Re: [Captive-portals] Starting to discuss Captive Portals

[Warren Kumari <warren@kumari.net>]

On Mon, Mar 30, 2015 at 3:38 PM, Martin Thomson
<martin.thomson@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 30 March 2015 at 14:35, Yoav Nir <ynir.ietf@gmail.com> wrote:
>> So why did my hotel do this? It’s because they wanted me to see that page.
>
> Yes, this is the real problem here.  It's eyeball-seeking behaviour.
> So why not build in an I-need-eyeballs option?


I suspect that we are going to be spending a significant amount of our
time with the tension between making the user's life better, and also
trying to maximize the CP operator's desires.

The CP vendor *could* satisfy their desire for eyeballs (puts me in
mind of zombies -- "Braaaaaiiiins... Eyeballls......") by having you
sign in, and then presenting a "Thank you for using our
super-awsome-internets service" (and whatever other ads they desire)
and including a <META http-equiv="refresh"
content="20;URL=http://192.0.2.1/congrats.html";>. This would get them
20 seconds of luckless^w happy users looking at their ads. Another
option would be "CP_SATISTISFIED_JABBERWOCKY; PERSISTANT" which would
instruct the host to keep the "Congrats" page around (sure, the host
might just ignore this, but, well, at some point we are going to have
to assume that the CP vendors and hosts are not completely trying to
make the user a sad puppy...)

Ugh.

Some of this discussion gets a little funny because we don't have good
terminology for taking about captive portal techniques. I really suck
at definitions and terminology, so someone else should write this, but
for now I've been thinking of things like this:

Interception - any of the things that CPs do to get you to visit them.
These include:
DNS interception - handing out fake answers to DNS lookups (fake is
meant to mean "different to what the owner of the domain would have
given", and is not intended to be pejorative)
Passive DNS interception - doing the above by handing out answers when
queried directly, for example by having the CP handed out (via DHCP)
as the DNS server.
Active DNS interception - watching DNS requests as they pass though
the CP device and pretending to be the configured DNS server.
<similar terms for HTTP interception, IP hijacking, etc>

"Splash pages" - generic term for all of the pages that the CP
generates and presents to the users.
"Welcome page" - the first page that the user sees from the CP.
Usually says something like "Welcome to hotel foo. You can get
Internets for $price". May include a few more "help" pages, AUP, etc.
"Login pages" - the page(s) that accept user input. These may accept
things like credentials or credit card information, and so may need
SSL/TLS.
"Congrats page" - the page that thanks you for your purchase, and says
that you are now connected to the Internet.
"Status page" - a page that some CPs provide that tells you how much
time you have left on your block of Internet (they usually ask to be
left open). Some of these are simply a javascript thing that
decrements the time, some do a periodic callback to check status, some
actually keep your block / lease alive by periodically poking the CP.
"Site page" - a page that the CP redirects to after the "congrats"
page. After you pay and the CP has told you are on the Internet some
CPs redirect you to a "site information page". This has "useful"
information about the hotel / airport / location where you are
(including stuff like ads for the hotel restaurant, etc.)
"Banner insertion" - (the Fairmont hotel was doing this, but many
attendees probably didn't see if because we'd already taken over the
hotel network and replaced it with the IETF one.) Basically the
captive-portal intercepts HTTP requests and injects an iframe which
presents a banner at the top of the page with a logo and the time
remaining.

"Continue URL" - the URL that the user originally tried to access.
When the CP has been satisfied, it may (should?!) redirect the user to
where they were originally trying to go...

Anyway, I *did* warn you that I suck at terminology -- but, we can use
things like this until we have something better.

W





-- 
I don't think the execution is relevant when it was obviously a bad
idea in the first place.
This is like putting rabid weasels in your pants, and later expressing
regret at having chosen those particular rabid weasels and that pair
of pants.
   ---maf