>>>>> "Don" == Don Park <[email protected]> writes:
Michael> One way we could approach this would be to allow PTP members Michael> to whitelist up to 3 devices for one year, by bringing the Michael> device(s) to a monthly meeting, where the MAC address would Michael> be placed into the Don> If a request is made for http://xyz, the page for xyz should be Don> returned and not a different page. Every computer on the Internet Don> can reasonably count on this happening, except for wifi users. Don> A half-way point between keeping and removing the splash page is Don> what wifidog is already doing: show the splash page once, then Don> consider the user authorized. A browser-less mobile device can be Don> expected to make a second attempt and that second attempt will go Don> through. My attitude for a while has been that the captive portal splash pages have advantages for our organization. The advantages are: a) they let people know about our organization, about who is hosting the node, who to thank, a pointer to a donate button, etc. b) display the terms of use for the node (something once upon a time vetted by our lawyers, when we had lawyers), providing the basis for the node host to claim (??) some kind of safe harbor. I seldom hear complaints about nocatauth nodes. We have had complaints about too-short timeouts, particularly at wifidog nodes, and there has been the problem at some wifidog nodes of it going wonky when there are lots of users (apparently, not so much of a problem at wgt634u-based nodes). Yes, captive portals annoy some users. Those same users are somewhat in our debt for there being an expectation in Portland of free wifi at all. Maybe they should just get over it? I don't think a once-a-day-per-node splash to navigate through is asking so much. I agree that repeatedly being slapped in the face every 5, 15 or 30 minutes is severely suboptimal, and ought to be fixed. One thing I don't like about the white-listing idea is that it will have the tendency to mask problems we really would be better off solving. Anybody who wants to work on improving captive portal behavior, please contact me. I'd love to have some thoughtful, engaged assistance. -- Russell Senior, Secretary [email protected] --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ The Personal Telco Project - http://www.personaltelco.net/ Donate to PTP: http://www.personaltelco.net/donate Archives: http://news.gmane.org/gmane.network.wireless.portland.general/ Etiquette: http://www.personaltelco.net/index.cgi/MailingListEtiquette List information: http://lists.personaltelco.net To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
