Commercial Cisco routers (i.e. public wifi)

nomorewindows · 2010-04-27 21:37:42

When I connect to one of these commercial routers with Windows it plays all nice and pretty, but when I use my power machine (*NIX), Cisco don't want to play so nice. It's a trick just getting the proprietary drivers to work under linux, but then when I connect to anything other than the cheap router at my own place, it don't want to connect and stay connected. Forget Ubuntu, it won't even try. Arch I've had success with a couple strange times. But there are certain ones that just won't cough up the network. Forget the library with all the extra hose down jobs, all I could get was their main page and the one that tells me to abide by the policy. Strangely, anything I pulled over from running windows would work, but anything else when dual booting would not give a lick. Not only is the wifi proprietary firmware, the networks they run on are also proprietary. Is this that the Cisco routers came out before the Wifi routers came out or some strange oddity like this?

ewaller · 2010-04-27 22:08:22

Often, those networks put you in "jail" and redirect everything to their log on / Agreement page. After you promise to behave and renounce your privacy rights, their router will forward you to the rest of the internet.

So, check if there is anything about your machine that could confuse their bot. Are you starting your internet session with a browser on port 80 so they can re-direct you? are you accepting cookies? are you allowing Javascript? Flash? Are they looking for a particular, standards non-compliant browser?

nomorewindows · 2010-04-28 02:01:04

Let's just put it this way...everything works on Windows, nothing (or limited parts) work on Unix. And we should know what the differences are, but it's like the routing designed by Cisco is only allowing Windows clients and could care nothing about unix clients. It connects and all that, but to very limited amount of resources. It would leave me to believe another industry domination tactic to force me to have to use windows if I want the internet 'as it was intended'. I remember a time when Micro$haft had to pour money into internet projects, because they blew the idea off in their operating system (win95), but now the browser is tightly bundled with the operating system (and all of its' extraneous & bogus bugs). To tell me that I can't happily connect with my unix box is looney. Supposedly every vendor has been represented with the TCP/IP protocol.

davidm · 2010-04-28 03:23:01

nomorewindows wrote:

Let's just put it this way...everything works on Windows, nothing (or limited parts) work on Unix. And we should know what the differences are, but it's like the routing designed by Cisco is only allowing Windows clients and could care nothing about unix clients. It connects and all that, but to very limited amount of resources. It would leave me to believe another industry domination tactic to force me to have to use windows if I want the internet 'as it was intended'. I remember a time when Micro$haft had to pour money into internet projects, because they blew the idea off in their operating system (win95), but now the browser is tightly bundled with the operating system (and all of its' extraneous & bogus bugs). To tell me that I can't happily connect with my unix box is looney. Supposedly every vendor has been represented with the TCP/IP protocol.

I've never heard of a commercial router only serving windows clients in this way. Are you sure it isn't another issue such as range or power where somehow on linux the TX/RX power is set lower than the compliment on windows? You might also play with various settings on your wifi adapter as well such changing long or short preambles or turning power management off just to see if it makes a difference at all.

Consider giving us a "iwconfig wlan0" (or whichever interface is your wifi adapter) output as well once you get connected and start noticing the problem. Maybe also try some traceroutes and pings to places like google to test the connection.

If you are still suspicious you can always use a extension in firefox (or even about:config) to change the user agent so that it looks like you are using internet explorer and windows. But I seriously doubt this is your problem. While it used to be very common for individual sites to discriminate based on browser and to a lessor extent OS, wifi routers doing this are almost unheard of.

Last edited by davidm (2010-04-28 03:24:00)

nomorewindows · 2010-04-28 09:58:17

I know in Ubuntu, it has trouble even getting a DHCP address and going anywhere beyond that.
The problem I was having yesterday, where they are using "content filtering" preventing me from going to those no-no sites, it was overworking itself.

I was pinging out to sites such as google.com and would come back. Was able to get the NTP protocol to give me the time. Was even able to ping the pacman servers, but when I run pacman they all come back with DNS search errors as if this is being content filtered. Same thing in the browser, can't find that site. Windows comes up with a message saying that connected to a network, with limited internet connectivity, but it goes to all the sites I would want to go to. Strangely, I was able to packet sniff where everyone else was going in the Arch, but I would not be able to reproduce that sort of traffic on my own. Usually, packet sniffing a wireless network *ONLY* shows traffic to/from your machine and here was I able to see the Windows machines in the rest of the network going all over the internet. Makes me wonder (although I should've seen something to the effect), that the windows machines are using WINS or some sort of NAT over NetBIOS for their address translation. Given that ping uses its' own protocol I was able to get the addresses, and use the IP addresses, but still no luck even then. iwconfig said I was connected at 36Mbps.

Last edited by nomorewindows (2010-04-28 10:02:24)

Sin.citadel · 2010-04-28 18:49:32

if pings to sites such as www.google.com, etc are working fine, then the DNS servers are working correctly working, most likely problem is either the default route which is improperly set, or you are not redirected to the proper page to allow access, try accessing http://<gatewayip> to see if u need to log into it or something.

nomorewindows · 2010-04-28 19:32:21

I try google initially in the browser and it either says not found or it drops to the policy page, please accept after which on Windows would go anywhere, but then afterwards on unix still doesn't go anywhere except maybe a local website on this side of the router (inhouse app). I checked for a default gateway route and I think it was in there. Of course, ping uses the ICMP protocol which most likely isn't being filtered by anything. But anything beyond that would not load. If I had somehow queried the site under windows and booted back to linux it would intermittently let me have it in the web browser, nothing else. It would decide one minute to work and then the next time it wouldn't bring the page up. Is the firewall separate from the Cisco router or is it actually part of the Cisco IOS? Of course, while I was sniffing out I didn't see my packets going across (they were going by in a blaze) almost like it would be a default gateway, but I would think it would be getting it from the DHCP server. My guess is maybe those routers when they bounce me around to read the policy or acceptance or initial connect page we'll call it, that an address is not being reassigned and therefore don't have my own address out past the firewall. Whatever changes when the accept button is taken doesn't get updated afterwards. This could be a possibility, because the one I have no trouble around, doesn't require the policy page. I had a little trouble with it initially, but now it works now everytime I want to use it. Don't remember about the other one that I didn't have problems with.

Sin.citadel · 2010-04-29 04:41:28

in windows, first check your settings (ip,mask,gateway,dns) before accepting the page, and then again after accepting it, see if there are any changes. also, try changing your network settings in windows to static and then again see if it works or not.

since in TCP/IP there is no discernible way for the router to check whether the request is from a unix/windows host, there must be some specific settings which are altered when you accept the policy page. do the above steps and post whether the connection still works or not, also make sure to find your mac address.

nomorewindows · 2010-09-13 14:26:52

Well, this is weird I get the same behaviour from my home router. I can connect and go just about anywhere, but recently the speed is the lowest possible. But when I switch to the wired, it's full speed. I think I read somewhere that the internal optimizations are available on the windows driver, but I'm using ndiswrapper. It worked fine on a campus network where I suppose they expect all types of operating systems. Strangely, I noticed someone using Windows 7 and they couldn't connect wirelessly at all? I'm just not really sold on this wireless concept yet, it's too unreliable. The only other thing I can think of is the TTL on windows is ridiculously large, whereas UNIX is small as possible.

Arch Linux

#1 2010-04-27 21:37:42

Commercial Cisco routers (i.e. public wifi)

#2 2010-04-27 22:08:22

Re: Commercial Cisco routers (i.e. public wifi)

#3 2010-04-28 02:01:04

Re: Commercial Cisco routers (i.e. public wifi)

#4 2010-04-28 03:23:01

Re: Commercial Cisco routers (i.e. public wifi)

#5 2010-04-28 09:58:17

Re: Commercial Cisco routers (i.e. public wifi)

#6 2010-04-28 18:49:32

Re: Commercial Cisco routers (i.e. public wifi)

#7 2010-04-28 19:32:21

Re: Commercial Cisco routers (i.e. public wifi)

#8 2010-04-29 04:41:28

Re: Commercial Cisco routers (i.e. public wifi)

#9 2010-09-13 14:26:52

Re: Commercial Cisco routers (i.e. public wifi)

Board footer