iPhone Has Me Captive!

July 16, 2009 9:59 AM

How to stop iPhone OS 3.0's captive portal page?

This is a dumb thing to waste my question on, but the new functionality of iPhone OS 3.0 has broken my wifi connection at college.

Now whenever I connect to a network with a captive portal, iPhone helpfully opens the page so I can login. This works great, except at university where you get a captive portal telling you to login via VPN.

Unfortunately, if I hit cancel on the iPhone's window so I can go over and turn on the vpn, the iPhone disconnects me from the network. No network connection = no vpn connection.

How can I turn off this new iPhone feature? Or exempt my college's network?

I've looked at all the options I could find and didn't see anything relevant. Hopefully I'm just overlooking something obvious.

posted by icebourg to technology (6 answers total)

Turn on the VPN first?
posted by Oktober at 10:03 AM on July 16, 2009

If you go to settings and hit the 'Wi-Fi' option, you should get a list of networks. Tap the > in a blue circle next to your college's network, and there should be an option there to turn off the feature (I think it's called Auto-login or something like that). Then you can do your worst with the VPN and it shouldn't auto-open.
posted by jaffacakerhubarb at 10:55 AM on July 16, 2009

I believe you have to be on a network that has successfully been "Auto-Join"ed to get the option in your Wi-Fi Settings, so you might not find the setting jaffacakerhubarb is referencing.

This is not for end users (sorry!), but if you're running a network that suffers from the all-or-nothing nature of the iPhone OS 3.0 hotspot autologin feature, you can route around this by adding a file at http://[your-registration-url]/library/test/success.html

I learned this here:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=9752344&tstart=0#9752344

...and when I did it for our campus network, it worked just fine.
posted by jmcmurry at 12:04 PM on July 16, 2009

I don't think the Vpn will turn on without a coonection unfortunately, but if there's enough of a delay it might work. And I have no control over the network. Any way to just turn the feature off universally? I like it at some places but not if it interferes with my college network.
posted by icebourg at 12:15 PM on July 16, 2009

Reports in that linked thread and others indicate that installing the free Boingo app from the app store disables auto-login for all Wi-Fi networks. I use the auto-login so I have not personally tested it, but that seems like a decent option.
posted by j.edwards at 12:34 PM on July 16, 2009

Looks like Boingo is the way to go. Thanks. I knew I could count on Ask MeFi.

And I will send the powers that be a jmcmurry's link.
posted by icebourg at 2:57 PM on July 16, 2009