Thanks for reporting this bug and any supporting documentation. Since
this bug has enough information provided for a developer to begin work,
I'm going to mark it as confirmed and let them handle it from here.
Thanks for taking the time to make Ubuntu better!
** Changed in: network-manager (Ubuntu)
Importance: Undecided => Medium
** Changed in: network-manager (Ubuntu)
Status: New => Triaged
** Changed in: network-manager (Ubuntu)
Importance: Medium => Wishlist
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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/914507
Title:
Feature Request: special Browser window for logging in to WiFi
Hotspots
Status in “network-manager” package in Ubuntu:
Triaged
Bug description:
Last year I travelled around a lot. And I saw that almost everywhere there
are WiFi Hotspots now: at airports, Hotels, train stations, public buildings
and in cafes.
These Hotspots normally redirect all traffic to a special IP address which
provides a Welcome page with a login form. Accessing this server with another
protocol does not work, which is not a problem for POP3, IMAP or SSH, but it is
a problem if you connect by https, because your browser will recognise the
wrong security certificate or the port is not even used (which is even better
in my opinion).
1) So if I open a browser it automatically tries to open its Start page which
is https in my case (I use the HTTPS Everywhere plugin in my firefox). Because
it uses https, I will not be redirected to the login page and am waiting in
front of an empty page. Then I manually have to open a link which does not use
https and get redirected to the login page.
2) Another annoying thing are other users who open a saved browser session.
All saved (http-)tabs will be redirected to the welcome page so that it does
not make any sense anymore to save the browser session.
3) Firefox also sometimes does compatibily checks and plugin updates at start
time. These also fail when trying to login to a Hotspot network.
How can we solve this problem?
First, network manager should check if the connected wireless network is a
Hotspot network. This chan be done by a simple http request to a stable and
well-known page, for example http://gnome.org/netcheck which returns a known
token (something like "Yes, you are connected to the Internet").
- If the token is returned, everything is fine and the user has connection
- If it does not receive this token but a redirect, it should open a special
browser-window (not the default browser because of the reasons above) which
allows to log-in to the network before other internet applications are started.
- In any other case, network manager could try another server (backup) or
stop probing.
For known wireless networks, network manager could also provide a
setting to disable/autodetect/force hotspot login.
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