Have to reset to connect to hotel captive portal

LE1250 · 2022-08-25T17:29:28.907Z

Hello everyone, I have an issue where my hotel has a 24 hour timer on every device. After 24 hours from connecting, you have to re-login through the captive portal even with the GL iNet router.

The issue is, I can’t get the captive portal to show up unless I completely reset the router. This is especially a pain because I have to go through and re-set up my names, passwords, and VPN data every time.

Model: GL.iNet GL-AXT1800 (Slate AX)
Version: v4.0.2

Does anyone have any recommendations for this?

-Restarting does not work
-DNS Attack on/off does not work
-Changing the name of the server does not work
-WAN does not work

Almahadeus · 2022-08-25T19:11:21.569Z

May be just change the MAC address of your router every day?

yuxin.zou · 2022-08-26T02:06:03.353Z

Have you tried MAC Clone?

Connect your phone to the hotel‘s Wi-Fi and login through the captive portal
Connect your phone to SlateAX’s Wi-Fi and access admin panel of the router
Open the MAC Clone page and let the router clone your phone’s MAC
Repeat step 1 every 24 hours thereafter, using your phone to login through the captive portal

Note: Some phones use a different randomized mac when connecting to different Wi-Fi. So maybe you need to enter the MAC manually to ensure that the MAC cloned by SlateAX is the one that your phone provides to the hotel WiFi.

alzhao · 2022-08-26T09:46:33.718Z

Need to disable vpn in order to let the portal pop up.

Scjcs · 2022-08-26T14:15:46.915Z

And use the hotel’s DNS.

jgutman · 2022-08-26T14:29:25.267Z

How important is it to use the hotel’s dns? For streaming purposes (I’m not in the USA) I use the Slate with vpn and a USA dns. Can I use the hotel dns to connect and then change it back to what I need?

Scjcs · 2022-08-26T14:54:35.105Z

The hotel’s setup might depend on using its own DNS during the login process. This requires no VPN be active as well.

After logging in, you can get fancy.

I just had this exact issue at my last hotel.

Now I’m at a new one, and alas: my guest network is visible and I can connect to it, but my admin WiFi (which I hid) can no longer be connected-to! One reset coming up…

LE1250 · 2022-08-27T12:03:29.869Z

Thanks for the help everyone! I’m in Italy trying to use a USA VPN. The fix really was as simple as turning off the VPN and refreshing. It makes sense since the VPN (as to my limited understanding of them) would just tunnel right past the captive portal… I think?

Anyways, it makes sense to me even if I’m wrong. To everyone else, if I have future issues I’ll try your advice as well and let you know. Hopefully other people who are new to VPN’s and using portable routers could find this thread helpful.

elorimer · 2022-08-27T13:09:11.288Z

LE1250:

It makes sense since the VPN (as to my limited understanding of them) would just tunnel right past the captive portal… I think?

Sorta. Captive portals are usually triggered by an http request on port 80. The VPN would try and never get out the door until whitelisted by the captive portal, but as long as the VPN service is in the mix that first request never happens.

Captive Portal Strategies Technical Support for Routers

I’ve had problems with captive portals, particularly with my Chromebooks (looking at you Delta), and I see others have had, so I thought I would put down a few notes in case it would be helpful. Some captive portals operate through a form of DNS poisoning. When you make a connection to a wifi router, you get an IP and a DNS server. Mobile devices, most modern OSs and browsers will immediately run a captive portal detection test by issuing a DNS request through port 80 for some identified serve…