simply suggest that you bring your business somewhere else.

Re: Hotel WiFi - Browser Login?
 

http://dnstunnel.de/ ?

*Cough Cough*

Re: Hotel WiFi - Browser Login?
 

I couldn't agree more. If they cannot make a simple form (a thing that was possible even with html 1.0 and mosaic) without using ie specific javascript, they either are hopelessly incompetent or a**holes, in either case they don't deserve your business.

Re: Hotel WiFi - Browser Login?
 

Thanks for the information. At least I know it's not just me. I agree in general, I prefer to stay at hotels that don't have annoyances like incompatibility with Mozilla. But in this case, there are few hotel choices in Ciudad del Carmen (where I had this trouble). I just got the N800, so hopefully I'll have better luck at hotels in my future travels.

Re: Hotel WiFi - Browser Login?
 

I too have had this problem, the captive portal just doesn't work with non-IE sites, so when I used older opera browser on my zaurus it would simply spawn another empty window. Too many ex-burger-flippers from MacDonalds combined with DreamWeaver think they're web designers :(

Re: Hotel WiFi - Browser Login?
 

I'm on OS2007 with Opera, but as Opera and MicroB use the same front-end I'll still ask (couldn't see this asked before): Did you check tools->settings->connection, specifically the checkbox for automatic redirection?

Re: Hotel WiFi - Browser Login?
 

I've encountered this in some hotels, and not just on my internet tablets but laptop as well. The best thing I've found to work is dump your cookies and then use the direct url to the signon page. Sometimes it has taken repeated efforts and I am not sure why that is. My experience with hotel wifi in general has been very poor...

Re: Hotel WiFi - Browser Login?
 

Right, I should have mentioned, I did set the connection setting to automatic redirection. I looked everywhere on the browser for other options, and tried everything I saw.

Opera on the desktop has/used to have a feature to spoof web sites by reporting that it is IE. I guess our microB doesn't support this? I looked for that option . . . .

Re: Hotel WiFi - Browser Login?
 

Yes, but not conveniently; you have to either edit prefs.js by hand, or go to about:config in the browser, and manually set values, or (the only way to conveniently switch) use a few bookmarks like these. You'll have to find the correct user agent string for IE; go to useragent.org with your laptop, and it'll show you. I have a folder of such bookmarks, but not one for IE.

Re: Hotel WiFi - Browser Login?
 

what i've noticed about the microB is that it uses a static google page every time it's open, regardless if you have a connection or not, i get around it by just clicking a bookmark to get to the starbucks login.. *open new window* always take me to a static google page.. just click any of your bookmarks to get to the browser login.

Re: Hotel WiFi - Browser Login?
 

Hi Allen,

Sorry to hear you are having problems... we use both Bluesocket and Aruba controllers, and the N800/N810's work fine with the web based authentication mechanisms. I believe that re-direction is actually controlled by the server but you might check this setting on your n800 and see if if is still set to the default:

load up the browser
type in "about:config?sprefname=redir"

see if it is set to the default of 20...


This only applies to http redirects, not the html ones that you can embed in a page, so it may or may not apply depending on how the controller is issuing the redir.

So it may not help at all, but at least it is something to look at...

I found an article on it here:

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Network.ht...irection-limit (http://tinyurl.com/loxhf)



---Aaron

Re: Hotel WiFi - Browser Login?
 

When I have not been able to log-in, it was not a redirection problem. I got the login page, had some credentials to enter and a button to click. Either the button was not visible in the browser, clicking it had not result or clicking it had the wrong results. I changed microB settings to "allow pop-ups", which helped once, but not the other times.

My conclusion is that the html code of the login web page is buggy. In China, the problem may have been that microB did not support the right character encoding.

Of course, there are plenty of other login pages where I enter the credentials, click a button and it works.

Re: Hotel WiFi - Browser Login?
 

I'm having a problem with hotel wireless also right now. Laptop is connecting fine, although connection is sometimes pretty slow.

I'm using Firefox on the laptop and able to load pages. There is no login page, but when I first opened a page in the browser I saw that it said it was being redirected...but then the page I requested loaded.

On my N800 (with OS 2008) it sees and connects to the wireless network...but I can't ever load a page.

Any help? I've only had my tablet for a day, and now am away on business for a week. Was really hoping to load this up with maps, pdfs, and email for my time away.

P.S. My laptop has bluetooth, can I use that to share the hotel internet connection if I can's get it working another way. Or can I use the USB cable to download Maps and other content to the N800?

Edit 2: I see in this thread that it should be possible to setup via bluetooth...but it also appears to be fairly in depth, and I don't have much free time to try and experiment this week. Hopefully I can figure out another way to connect over the week.

Re: Hotel WiFi - Browser Login?
 

In the settings for the browser, you have options about "automatic redirection", popups and cookies. Maybe you could try to see if they help.

Using the USB cable to copy data works, of course. Much faster than bluetooth.

Re: Hotel WiFi - Browser Login?
 

Same problem here:-(
OTOH,it works with my N82!

Re: Hotel WiFi - Browser Login?
 

I was partially able to resolve my problems, however I never got it completely running (was on holiday there, didn't want to spend ALL my time with the gadgets...) on my N810. I'm posting my first steps to the solution, perhaps it might help someone else or a linux crack can chime in and explain:
The Hotel uses IACbox (rebranded as Siemens Internet for Guests), which is a Linux-based access control system. The IACbox support FAQ mentions that some Linux distros (evidently Maemo being one of them) are unable to "set a hostroute if multiple network cards are in use" (???). In then points out that to resolve this, one needs to act as "root" (gainroot, becomeroot, sudo whatever, I did ssh to localhost...) and then add an additional route/gw (172.30.3.254/32).
I took these instructions and "translated" them to Maemo, resulting in something like:
After this, I was able to finally access the login page of the system and authenticate myself (each Guest gets a user/pw that is valid for the duration of his stay).
Unfortunately, I was still only able to access the unprotected "free" sites, as something with the redirection didn't seem to work (I got some "out of memory / not enough memory for this operation to complete" errors from MicroB, perhaps a javascript issue).

My questions:

• Why are many distros unable to do this? (Rant: Is Linux still not ready for the desktop and mobile environments? OSX and Windows do work properly...)
• Shall I file this on the Maemo Bugzilla?
• Anybody with an idea about the error in MicroB?

Re: Hotel WiFi - Browser Login?
 

That's the problem: everything touched by siemens is either sh*t to begin with or it'll turn to sh*t anyway ;)
(at least that's been my experience in almost 20 years of being forced to profesionally use their stuff....the problem is that their competitors in my field are even worse :D)

Re: Hotel WiFi - Browser Login?
 

Hi All;

Does someone has a solution for the problem.

I just bought a NOKIA N 810 and installed OS 2008 on it.
The problem when I go to Starbucks, I can not get the login page.
(No redirection).
The same with unsecured WIFI that need the user just to click. on "I agree with terms and conditions". No redirection page.

I Bookmarked the ebay site (http://www.ebay.com which is different than the NOKIA home page), after getting connected to ATTWIFI ==> From Nokia N810 Menu : go to Bookmarks then Ebay but it's not working (the login page still not showing).

Any Help will be appreciative.

Re: Hotel WiFi - Browser Login?
 

Start a browser, open menu/tools/settings/connection and check that redirection is ticked. (NB: That's on OS2007, the path to the setting could be slightly different on OS2008 but it should be there somewhere)

Re: Hotel WiFi - Browser Login?
 

Thanks for the quick replay.
Yes I have automatic redirection page checked

MY CONNECTION SETTINGS:

Tools ==> Setting :
Connection
home page address file://localhost/usr/share/browser/home_page/index.html
use default home page: CHECKED
Enable automatic redirection: CHECKED.

Re: Hotel WiFi - Browser Login?
 

I cleared the browser CACHE , password and HISTORY. Make connection to attwifi (at starbucks).
From web Menu : Bookmarks ==> then Ebay .THIS TIME it tried to load the login page BUT I got "Javascript Probe " Error with blank page.

Any ideas.
Thanks.