- Dustin -
Rob Flickenger * rob at nocat.net <mailto:rob%20at%20nocat.net> /Sun, 25 Jan 2004 11:31:12 -0800/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------
I thought you might find this interesting. Someone brought this to my attention:
http://www.nomadix.com/company/pressroom/pressrelease.asp?id=PR01200401
I think the critical phrase from the press release is: "This redirection takes place regardless of the host computer's settings and without altering the user's browser settings." Check out the full text of the patent:
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser? Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=/netahtml/search- adv.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&d=ptxt&S1=6,636,894&OS=6,636,894&RS=6,636,894
While they might like to make it sound like they've patented the captive portal, they've really only patented their wacky arp implementation. They look for any machine being ARP'd for that doesn't receive a reply, and issue an ARP reply using the gateway's MAC address. Combined with some DNS strangeness, this lets the gateway bring up a splash page even when the client requests a private intranet page, or even if they are using static IP address settings rather than DHCP.
NoCatAuth does none of that. We considered it for a while, but I don't think it's worth the effort, as it's really easy to confuse both the client and the gatway. I still think that software implementation patents are detrimental to innovation, but this one doesn't seem to pose an immediate threat to our project.
Still, it is interesting that they've gone and patented it.
--Rob
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