What is with "fake internet"?
August 30, 2013 3:49 AM Subscribe
You're at a location with available WiFi. You have a signal, the signal is reported as "strong," but no web pages will open up. I have noticed this regularly, usually in hotels. I would understand it if the signal was marginal, but why does this happen with a strong signal?
I suspect there are a number of possible causes. One simple one might be that your computer/smatrphone/whatever has not made a successful hop from whatever it was last using as a connection to whatever is there now. This is where "ipconfig -release" and "ipconfig -renew" might help on a windows machine - or where you might want to get your iphone to "forget" a wireless network before looking for it again.
The fact that a signal is reported as "strong" only means that there is a non-hidden wifi signal of a given strength. It says nothing about whether the higher layers of communication needed to display a page in a browser are going to work OK.
Hotels seem to be particularly prone to screwing up normal practice in terms of wireless networks. Many hotels seem to have migrated from a charge-for-connection model to a free one - but this means that they are not always motivated to worry about their routers when there is a big line at the check in desk.
posted by rongorongo at 4:02 AM on August 30, 2013 [3 favorites]
The fact that a signal is reported as "strong" only means that there is a non-hidden wifi signal of a given strength. It says nothing about whether the higher layers of communication needed to display a page in a browser are going to work OK.
Hotels seem to be particularly prone to screwing up normal practice in terms of wireless networks. Many hotels seem to have migrated from a charge-for-connection model to a free one - but this means that they are not always motivated to worry about their routers when there is a big line at the check in desk.
posted by rongorongo at 4:02 AM on August 30, 2013 [3 favorites]
Might not have an IP address for whatever reason. Might be firewalled or waiting for authentication, might be that the wifi has a stronger signal than your laptop (ie, you can see the wifi signal, but it can't see you).
posted by empath at 4:03 AM on August 30, 2013
posted by empath at 4:03 AM on August 30, 2013
Just because there's a wifi connection, it doesn't mean that wifi is connected to the internet.
Also, public wifi connections often require you to go through a splash page (to sign in, enter an authorisation code, or enter your email or something) before you can properly access the internet. As dywupi says, try opening different browsers and accessing any website - it should automatically redirect you to the splash page if there is one.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 4:03 AM on August 30, 2013 [2 favorites]
Also, public wifi connections often require you to go through a splash page (to sign in, enter an authorisation code, or enter your email or something) before you can properly access the internet. As dywupi says, try opening different browsers and accessing any website - it should automatically redirect you to the splash page if there is one.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 4:03 AM on August 30, 2013 [2 favorites]
When I am in public this is generally because I haven't gone through the proper authentication process for the network.
When I am at home this is generally because Comcast sucks and internet service to my modem has died, but my wifi router is technically still putting out a signal. The signal just doesn't have any internet in it.
posted by phunniemee at 4:03 AM on August 30, 2013 [6 favorites]
When I am at home this is generally because Comcast sucks and internet service to my modem has died, but my wifi router is technically still putting out a signal. The signal just doesn't have any internet in it.
posted by phunniemee at 4:03 AM on August 30, 2013 [6 favorites]
A strong signal means you have a good connection to a wireless router. That router still needs to route to get you on the internet. There are various reasons why it may not, but the usual one for a public signal is that they want you to sign in and show you're allowed to be using the signal. If the hotel doesn't want to let everyone on, they would just tell the password to their guests. At any rate, a browser should bring up an authentication page (ignoring any url you may type in) for this purpose.
posted by Obscure Reference at 4:27 AM on August 30, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by Obscure Reference at 4:27 AM on August 30, 2013 [1 favorite]
While someones already mentioned the "login screen for the wireless" page thing, i just wanted to add that a lot of places really fuck that up. It's just never a 100% thing even at places like starbucks where it works 99% of the time. A common failure is that it's supposed to corral you from any page you try and load in a browser and redirect you to the "I accept the terms of service and won't download any child porn on ShittyInns network" page and just... doesn't.
For that reason, i absolutely hate the shit out of them and wont put them on any networks i'm running unless someone forces me too for a damn good reason(IE: you need to authenticate to the network individually with an actual username/pass). No two browsers on any two computers will handle that redirect the same... somehow. It never reliably works every time on everyones system. Sometimes the snake seems to eat it's tail and it tries to redirect you... but the walled garden stops you from loading the page that's supposed to be the gatekeeper and it just times out with a "Server could not be reached at "welcome.dickbuttnetworks.com:4433/welcome/superawesomewelcome.cgi""
Which leads me to, out of curiosity, what are you trying to access the networks from? Because in the early days of the iphone/android or really just mobile devices having wifi in general this was a huge problem. It wasn't until they all started adding some little automatic check which would launch a popup if it noticed you were getting corralled into a welcome page right in to the OS that it got better. If it's an older smartphone/non state of the art tablet it might just be erm, differently abled when it comes to this sort of thing.
If you're a bit technically minded i like opening up a "dos" prompt/terminal window and pinging two separate URLs that should obviously resolve to different IPs. Like google and yahoo. If they both come back as the same IP you're stuck in a stupid walled garden. Of course if you're on a tablet/smartphone you might not even have the ability to do so and often discover that once you grab a full-sized computer that happily loads the page and then you want to slam dunk the thing into the garbage out of frustration.
What you do then is anything between renew the DHCP lease on mac android or iOS/"repair network connection" on windows and just cry depending on what you've tried already and whether it makes a difference.
Good luck, this problem distinctly reminds me of being in college. The network there was legendary for fucking this up, and so is every other network with this sort of walled garden welcome login i've ever used more than 3 times.
I'd be extremely surprised if the problem actually turned out to be anything else if this was a commercial network at a business. Businesses love that silly welcome page with the legal notice and the "i agree" checkbox.
posted by emptythought at 4:55 AM on August 30, 2013 [13 favorites]
For that reason, i absolutely hate the shit out of them and wont put them on any networks i'm running unless someone forces me too for a damn good reason(IE: you need to authenticate to the network individually with an actual username/pass). No two browsers on any two computers will handle that redirect the same... somehow. It never reliably works every time on everyones system. Sometimes the snake seems to eat it's tail and it tries to redirect you... but the walled garden stops you from loading the page that's supposed to be the gatekeeper and it just times out with a "Server could not be reached at "welcome.dickbuttnetworks.com:4433/welcome/superawesomewelcome.cgi""
Which leads me to, out of curiosity, what are you trying to access the networks from? Because in the early days of the iphone/android or really just mobile devices having wifi in general this was a huge problem. It wasn't until they all started adding some little automatic check which would launch a popup if it noticed you were getting corralled into a welcome page right in to the OS that it got better. If it's an older smartphone/non state of the art tablet it might just be erm, differently abled when it comes to this sort of thing.
If you're a bit technically minded i like opening up a "dos" prompt/terminal window and pinging two separate URLs that should obviously resolve to different IPs. Like google and yahoo. If they both come back as the same IP you're stuck in a stupid walled garden. Of course if you're on a tablet/smartphone you might not even have the ability to do so and often discover that once you grab a full-sized computer that happily loads the page and then you want to slam dunk the thing into the garbage out of frustration.
What you do then is anything between renew the DHCP lease on mac android or iOS/"repair network connection" on windows and just cry depending on what you've tried already and whether it makes a difference.
Good luck, this problem distinctly reminds me of being in college. The network there was legendary for fucking this up, and so is every other network with this sort of walled garden welcome login i've ever used more than 3 times.
I'd be extremely surprised if the problem actually turned out to be anything else if this was a commercial network at a business. Businesses love that silly welcome page with the legal notice and the "i agree" checkbox.
posted by emptythought at 4:55 AM on August 30, 2013 [13 favorites]
I know exactly what you mean: there's a strong connection, and the moment you try to connect it dives to minimal strength and you can't connect. I have no idea why that happens, either.
posted by jpe at 5:12 AM on August 30, 2013
posted by jpe at 5:12 AM on August 30, 2013
I've never thought about it before, but the problem is one of user interface design. The wireless indicator thing doesn't show you how good your connection to the Internet is, altough that would seem natural. Instead, it shows you how good to connection to the wireless router is.
You can completely disconnect your wireless router from the Internet, and still have an excellent connection between your laptop and the router.
posted by dhoe at 5:26 AM on August 30, 2013
You can completely disconnect your wireless router from the Internet, and still have an excellent connection between your laptop and the router.
posted by dhoe at 5:26 AM on August 30, 2013
I noticed this happen with a public WiFi network I set up and the diagnosis was that it wasn't handing out IP addresses via DHCP as the entire range the stupid router was configured to use (32 addresses IIRC) has been used up due to a default 1 month lease and the limited range.
A quick reconfiguration to hand out 253 IP addresses and limit the lease to one day and it's worked ever since.
posted by hardcode at 5:32 AM on August 30, 2013
A quick reconfiguration to hand out 253 IP addresses and limit the lease to one day and it's worked ever since.
posted by hardcode at 5:32 AM on August 30, 2013
What kind of wireless network is it? If it's an ad hoc or peer to peer network, it might just be a Viral SSID such as the infamous "Free Public Wifi" network that used to appear everywhere. These networks were the result of badly behaving client devices, and thus didn't really connect to anything.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 5:37 AM on August 30, 2013
posted by RonButNotStupid at 5:37 AM on August 30, 2013
I'm not an expert, but this article may also hold a clue: Outdoor Wifi in both directions:
posted by snarfois at 6:29 AM on August 30, 2013
You must have seen something like this before… you’re sitting in a coffee shop and you pick up a hotspot with “full” signal – but you can’t connect to it? Usually this is because you can receive the hotspot signal, but your laptop does not have enough power to reply.Basically, just because the router has the strength to push the wireless signal to your device, doesn't mean your device's antenna has enough power to reply.
posted by snarfois at 6:29 AM on August 30, 2013
In a hotel or crowded public situation, I always assume that the router with its strong signal is connected to a totally inadequate DSL connection, with 100 people all trying to stream video or download bittorrents simultaneously.
posted by usonian at 6:32 AM on August 30, 2013 [3 favorites]
posted by usonian at 6:32 AM on August 30, 2013 [3 favorites]
Argh, I have the problem that emptythought describes every time I go to Panera, but only with my personal laptop - my work one makes it through the barrier just fine. For some reason my personal laptop never triggers the redirect page, in any browser I try. I'd put my money on this being your issue, too; wish I knew of a solution for it.
posted by DingoMutt at 7:30 AM on August 30, 2013
posted by DingoMutt at 7:30 AM on August 30, 2013
Two thoughts:
If your homepage or whatever page you're trying to load is secure (i.e., starts with HTTPS), authentication often won't work--which is a good thing, because redirecting somewhere unsecure is part of the purpose of a secure connection. I often find that I have to open an unsecure webpage to get to the landing page.
Also, a lot of public routers are set to use their own DNS server, which is often horribly bogged down. If the initial connection to any web page is exceptionally slow, but if it seems fine once finally connected, this may be the issue. Telling your computer to use OpenDNS or Google DNS instead of getting DNS settings automatically from DHCP will prevent this, and I've turned abysmally slow coffee shop connections into blazing fast ones with just this.
posted by matlock expressway at 8:59 AM on August 30, 2013 [5 favorites]
If your homepage or whatever page you're trying to load is secure (i.e., starts with HTTPS), authentication often won't work--which is a good thing, because redirecting somewhere unsecure is part of the purpose of a secure connection. I often find that I have to open an unsecure webpage to get to the landing page.
Also, a lot of public routers are set to use their own DNS server, which is often horribly bogged down. If the initial connection to any web page is exceptionally slow, but if it seems fine once finally connected, this may be the issue. Telling your computer to use OpenDNS or Google DNS instead of getting DNS settings automatically from DHCP will prevent this, and I've turned abysmally slow coffee shop connections into blazing fast ones with just this.
posted by matlock expressway at 8:59 AM on August 30, 2013 [5 favorites]
If you think of WiFi as simply a replacement for the cat5 wire, it gets easier to understand. Getting good signal just means the virtual wire is connected. (Like in wired connection; you've plugged the cable in and the lights go on.) Your computer can "hear" the access point.
Whether that access point is doing anything else besides letting you connect is a different story.
If you are the only one around, ask the people behind the counter. They probably have to reboot the thing all the time. If there are other people working around you, then it's either overloaded or possibly your computer is somehow not working right.
I know with iOS devices, it can look like you are connected, but you have to go in an enter a password somewhere.
posted by gjc at 12:19 PM on August 30, 2013
Whether that access point is doing anything else besides letting you connect is a different story.
If you are the only one around, ask the people behind the counter. They probably have to reboot the thing all the time. If there are other people working around you, then it's either overloaded or possibly your computer is somehow not working right.
I know with iOS devices, it can look like you are connected, but you have to go in an enter a password somewhere.
posted by gjc at 12:19 PM on August 30, 2013
Response by poster: >I often find that I have to open an unsecure webpage to get to the landing page.
This may be part of the problem. I have noticed that pattern - try, no; try, no; try, yes! That may be the reason.
posted by megatherium at 12:25 PM on August 30, 2013
This may be part of the problem. I have noticed that pattern - try, no; try, no; try, yes! That may be the reason.
posted by megatherium at 12:25 PM on August 30, 2013
Keep in mind that although WIFI is often used as a term that means wireless internet, that's not what WIFI is. WIFI is the wireless signal that connects devices like a laptop or an iPad to and from a router. If there's no modem connected to the router, there's no way for internet to get to the router. The router serves WIFI to (and receives from) the devices. So, you can have a really strong signal that shows you're picking up WIFI, but that doesn't tell you anything about whether or not the router that's serving up the WIFI is connected to the internet.
Sometimes, a router and a modem are the same device. Often, they're not.
Internet < > Modem < > Router < > Laptop and other devices.
I used to use a crappy modem from Comcast. Every now and then, the modem would freak out and need to be rebooted. But I could still stream from my Mac to my Apple TV because the router was fine. I've been using an Apple Airport Extreme router for years. I've never needed to reboot it. The thing works flawlessly. But Comcast's modems sometimes suck.
Even if they are the same device, just because a modem with a built-in router can serve up WIFI doesn't mean it's connected to the internet or that the modem part is functioning properly.
posted by 2oh1 at 4:03 PM on August 30, 2013
Sometimes, a router and a modem are the same device. Often, they're not.
Internet < > Modem < > Router < > Laptop and other devices.
I used to use a crappy modem from Comcast. Every now and then, the modem would freak out and need to be rebooted. But I could still stream from my Mac to my Apple TV because the router was fine. I've been using an Apple Airport Extreme router for years. I've never needed to reboot it. The thing works flawlessly. But Comcast's modems sometimes suck.
Even if they are the same device, just because a modem with a built-in router can serve up WIFI doesn't mean it's connected to the internet or that the modem part is functioning properly.
posted by 2oh1 at 4:03 PM on August 30, 2013
There are all kinds of ways to mess up internet access from an internal network. The place I work, a hospital, has a free wireless network as a convenience for patients and their visitors. The first time you try to hit an internet site from this network you're redirected to a page with a bit of boilerplate you have to click through that says essentially "We make no attempt to protect you on this network, use at your own risk."
Yeah, fine, OK. But our ever-vigilant IT folks set this page up as a secure site, and then put a self-signed certificate on it. No modern browser will have anything to do with it. IE puts up a security warning and gives you a choice: 1. Don't go here (RECOMMENDED), and 2. Continue anyway (NOT RECOMMENDED). In firefox you have to figure out how to add a security exception for the bogus certificate (and be bold enough to do so) before it will show you the boilerplate click-through.
I do wonder just how many patients/visitors have ever gotten any benefit from this particular convenience.
posted by jfuller at 8:05 AM on August 31, 2013
Yeah, fine, OK. But our ever-vigilant IT folks set this page up as a secure site, and then put a self-signed certificate on it. No modern browser will have anything to do with it. IE puts up a security warning and gives you a choice: 1. Don't go here (RECOMMENDED), and 2. Continue anyway (NOT RECOMMENDED). In firefox you have to figure out how to add a security exception for the bogus certificate (and be bold enough to do so) before it will show you the boilerplate click-through.
I do wonder just how many patients/visitors have ever gotten any benefit from this particular convenience.
posted by jfuller at 8:05 AM on August 31, 2013
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by dywypi at 3:54 AM on August 30, 2013 [39 favorites]