I’m a little confused about the captive portal settings and need some help. I’m away at the moment and the hotels network uses a captive portal. Initially I had the auto login set off and authenticated myself via phone then cloned Mac to router and all seemed to work.
24 hours later (well more like 22hrs) I can’t get in at all via the router after trying clone again and factory. Tried switching auto login to portal on but when it tells me I’ve entered login mode and I click the link to take me to login nothing happens.
I’m now back to using my phone directly thru hotel network without router.
Could someone advise what should my settings be with regards to captive portal and what is the expected behaviour when the hotel network times out your connection (I assume thus is MAC address)
You dont always need to clone a mobile Mac address. The router has its own Mac address.
Load up the travel router, Connect to your travel router SSID / WiFi name, login to your travel router and accept any warning that says there's no internet and to stay connected to your travel router. On the router scan for hotel WiFi and connect. make sure your travel router has "DNS Rebinding Attack Protection" OFF - Found under Network > DNS
Now on your device that is connected to your travel router load up http://neverssl.com, this will help load up any captive portal that's on the hotel WiFi as usually a captive portal loads when visiting a site prior to accepting terms. Using the site I posted can help ensure the portal loads. Agree to any terms and conditions and then just browse as normal. Unless they have some low DHCP lease you should be good to go, if not you will have to reauth.
So if I enable "Auto-Enable Login Mode for Public Hotspots" what is supposed to happen? The pop up within the router GUI says it will automatically enter login mode.....am I supposed to see the captive portal details displayed within my travel router GUI or is it supposed to reactivate my session automatically without user action?
I'll play around again tomorrow when the portal locks me out and see what happens
Honestly, I'm unsure. I have never needed / used that option. Usually I connect to my travel router, login to the travel router and scan for nearby WiFi, find the SSID of the WiFi and connect directly to it. Then I do what I mentioned in my previous post.
Just thought I would provide an update for anyone interested. After the info from @j2zero I switched off the "Auto Enable Login for Public Hotspots" and it's been working fine. What happens now is that when the portal stops working and needs me to re-authenticate then any new browser tab on my laptop just takes me to the portal where I provide my details and then everything carries on as normal.
One strange thing though is that my iPhone which is also connected to the wifi of my travel router didn't stop working when my laptop did. I double checked it hadn't switched itself to the hotel wifi which it hadn't and it just carried on working - anyway not a problem but a strange one.
I'm still interested in understanding what the expected behaviour is when I enable auto login mode for public hotspots - so if anyone know please let me know.
this router will automatically enter Login Mode for Public Hotspots when it successfully connected to a hotspot but not the Internet. This mode will pause VPNs and custom DNS until it leave,
afaik: it will help you a little bit, and do the 2 needed actions for you, that are needed to reach the Login page. That is (pause VPN: because VPN traffic cannot reach the Portal input) and (pause local DNS: because only the Portal DNS contains the domain name pointing to the IP address for the portal) . This is called the "Login Mode for Public Hotspots" , it is not doing the Login, just make it possible.
The iPhone , like any client device connected to the GL.inet router will just communicate via de GL.inet router with the portal, using the routers MAC and IP address. Any device behind the GL.inet router will be seen as the GL.inet router itself. (That is with the "Router" Network Mode, and is different from the "Extender" Network mode. Extender Network mode would use the Mac address of the router with the IP address of the client device, if the Portal allows for such usage.
Connection through the portal for devices and applications behind the travel router can stop working at different times, because the decision to allow a new connection (TCP session) is different from stopping an established (tracked-)connection.
Direct browsing: many new connections/per page
Applications, mostly steady connection to one server
Via VPN, the portal tracks the very steady VPN itself, new connections in that VPN or existing connections doesn't matter.
Thanks for that explanation. I use my AX-3000 only once or twice a year as a travel router to circumvent Captive Portals, so I update the firmware before I go . I then have to relearn how to use it again
But as captive portal use in Hotels is one of the main purposes of a Travel router and the new firmware is designed to make this easy, I think it would be a good idea for gl-inet to have a pdf file of methods/notes for users to print and take with them.