hello all,
holiday greetings to all.
does anyone have any experience, insight into how the public, fee-based
802.11b services such as SurfAndSip or the Starbucks/T-mobile system
work on the technical side?
I looked (very briefly, wasn't in the mood to actually spend any money)
at a SurfAndSip site. it looks like all you need to do is connect to their
access point (no wep keys involved), https to a certain address, login
with password, and then one is in the network. Am I right in assuming
that these networks are WEP-less? i'm aware of the weaknesses in
WEP, but surely WEP is better than nude?!
If WEP is not involved, how do they allow authenticated users through
while blocking non-authenticated users? i can think of at least two
ways, but my current idea is that the web based login somehow figures
out the client's MAC address (probably working with the access point,
router or some cafe-side sniffer), calls back the router (identified by
the IP number it gave the client via DHCP) and sets an ACL or firewall
rule that lets the given MAC address through.
does anyone have any other insight into this? preferably, one that is
based on data rather than conjecture? :).
this is all just for the sake of curiosity, at some point the parent company
of the company i work for will help in rolling out starbucks cafe
installations (i won't be involved) so i suppose i'll figure it out then.
i'd like to get a jump on this though and i'd like to know what people
think about how this might be implemented.
tiger
--
Gerald Timothy Quimpo tiger*quimpo*org gquimpo*sni-inc.com tiger*sni*ph
Public Key: "gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys 672F4C78"
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Doveryai no proveryai.
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