are you telling me that (in the case of starbucks) every hotspot at a starbucks is running a computer/server at their location JUST for redirecting all the traffic to a specific logon page? i always thot it was a special router of some sort... so every hotspot that redirects traffic is using a server?
No, you could have a router with a packet filter that forwards all TCP traffic on port 80 from the LAN segment(s) to a remote IP address and TCP port.
Same thing.
Most of the smaller players do it in the AP though
