Originally Posted by
PabloTbag
Thanks Ryan. Don't some of the captive portal systems actually have an applett that reads the MAC address off the machine that is running the browser? If that were the case, it would seem to be wise to at least clone the MAC address of the wireless inteface on the laptop to the travel router wired LAN address just to be safe
I don't claim to be an expert on captive portals, but generally speaking, captive portals are done via a simple HTTP redirect by the router itself to a webpage which asks you to login and/or accept some terms. I've never seen one that runs/installs any kind of applet (at least not in the US), but that doesn't mean they don't exist.
I would suspect though, that an applet approach would not be ideal since it is impossible to determine what types of machines, browsers, restrictions will be in place on customer machines. In other words, not every browser can support every technology (activex, java, etc.) so the people running the captive portal would cause themselves more grief by putting a restrictive solution in place (more help desk calls, etc.).
Ryan