I have a somewhat unique situation and I'm hoping someone has a possible solution.
I have a seasonal trailer and the campground provides Wi-Fi at a fee. Their Wi-Fi system is not password protected. When you first connect with a device you are presented with a captive portal requesting a coupon. This coupon is purchased from the campground. Once you input the coupon number you are granted Wi-Fi access. Once the coupon is entered, the device will no longer be sent to the captive portal website. You will simply be granted Wi-Fi access. I am assuming that the captive portal and coupon effectively register the Mac address of the device on their network.
My issue is I have a device in my trailer that requires Wi-Fi access but has no capability of accessing the captive portal web page.
What I am thinking of doing is using two opal routers. Opal 1 will act as a repeater. I will set up opal 1 using my laptop connected to the LAN port. I am hoping when I try to connect to the internet with my laptop it will be provided the captive portal authorization web page. Once I enter in the coupon supplied via the trailer park Opal 1 will then have unlimited access to the Wi-Fi system.
Opal 2 I will set up as an access point and connect the LAN port from Opal 1 to the WAN port of Opal 2.
The device I have in my trailer should then see the Wi-Fi signal from Opel 2 and be granted Wi-Fi access.
If there are any network gurus out there that could review what I've just written and let me know if it will work I would be very appreciative.
Theres a feature inside the glinet gui that can clone the Mac address. So you would connect to the WiFi via your phone or laptop and enter the coupon code on the captive portal.
You then go to the glinet gui and input the Mac address of the device which you used on the captive portal essentially tricking their portal / Mac assignment into thinking your router is actually the original device.
Check the docs - Solution 2 is what should work for you.
Just take your laptop via LAN or Mobile via WLAN and connect to the GL-iNet router. Open in a browser http://192.168.8.1.
At the first site you should see something 'not connected, please connect'. There you can choose a WLAN. Use the SSID of your camping site.
Now you should open a website at your laptop or mobile. Make sure it is http:// not https://. Secure sites in general should not allow redirect.
You should see the captive portal and enter your voucher code.
Worst what can happen, the camping site also using 192.168.8.0/24 (or similar) as subnet. It may works but only sometimes and very hard to analyze as non networking people.
In that case configure another subnet in your GL-iNet router at settings - network.
I've read through the document you suggested and I have a question.....
I'll connect to the opal router with my smartphone and the routers' WiFi for the initial setup. I'll set the router up as a repeater and choose the campground's captive portal protected WiFi. Once that has been accomplished (following the 1st option of the document you sent), will I get the captive portal if I connect my laptop to the routers LAN Port ?
If I do and I enter the purchased coupon, will the routers Mac address be whitelisted or will it be the Mac address of the laptop?
Or is it better to use my laptop to connect to the campground WiFi, enter the coupon, and then clone my laptop's Mac address in the Router (option 2)?
Try option one first, if that works then you don't need to clone anything.
Yes, you should. You can connect to your travel router via Lan or your travel routers SSID, the portal page will see the Mac address of your travel router as it's doing the request, your end device (laptop or phone) are not known to them. You might need to disable DNS rebinding if the portal doesn't load. See this page "DNS Rebinding Attack Protection" DNS - GL.iNet Router Docs 4 - You can also visit: http://neverssl.com to try and help load the portal (you should get redirected to their portal) when trying to access a site prior to being authorised by their captive portal.
Again, it is the router that will be making the request to the portal page so it will be the Mac address of your router that's accepted. They will not know any other Mac addresses or clients connecting as they will be connected behind your allowed device, in this case your travel router hence why you can bypass any device limits.
Option 2 is only necessary when you can't get the portal page to load when it's routing via the travel router. In that case you would need to use a phone or laptop and connect direct to their WiFi then when connected and approve you would clone your device Mac to the router so the router now is the phone or laptop to them, then disconnect your phone from their WiFi and join your travel router network via the travel router SSID or ethernet. The reason for the clone is that your travel router then looks like an accepted device (phone or laptop) the reason option 2 exists is because some portals can block travel routers so it's another way to get around it.
@TwoCountyMedic No problem. I have just had a thought which might be useful however I'm not sure if it would work.
So if you register the router Mac address to the campus WiFi that device will then be online however you can't clone the router Mac address to say your phone so option 2 might be a viable solution here and here's my logic.
Say you leave the van and roam the campus, maybe there's a bar or pool and you want campus WiFi on your phone, you would then have to purchase a code for that device as the router isn't In range.
Now I have thought of two ways to get round this. Connect to the campus with your phone and clone the Mac of the phone to the travel router (option 2) and hope that there captive portal isn't very clever and that when you disconnect from the travel router that both the phone and travel router continue to work as they are the same client so to speak, again I'm not sure if that would work as it might flag up as two identical Mac addresses, worst case just randomise the phone Mac address so that the router gets priority and continues to work.
The other way would be to power the travel router with a power bank and put it in a backpack so you always have WiFi lol but that's me saving money / not wanting to buying any more codes.
That's actually a great idea. But I'm not worried about data/internet on my phone as I currently get 130gig / month from my cell provider. However I do have another question.
Is there any way to save the configuration of the Opal router? I had everything set up and it was working great. Then all of a sudden the system reported that it was connected to the router (park's system) but had no internet connection. I tried deleting the repeater connection to the park's wifi and then reconnecting - No go. I eventually just did a factory reset on the Opal and reconfigured as before.. and everything started working.
I would like to be able to quickly restore a configuration file if it does it again...
You can backup system settings but I'm unsure if it preserves the repeater connections settings etc, you could try and see. Let us know if it does preserve the repeater settings if you ever do restore it back.
To do a system backup you go to System > Advanced and follow the link to Luci. Same password as the glinet gui. From there go to: System > Backup / Flash Firmware > Generate Archive.
Your settings will be in a compressed zip. When you reflash the firmware just do the quick initial setup and then visit the Luci interface and Upload archive (The main compressed file - no need to extract)
Keep in mind that you should only really backup and restore settings on the same version of firmware just incase a setting was patched in a future firmware update and your restore over writes it.
I usually create a backup and save the original firmware in the same folder just so I know it's compatible, plus the fact sometimes you can't find certain firmware builds later on via the downloads page.
I take it you managed to get it all working at the campus then?
Perfect thanks. I created an archive. I have not restored it yet, but I reviewed the zip file and found entries in the config section for the repeater and wireless setup.
I'm assuming the archive would restore functionality to the way I have the router setup. I'll try restoring the archive to the 2nd opal I purchased and let you know if it works