User Experience: Ramada Hotel Wireless Internet

J and I stayed at a Ramada Inn in Milton Ontario during our Crosswinds Party trip this December. Like any decent hotel, they provided wireless internet access. Like most services provided by non-geeks for non-geeks, it doesn’t quite work, and noone at the hotel knows how to make it go.

Sometimes I like to walk through a problem the first time like an average user would, just to see what they would. It helps when I have to troubleshoot things from their perspective later.

So, I get a receipt from the front desk. It has the following pseudo-generic information:

Username: RAMADA25
Password: OSK12NH5
Price: Free
Usage: 4320 minutes (that’s 3 days)
ESSID: Ramada
Shared WEP Keys: 9058753818 (that’s their phone number)
Valid to use until: 2006/12/13 20:00:10

First problem is that this information is not presented in the order in which the user makes use of it. The ESSID should be at the top, followed by WEP Key, Username, Password.

So, the client is an iBook. Click the wireless networks menubar option, and lo, there’s a selection of wireless networks to choose from. Unfortunatly, none of the ESSIDs exactly match the one provided.

RAMADA-4
RAMADA-5
RAMADA-2a

So I make a little leap of faith, and assume that this is not a phishing attempt. I’m on the fourth floor, so I select RAMADA-4. I am prompted for a WEP-40 key, and enter 9058753818. Connected.

I open Safari, which tells me I’m not connected to the internet. I happen to know that I never got a reply from the DHCP server. A few rounds of attempted DHCP renews fixed that, but the average user would probably reboot their machine instead.

Alright, I got an IP, 192.168.1.169. Open Safari back up, try to load a webpage. Same deal, I am told that I am not connected to the internet. At this point I should have been seeing a captive portal for entering a username/password, but I’ve got naught.

DNS is working, and I can do UDP traceroutes, which indicate that I’m connected to the internet via Bell Nexxia, and happen to be using their DNS servers. However, no TCP connections are working.

So, I check what a simpler webbrowser would see:

nemu:~ alan$ telnet google.ca 80
Trying 64.233.187.104...
Connected to google.ca.
Escape character is '^]'.
get /
HTTP/1.0 302 Moved Temporarily
Server: Apache(Cipherium) 1.0.0
/
                        Connection: close
Location: HTTPS://192.168.1.40/loginpages/dns.shtml
Content-Type: text/plain
<html></html>

Alright, it’s a classic captive-portal redirect dance. However, what the hell is that “/\n ” doing there? That doesn’t look like a valid HTTP header to me at all. After some probing, I noticed that Firefox handles it anyway, and presumably IE too (or else users would be screaming for blood). Manually entering in the above URL, or just https://192.168.1.40/loginpages/, works fine in Safari.

I do so, and I’m summarily informed that this site is secured with an invalid SSL certificate. Partly because it’s being referenced by IP rather than by domain, and partly because the domain in the certificate is ‘dlink.com’. I accept the invalid certificate.

I can see the captive portal. It’s a D-Link DSA-3100. I am prompted for the Username and Password. Unmentioned is that both must be entered in all caps.

After login, up pops up a javascript-driven “you have been logged in since X”, with a logout button. I hate these popups. Unfortunatly, closing the popup fires the logout action, which kills my internet session. Thus, I must leave it open.

At this point, I can load webpages in any browser of my choosing. FTP works, as does IRC, SSH, AIM, IMAP/S, and all the other services I’ve come to expect from the network, with the exception of outgoing email, which I’ve come to expect.

Summary: This internet service doesn’t suck too much. There’s a couple things that should be fixed. By far the most important, test the captive portal solution with multiple browsers on multiple platforms. Currently, a non-resourceful Apple user is left out in the cold. For general improvement of the user experience, I’d recommend complete removal of the annoying javascripted browser window popup, printing correct ESSIDs on receipts, and improving the dhcp server responsiveness.

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You’re currently reading “User Experience: Ramada Hotel Wireless Internet”, an entry on VerseLogic

Published:: 12.11.06 / 1am

Category:: Uncategorized

AboutMe

Alan J Castonguay is from Ontario, Canada. Interested in philosophy, animation, serial art, and mixing bleeding-edge technology with doing things the old fashioned way. Works in tech support, but dreams of going back to the theatre.

A resume is available for your perusal, should you be interested in bribing me to do work.

Murray 01.07.07 / 9am

As an owner of a D-Link DSA-3100 I found your comment. Interesting. Especially the popup logout page. We have it turned on, so that when someone leaves our public access computer the next user has to log in, and cant surf using the previous users credentials.

The problem I am trying to resolve is that my DSA-3100 freezes during FTP sessions. Whenever I want to update multiple pages on our website, I have to limit my changes to less than 20 pages per session, or the whole hotel looses Internet access. I also had a DWL-2100AP wireless access point from D-Link and it is no longer working after 6 months which leaves me thinking that D-Link products are best avoided.

But where can I get a decent ready made captive portal, with minimal set up required. At the moment I am considering setting up a linux box myself, but I have very little linux experience. Its all too confusing. Its easier to buy something off the shelf.

A hosteller 03.07.08 / 10pm

A hostel I’m staying at also uses this DSA-3100 hotspot/authenticator.

I stumbled upon an interesting flaw in the security. This might work anywhere this device has been set to quasi default standards.

The steps:
1) Buy the time they sell. Here is only $3 for 48 hours. You’ll get an ID and password from that little printout add-on device.

2) Try to launch the internet browser of choice. You’ll get a “bad certificate” notice and forwarding to the next page is the login screen. Note the IP address.

3) Login.

4) If successful then allow the popup to run and you’re in.

(now the interesting part)

5) If you disable your wireless network card (either by right click or by a physical switch) You’ll instantly lose your connection.

6) Right after that close the popup logon box. It will error out with page not found.

7) Turn the wireless network card back on. You’ll be reconnected without having to login again. (and your paid for time *doesn’t* count down without that popup).

At some point your MAC address becomes blocked or the server can’t handle the traffic or an reason I don’t know. I think the knee jerk reaction from the office staff has been to reboot the authenticator and the office wap. Sometimes this causes disconnection with the wap that is further away and the one I relied on using while in my room. (If I could ping it but nothing else I rebooted it on the sly).

At #4 you might see an error message “cannot read from cookie”.

4b Try to surf normally without logging in.

5b - Find a MAC changing utility (macshift for one in Windows) and apply it to the wireless card.

6b - Attempt to login again. Repeat 4b either until you can login

An additional setting that I made which may or may not contribute to this - changing your alternate IP configuration setting to whatever your current dhcp assignment is…and to something else just before changing your mac address.

I don’t know how they could police this security hole other than tracking or blocking actual computer *names* (which could also be changed) or diverting the web page access to a more secure web server or using third party firmware with fewer holes on their devices.

I didn’t rely on the mac changing utility initially. I think the rebooting of their devices allows you to exploit this flaw indefinitely and they must have been rebooting their office equipment often.

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User Experience: Ramada Hotel Wireless Internet

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