Re: [Captive-portals] Arguments against (any) Capport "API"

[Mikael Abrahamsson <swmike@swm.pp.se>]

On Tue, 4 Apr 2017, David Bird wrote:

> The one area I do see value in solving is how to get headless IoT 
> devices on-line on capport networks.. But, in some ways, all we need 
> their is a WISPr client in the device and an out-of-band way of 
> configuring credentials into it. That can be solved with existing 
> protocols and technologies.

I only have experience with captive portals as a user. When I travel the 
world, I have frequently seen captive portal pages that as far as I can 
see, offer nothing apart from a login page. It might have the hotel name 
in there, but that's it. So then I have to manually do something like 
find the piece of paper where my username/password is, and enter that. It 
seems to be only about authenticating me as actually being a resident of 
the hotel or whatever venue it is. Sometimes it seems to be there because 
there are legal requirements for tracking (they will write down a log of 
my room number and username on the paper in a ledger).

It's extremely cumbersome and as far as I can tell, it adds nothing for 
the WISP (at least nothing I can tell) by means of marketing or alike, 
it's only for assuring that people in the street can't just use the wifi.

Do you know the motivation for doing this in the context of your email? Is 
there added cost for them to automate the behavior, as in IPR or other 
licensing cost for them to use the automation tech that perhaps is already 
available in my mobile device?

--
Mikael Abrahamsson    email: swmike@swm.pp.se