Better Hotel Wifi

Working around a hotel's captive portal

Published: Monday, Jun 28, 2021 Last modified: Monday, Dec 9, 2024

I’m quarantined in a hotel for two weeks in Singapore and I don’t want the hassle of joining the open JWMarriot public network and logging in with my devices.

My solution is to connect a Singapore bought Mikrotik hap ac2 (aka RouterBOARD D52G-5HacD2HnD-TC) to the phone like so:

No IP address was acquired via ether1 (default configuration) until I called reception and request their tech team configures the port so that an address comes down like so:

Is the Mikrotik better?

JWMarriot nicetrace Mikrotik nicetrace

Yes, my AP is on the table and ping times are halved with better stability (no packetloss).

I work around the captive portal by only jumping hoops once with the Mikrotik’s MAC address. Since it’s consistently connected, it should not require a login again.🤞

So no need to jump hoops when I connect my devices, especially my Archlinux machine which resists DNS poisoning on portal.reivernet.com !!