Add-In Browser for Hotel Portals

G7LTQ · April 23, 2023, 1:31pm

I am looking at replacing my old travel router with a Beryl or similar. My main use is in hotels with Captive Portals. I’ve read the various methods, but it seems to me the proper long-term solution is to add a browser into the router so that Beryl or others can satisfy the Captive Portals request directly and natively. That way no more Cloning MAcAddress and the like. WISP Mode might then just work , straight afterwards

How open is the framework to having a mini Browser ? Perhaps something like NYXT which very lightweight ?

Almahadeus · April 23, 2023, 6:17pm

That is actually one fantastic idea and suggestion. Hope developers seriously look into implementing this feature soon.

wcs2228 · April 24, 2023, 1:55am

I thought about the same a while back and maybe a front-end UI (web-based or app-based) to curl could be developed. I believe OpenWrt itself is a text-based (as is Linux).

OpenWrt has a Travelmate package that has Captive Portal Auto-Login capability through some scripts, but I have not tried it:

github.com

openwrt/packages/blob/master/net/travelmate/files/README.md#captive-portal-auto-logins

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# travelmate, a wlan connection manager for travel router

## Description
If you’re planning an upcoming vacation or a business trip, taking your laptop, tablet or smartphone give you the ability to connect with friends or complete work on the go. But many hotels don’t have a secure wireless network setup or you’re limited on using a single device at once. Investing in a portable, mini travel router is a great way to connect all of your devices at once while having total control over your own personalized wireless network.  
A logical combination of AP+STA mode on one physical radio allows most of OpenWrt supported router devices to connect to a wireless hotspot/station (STA) and provide a wireless access point (AP) from that hotspot at the same time. Downside of this solution: whenever the STA interface looses the connection it will go into an active scan cycle which renders the radio unusable for AP mode operation, therefore the AP is taken down if the STA looses its association.  
To avoid these kind of deadlocks, travelmate will set all station interfaces to an "always off" mode and connects automatically to available/configured hotspots.  

## Main Features
* STA interfaces operating in an "always off" mode, to make sure that the AP is always accessible
* easy setup within normal OpenWrt environment
* strong LuCI-Support with builtin interface wizard and a wireless station manager
* render the QR-Code of the selected Access Point in LuCI to comfortably transfer the WLAN credentials to your mobile devices
* fast uplink connections
* support all kinds of uplinks, incl. hidden and enterprise uplinks (WEP-based uplinks are no longer supported!)
* continuously checks the existing uplink connection (quality), e.g. for conditional uplink (dis-) connections
* automatically add open uplinks to your wireless config, e.g. hotel captive portals
* captive portal detection with internet online check and a 'heartbeat' function to keep the uplink connection up & running
* captive portal auto-login hook (configured via uci/LuCI), you are able to reference an external script for captive portal auto-logins (see example below)

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I do not work for and I am not directly associated with GL.iNet

Almahadeus · July 14, 2023, 9:19am

Is there any possible movement on this? I am currently on a camping site (within an old farm so I cannot imagine their wifi setup to be too sophisticated) without being able to connect my Beryl AX to the WiFi despite, once again, trying everything in the book including all sorts of DNS setups, MAC cloning and randomising, connecting 5ghz or 2.4ghz as well as using stable, beta and snapshots versions of the firmware with factory resets in between. Luckily all my other devices have connected with no issues whatsoever including a laptop, Firestick (even this opens up its own browser page for the captive portal) and smartphones with no problems at all (every other device worked the first time on entering a code into the captive portal page) as they fortunately allowed me to connect up to 9 devices for the same fee. I am this close to chucking the Beryl AX in the nearest rubbish bin.

greenspace · September 20, 2023, 3:23pm

I’d love to see this implemented too. The routers just can’t function as proper travel devices, which is a shame. Some sort of basic browser support just for captive portals would be massively helpful.

G7LTQ · September 20, 2023, 4:29pm

I had forgotten about this, as I have not stayed in a hotel with a portal for a few months now. I’ve looked at my notes, and and wonder if an alternative, and perhaps easier method for GL-inet might be to arrange a proxy on a different port . The kind of thing where
USER Device Port 8080 <> Beryl Proxy <> Beryl’s Outfacing WiFi Port 80 <> Hotel WiFi

This has been on their research list since March 2021 - and as the primary purpose of a Travel Router is to use while travelling in hotels , you would think this goes to the top of their priority list.

Best would of course be an inbuilt Browser and the ability to use VNC or similar to access it. That would make sure that ANY kind of future captive portal could be handled as a browser was making direct connection as the Hotel would like.