I have a portable router. I want a VPN. How the fuck do I deal with wifi login pages?
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Title says it all. I have a portable wireless router. It's-- uh-- TP-Link TL-MR3040. I think I put CFW on it a while ago.
I also have a VPN box.
For the road trip, I'd like the router to be the one that connects to the hotel/restaurant wifi, establish a VPN, and then I'll connect my laptop to the router via wifi (which will now be a secure VPN connection).
Unless this falls under "lorne what the fuck u doin u know nothing".
Anyways-- the one hitch I can't figure out. If the wifi does that stupid "redirect all traffic to a web page until you click I Accept", how do I make the router handle that? Or is there a manual step where I connect to the router and my browser clicks I accept and the router gets the cookie?
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@Lorne-Kates said in I have a portable router. I want a VPN. How the fuck do I deal with wifi login pages?:
Anyways-- the one hitch I can't figure out. If the wifi does that stupid "redirect all traffic to a web page until you click I Accept", how do I make the router handle that? Or is there a manual step where I connect to the router and my browser clicks I accept and the router gets the cookie?
As far as I'm aware, most of their systems you can't get around that, since those redirect pages store their session information on a per-machine basis. It might be possible if their system does that by MAC address if your porta-router supports MAC spoofing by direct-connecting your laptop first, accepting the terms, then splicing the router using the same MAC inbetween them, but as I've never actually tested whether this works or not, I can't say for sure if it'd actually work.
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@Lorne-Kates
The simple option is to use the router to open your browser with your computer while the router hasn't connected to the VPN yet, so that you can accept the hotspot terms and move on with life.Also, you need to make sure your VPN endpoint is an SSL VPN that tunnels over HTTPS (TCP/443) - if you're using L2TP/SSTP or other similar IPSec protocols that use very specific (non-HTTP) ports, they will almost certainly be blocked by the hotspot network, which usually only whitelists HTTP/S and maybe e-mail ports.
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@izzion Yes.
Also note that most hotel networks are fucking broken most of the time anyway.
That said - screw the router. It's overly complicated and not likely to work easily. You're on vacation and ain't got time for that shit. Just VPN from the computer.
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@Lorne-Kates you can contact the hotel ahead of time and attempt to get them to whitelist your MAC address for the router.
Or, just do what @Weng said and VPN from the laptop. Why overcomplicate things? Also, expect the VPN to not work from the hotel WiFi because it will probably be overly locked down and utter shit anyway.
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@Polygeekery said in I have a portable router. I want a VPN. How the fuck do I deal with wifi login pages?:
you can contact the hotel ahead of time and attempt to get them to whitelist your MAC address for the router.
Hah! Let us know how that goes. My guess is you'll get a puzzled "uh... what's this about makeup?"
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@Weng
I was in one hotel (of the $200/night variety in downtown Toronto) that had some really bad wireless. And then I noticed that the wireless was bad because the AP was 802.11b. But there wasn't an Ethernet port available on the desk to connect to.So, I noticed that I had 5 bars of signal strength and figured the AP had to be in the actual room (the range on 802.11b is approximately the distance a nerd can throw a lead balloon), and started looking around. And lo, underneath the desk, the AP doth appear. Plugged in to an Ethernet jack in the wall.
So I did what any sensible person would do. I unplugged the AP, and plugged my computer straight into the jack. And they didn't have any shaping or control on the Ethernet network at all, so I got a great 1Gbps connection during my stay, completely unfiltered. Probably because nobody else in the building even bothered with the Internet due to the 2Mbps "connectivity" of the wireless APs.
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@Yamikuronue said in I have a portable router. I want a VPN. How the fuck do I deal with wifi login pages?:
@Polygeekery said in I have a portable router. I want a VPN. How the fuck do I deal with wifi login pages?:
you can contact the hotel ahead of time and attempt to get them to whitelist your MAC address for the router.
Hah! Let us know how that goes. My guess is you'll get a puzzled "uh... what's this about makeup?"
You have to contact their IT. It can be done on larger hotel chains, but is not worth the effort.
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Have the router spoof your laptop's MAC address.
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@Weng said in I have a portable router. I want a VPN. How the fuck do I deal with wifi login pages?:
That said - screw the router. It's overly complicated and not likely to work easily. You're on vacation and ain't got time for that shit. Just VPN from the computer.
Agreed. I flipped on a PPTP server on my router this morning and was astonished at how easy it was to configure and how easy it was to connect (natively from Windows 7, even).
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@Polygeekery said in I have a portable router. I want a VPN. How the fuck do I deal with wifi login pages?:
Also, expect
the VPNWiFi to not work from the hotel WiFi because it will probably beoverly locked down and utter shit anywayso slow everything times out.That's my usual experience.
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@heterodox said in I have a portable router. I want a VPN. How the fuck do I deal with wifi login pages?:
@Weng said in I have a portable router. I want a VPN. How the fuck do I deal with wifi login pages?:
That said - screw the router. It's overly complicated and not likely to work easily. You're on vacation and ain't got time for that shit. Just VPN from the computer.
Agreed. I flipped on a PPTP server on my router this morning and was astonished at how easy it was to configure and how easy it was to connect (natively from Windows 7, even).
Yeah, you may want to consider an alternative to PPTP. It is widely considered to be entirely broken. Apple even completely removed it as a VPN option from their OS last year.
The PPTP VPN Protocol Is Not Secure Try, These Alternatives Instead
Don't use PPTP if you care at all about security when setting up a VPN. Instead, opt for a more secure protocol: OpenVPN, L2TP/IPSec, SSTP, or IKEv2.
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@Lorne-Kates said in I have a portable router. I want a VPN. How the fuck do I deal with wifi login pages?:
Title says it all. I have a portable wireless router. It's-- uh-- TP-Link TL-MR3040. I think I put CFW on it a while ago.
I also have a VPN box.Is there anything the portable router or VPN box can do that your laptop can't?
I don't understand why you're carting all this crap around.
Why don't you explain the actual problem you're trying to solve.
EDIT: are you trying to plug in an Xbox or something? If it's a Windows laptop, use Internet Connection Sharing from its ethernet port (while the laptop itself is on wifi). There's probably an equivalent in macOS or Linux.
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@Polygeekery said in I have a portable router. I want a VPN. How the fuck do I deal with wifi login pages?:
Yeah, you may want to consider an alternative to PPTP. It is widely considered to be entirely broken. Apple even completely removed it as a VPN option from their OS last year.
I'm using EAP-TLS which should be fine, but I do want to switch to L2TP/IPsec when I can if only because less firewalls fuck it.
OpenVPN is completely unacceptable to me since it requires installation of a client.
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@heterodox
The problem is, in the "evade the hotel hotspot" case, you might well NEED OpenVPN or something similar, configured to use TCP/443 (HTTPS tunneling). If you're on a shitty network with absolutely no filtering on it at all, the other protocols will probably work. But most modern hotel hotspot networks wind up going the other way, with the default on for those controllers to allow literally nothing other than HTTP, HTTPS, and if you're lucky POP and IMAP (but probably not SMTP, POPS, or IMAPS). PPTP and L2TP are going to be right out in those situations, because they require non-standard ports and/or protocols that aren't going to be passed through the hotspot controller.
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@blakeyrat said in I have a portable router. I want a VPN. How the fuck do I deal with wifi login pages?:
Is there anything the portable router or VPN box can do that your laptop can't?
I don't understand why you're carting all this crap around.
Why don't you explain the actual problem you're trying to solve.I MAAAY be overcomplicating things, granted. Thinking back to the beginning of this thought process, I think it was something like this:
- I'm in a hotel room
- There's wifi
- The wifi is really strong near the door
- But the bed is not anywhere near the door
- If only I could connect a router to the wifi near the door, and then connect to that router while lounging on the bed
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@Lorne-Kates said in I have a portable router. I want a VPN. How the fuck do I deal with wifi login pages?:
Thinking back to the beginning of this thought process, I think it was something like this:
- I'm in a hotel room
- There's wifi
- The wifi is really strong near the door
- But the bed is not anywhere near the door
- If only I could connect a router to the wifi near the door, and then connect to that router while lounging on the bed
Pull the bed near the door
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@Lorne-Kates
In my experience, that usage case won't be a concern. Hotels put way too many APs in, not the other way around -- you'll have great signal, as long as there isn't a lot of usage in other rooms generating interference for your usage.So, basically, just buy everyone else on your floor the AYCW option from the "special" channels and you'll be good to go.
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@izzion I'm hoping that it will be the case more and more that IPsec traffic will be allowed to pass through firewalls unscathed, but we'll see. I have a hotspot in the case that I really just don't trust the local network/it's completely fucking borked.
@izzion said in I have a portable router. I want a VPN. How the fuck do I deal with wifi login pages?:
and if you're lucky POP and IMAP (but probably not SMTP, POPS, or IMAPS).
Thank God for STARTTLS on IMAP, at least.
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@Lorne-Kates said in I have a portable router. I want a VPN. How the fuck do I deal with wifi login pages?:
If only I could connect a router to the wifi near the door, and then connect to that router while lounging on the bed
If you really believe that's worth carting multiple wallwarts around in your luggage.
Here's an alternative plan: ignore hotel wifi, bring your own cell internet and do tethering. That works by the bed. And in the restaurant, and in the car, and etc.
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@blakeyrat said in I have a portable router. I want a VPN. How the fuck do I deal with wifi login pages?:
@Lorne-Kates said in I have a portable router. I want a VPN. How the fuck do I deal with wifi login pages?:
If only I could connect a router to the wifi near the door, and then connect to that router while lounging on the bed
If you really believe that's worth carting multiple wallwarts around in your luggage.
The router is actually a portable battery powered one. I think it TECHNICALLY can do 4G, but I guess that needs a SIM and a plan. Which brings me to:
Here's an alternative plan: ignore hotel wifi, bring your own cell internet and do tethering. That works by the bed. And in the restaurant, and in the car, and etc.
One problem:
The BEST plan I've found yet is $85CAD for 5GB of data in a month, with overages costing about $7/100MB. Yes, MB. So while I will pick up some sort of portable data plan just to have the data on a road trip-- ain't no fucking way I'm doing any serious browsing through it.I bet I'd burn through half the data just browsing this forum for a day.
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@Lorne-Kates said in I have a portable router. I want a VPN. How the fuck do I deal with wifi login pages?:
The router is actually a portable battery powered one.
FYI, it's this one, and was originally $30:
https://www.amazon.ca/TL-MR3040-Wireless-Portable-Compatible-Selected/dp/B0088PPFP4
And since DumbBox helpfully doesn't show the image, here it is. It fits in the palm of my hand.
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So buy a Kindle and don't do any "serious browsing" during the trip. I mean at some point you're just going to have to decide what the internetzz is worth to you and put it on a balance sheet.
But I still think the portable router is stupid.
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@blakeyrat said in I have a portable router. I want a VPN. How the fuck do I deal with wifi login pages?:
So buy a Kindle and don't do any "serious browsing" during the trip. I mean at some point you're just going to have to decide what the internetzz is worth to you and put it on a balance sheet.
Why would I buy a Kindle when I already have phone/tablet?
And that still doesn't solve the problem of using cell data (which is fucking expensive in Canada) when there's free wifi.
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Worthless things are often free. Hotel wifi is usually worthless.
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@blakeyrat said in I have a portable router. I want a VPN. How the fuck do I deal with wifi login pages?:
Worthless things are often free. Hotel wifi is usually worthless.
I don't get what your point is. I know it's not that good, but it's good enough. The only problem I've had is extending the range to cover the entire hotel room.
Seriously, what is your point?
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@Lorne-Kates I made my point, now I'm just being snarky.
My point was this:
I mean at some point you're just going to have to decide what the internetzz is worth to you and put it on a balance sheet.
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@Lorne-Kates said in I have a portable router. I want a VPN. How the fuck do I deal with wifi login pages?:
The BEST plan I've found yet is $85CAD for 5GB of data in a month, with overages costing about $7/100MB.
Why don't you just take the cell phone of all the hookers you kill and use their data plan ?
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@TimeBandit said in I have a portable router. I want a VPN. How the fuck do I deal with wifi login pages?:
@Lorne-Kates said in I have a portable router. I want a VPN. How the fuck do I deal with wifi login pages?:
The BEST plan I've found yet is $85CAD for 5GB of data in a month, with overages costing about $7/100MB.
Why don't you just take the cell phone of all the hookers you kill and use their data plan ?
Traceability?
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@PleegWat said in I have a portable router. I want a VPN. How the fuck do I deal with wifi login pages?:
Traceability?
I can get around that. It's more along the lines of occupational circumstances. Hookers tend to not carry their personal cell phones on the job. Part of it is security-- they don't want personal information on them. Or their pimps take the cells so the hookers aren't distracted on the job by internet / personal phone calls. So they tend to have burner phones with talk/text only, just to receive business calls. So I end up with a huge pile of shitty flip-phones with no data, whose 7-day talk/text plans have already expired.
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For what it's worth.. I've seen zero hotels in the modern era where wifi both actually worked and only had limited signal in the body of the room.
The limitation isn't signal strength. It usually isn't even fucking bandwidth or node saturation. It's IP addresses.
300 room hotels. Block of 256 IP addresses. Multiday IP leases (nevermind the auth times out after 24 hours at most).
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@Weng
It would be a substantially shorter post to list off all the things hotels do correctly with their hotspot networks than incorrectly.In fact, the latter would be longer than that one password @accalia DDOS'd Discourse with.
And here's the former:
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@izzion said in I have a portable router. I want a VPN. How the fuck do I deal with wifi login pages?:
In fact, the latter would be longer than that one password @accalia DDOS'd Discourse with.
Point of order!
it was only one login attempt for one user from one computer.
that's hardly a distributed denial of service.
Secondary point of order!
It was discourse, in order to deny service one has to HAVE service.
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@accalia said in I have a portable router. I want a VPN. How the fuck do I deal with wifi login pages?:
that's hardly a distributed denial of service.
But it is a Discourse Denial of Service
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@accalia
If Square-Enix is allowed to use the "we're getting DDOS'd" excuse for why their underprovisioned FF14 servers are shitting themselves under the load of this week's expansion pack release, then I can call what you did versus Discourse a DDOS too, since the term doesn't have any real meaning :P
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@RaceProUK said in I have a portable router. I want a VPN. How the fuck do I deal with wifi login pages?:
@accalia said in I have a portable router. I want a VPN. How the fuck do I deal with wifi login pages?:
that's hardly a distributed denial of service.
But it is a Discourse Denial of Service
Or is it a DoDS?
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@dcon said in I have a portable router. I want a VPN. How the fuck do I deal with wifi login pages?:
Or is it a DoDS?
Discourse is a Denial of Service
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@izzion said in I have a portable router. I want a VPN. How the fuck do I deal with wifi login pages?:
If Square-Enix is allowed to use the "we're getting DDOS'd" excuse
it's technically true because they
@izzion said in I have a portable router. I want a VPN. How the fuck do I deal with wifi login pages?:
underprovisioned
should they be able to get away with that bull shit? no. but they're going to try and skate by on that technicality.
they'll probably succeed too.
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@accalia said in I have a portable router. I want a VPN. How the fuck do I deal with wifi login pages?:
they'll probably succeed too.
Too many fanboys, not enough Clueko Hammers.
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@RaceProUK said in I have a portable router. I want a VPN. How the fuck do I deal with wifi login pages?:
@accalia said in I have a portable router. I want a VPN. How the fuck do I deal with wifi login pages?:
that's hardly a distributed denial of service.
But it is a Discourse Denial of Service
CDoD?
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@raceprouk said in I have a portable router. I want a VPN. How the fuck do I deal with wifi login pages?:
Discourse is a Denial of Service
You're denying that discourse provides service?
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@lorne-kates Because reading on it is actually a good experience?
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@blakeyrat said in I have a portable router. I want a VPN. How the fuck do I deal with wifi login pages?:
So buy a Kindle and don't do any "serious browsing" during the trip.
How long does a human survive without internet?
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@wharrgarbl If said human[citation needed] is me, then about 35 minutes unless asleep. I might be able to get to an hour, but that's pushing it.
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@wharrgarbl said in I have a portable router. I want a VPN. How the fuck do I deal with wifi login pages?:
@blakeyrat said in I have a portable router. I want a VPN. How the fuck do I deal with wifi login pages?:
So buy a Kindle and don't do any "serious browsing" during the trip.
How long does a human survive without internet?
I don't know. Let me check Wikipedia.
Internet Not Available
nooooooooooooooooooooooooooo{dies}
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@lorne-kates I found the link for you
Just replace oxygen with internet
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@cark said in I have a portable router. I want a VPN. How the fuck do I deal with wifi login pages?:
@lorne-kates I found the link for you
Just replace oxygen with internet
I just discovered a new kink! eAuto-erotic asphyxiation.
Internet
Internet
Unplug the ethernet cable from the router...
no internet
uhg-- mm-- ohh--
{plugs cable back in}
Internet back
whoo. wow. what a rush. I have to have more.
{unplug cable}
No internet
mmm.... god yes... so close... can't stand it-- but edging-- edging-- right to the edge
{fumble, can't find which way cable goes, fumbles, drops it}
ohnoohnoohnoohnoohnoohnoohnoohnonnononon OH FUCKING GOD YES {jizz jizz jizz}
{dies}
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Cerebral hypoxia - Wikipedia
