I have always suspected this is not the case with T-Mobile. I have just such an account with them, and whenever I go to a T-Mobile hotspot, I find I can't even use command-line SSH until I log in using a web browser. In fact, all of my requests get redirected to www.tmobile.com, regardless of port, often resulting in rejected service, until I actually log in. My impression has been that a T-Mobile hotspot has some means of maintaining a list of active MAC addresses of customers who have logged in, and provides different DNS for any MAC address that isn't on the list.
I am not a T-Mobile employee, but if someone has a way of ascertaining these these things, I will gladly lend someone my T-Mobile hotspot account for finding out. Solomon K. Chang On Mon, 2005-01-24 at 04:30, Jim Thompson wrote: > kram2004 wrote: > > 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
