[Commotion-discuss] Commotion Splash Screen
Dan Staples
danstaples at opentechinstitute.org
Thu Sep 12 19:13:46 UTC 2013
We also add a "thisnode 192.168.1.20" entry to /etc/hosts to allow for
clients to access the router. But I'm not sure how that would be useful
for captive portaling.
I also wasn't aware of dnsmasq's caching abilities. I'll have to look
into that. If you have any suggestions for best utilizing it or seeding
it, I would love to know.
thanks,
Dan
On Thu 12 Sep 2013 02:00:53 PM EDT, Ben West wrote:
> Hi Dan,
>
> I believe ROBIN's trick was to include local hostname entries for the
> router, e.g. my.open-mesh.com <http://my.open-mesh.com>, in into the
> node's dnsmasq config.
>
> Likewise, dnsmasq supports storing a local cache on the node, which
> could be enhanced/enlarged to ensure a good chance that a commonly
> requested URLs (google.com <http://google.com>, yahoo.com
> <http://yahoo.com>, etc) has entries in the local cache. Indeed, the
> local cache could also be explicitly seeded on power-up with such
> popular entries. I don't believe the RAM requirements for 150 entries
> vs 10000 entries in the local DNS cache are that severe.
>
> This might allow nodogsplash to stand a good chance of successfully
> caching users' port 80 sessions in the event of an Internet outage and
> display an appropriate portal page (e.g. announcement of the outage).
>
> This approach would assume the node normally has an Internet
> connection, and that outages are infrequent.
>
>
>
>
> On Thu, Sep 12, 2013 at 11:46 AM, Dan Staples
> <danstaples at opentechinstitute.org
> <mailto:danstaples at opentechinstitute.org>> wrote:
>
> The captive portal can't intercept port 80 requests before DNS
> requests
> because the client doesn't actually make a port 80 HTTP request until
> they get a DNS resolution of the site they are trying to reach.
>
> I would be really curious to know how ROBIN captive portaled during
> internet outages.
>
> On 09/12/2013 12:02 PM, Ben West wrote:
> > Hi All,
> >
> > Is nodogsplash still being investigated as a stand-alone splash page
> > solution? My understanding is that nodog would intercept users'
> port 80
> > sessions before any DNS queries were actually launched.
> >
> > I realize the version of nodog available until just recently was
> lacking
> > key bandwidth throttling features, but I can share that a new
> nodog was
> > released a few days ago. The Changelog, unfortunately, doesn't
> indicate
> > that throttling has yet been ported to the new 3.x kernel.
> >
> https://github.com/nodogsplash/nodogsplash/releases/tag/v0.9_beta9.9.8
> >
> > Anyway, on the old ROBIN firmware, the nodog captive portal
> would indeed
> > continue to display even in case of Internet outage, since the
> portal
> > content is stored locally on the node. I had used that very
> capability
> > to (manually) adjust content on nodes' local splash page and
> announce
> > outages. This unfortunately didn't work out as a reliable means to
> > announce outages, since the ROBIN firmware itself would later
> detect the
> > Internet outage and disable the nodes' AP entirely (a feature which
> > couldn't be disabled, and got annoying very quickly).
> >
> > As for a node detecting whether it has Internet access, I think
> Freifunk
> > scripted solution for that in the freifunk-gwcheck package.
> > Unfortunately, luci,subsignal.org <http://subsignal.org>
> <http://subsignal.org> appears to be
> > down now, so I can't cite the source code.
> >
> > This appears to be clone:
> >
> https://dev.openwrt.org.cn/browser/feeds/luci/trunk/luci/luci/contrib/package/freifunk-gwcheck
> >
> >
> >
> > On Thu, Sep 12, 2013 at 7:24 AM, Dan Staples
> > <danstaples at opentechinstitute.org
> <mailto:danstaples at opentechinstitute.org>
> > <mailto:danstaples at opentechinstitute.org
> <mailto:danstaples at opentechinstitute.org>>> wrote:
> >
> > Hi Dan,
> >
> > Unfortunately, the splash screen currently requires internet
> access to
> > function. This is because the captive portal program
> intercepts and
> > modifies responses to clients' DNS requests, and those
> responses only
> > occur if DNS servers are available in the first place. With
> no internet
> > access, no DNS response, no splash screen.
> >
> > I have worked on creating a captive portal solution for
> > non-internet-connected Commotion networks, and it in fact
> works. The
> > problem is that there is currently no way to have a router
> auto-detect
> > whether it is currently connected to the internet or not,
> and then
> > auto-configure its captive portal to do the right thing. If
> your network
> > suffered an internet outage, you would have to either
> restart DNSmasq on
> > each node, or reboot all the nodes, in order for the splash
> screen to
> > continue to function. And then do the same thing once
> internet access
> > was restored.
> >
> > There might be a way to run a script periodically to check
> for internet
> > connectivity, and then restart DNSmasq if it detects an
> outage. I'll try
> > to work on that and see what I can do.
> >
> > Do you know what versions of Firefox and Chrome didn't work
> with the
> > splash page? If you can find out, I can look into that too.
> >
> > cheers,
> > Dan
> >
> >
> > On 09/12/2013 07:40 AM, Dan Hastings wrote:
> > > Yesterday we had our first large internet outage since
> setting up our
> > > first few commotion nodes. I have our homepage in the our
> > computer lab
> > > set to google.com <http://google.com> <http://google.com>
> but since we are on an open
> > network the commotion
> > > splash screen comes up first. This is great since it
> makes it easier
> > > for students to access local applications without having to
> > memorize the
> > > location of the applications on the network.
> > >
> > > However, when our net went out the splash screen did not
> come up.
> > I was
> > > wondering if anyone knew a way to set the splash screen so
> it will
> > come
> > > up regardless if their is internet access. Should the
> splash screen
> > > appear anyway regardless and am I'm missing something in
> the captive
> > > portal settings? Is there way to set the splash screen as
> a homepage?
> > >
> > > Also, I've noticed that some students who are running older
> > versions of
> > > Firefox and chrome in windows 7 would not be redirected to
> the splash
> > > screen and could not access the internet. After updating
> their
> > browsers
> > > we seemed to get to the splash screen fine to allow internet
> > access. Not
> > > sure if this has been a problem in the past or of I'm missing
> > something
> > > as well.
> > >
> > > Any guidance or help would be much appreciated.
> > >
> > > Thanks,
> > >
> > > Dan
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Commotion-discuss mailing list
> > > Commotion-discuss at lists.chambana.net
> <mailto:Commotion-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
> > <mailto:Commotion-discuss at lists.chambana.net
> <mailto:Commotion-discuss at lists.chambana.net>>
> > > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/commotion-discuss
> > >
> >
> > --
> > Dan Staples
> >
> > Open Technology Institute
> > https://commotionwireless.net
> > OpenPGP key: http://disman.tl/pgp.asc
> > Fingerprint: 2480 095D 4B16 436F 35AB 7305 F670 74ED BD86 43A9
> > _______________________________________________
> > Commotion-discuss mailing list
> > Commotion-discuss at lists.chambana.net
> <mailto:Commotion-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
> > <mailto:Commotion-discuss at lists.chambana.net
> <mailto:Commotion-discuss at lists.chambana.net>>
> > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/commotion-discuss
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Ben West
> > me at benwest.name <mailto:me at benwest.name> <mailto:me at benwest.name
> <mailto:me at benwest.name>>
>
> --
> Dan Staples
>
> Open Technology Institute
> https://commotionwireless.net
> OpenPGP key: http://disman.tl/pgp.asc
> Fingerprint: 2480 095D 4B16 436F 35AB 7305 F670 74ED BD86 43A9
>
>
>
>
> --
> Ben West
> me at benwest.name <mailto:me at benwest.name>
--
Dan Staples
Open Technology Institute
https://commotionwireless.net
OpenPGP key: http://disman.tl/pgp.asc
Fingerprint: 2480 095D 4B16 436F 35AB 7305 F670 74ED BD86 43A9
More information about the Commotion-discuss
mailing list