In order to add support for a Wyebot sensor to authenticate through a new captive portal type, the sensor must first know what HTML code the captive portal sends and expects to receive during the login. A Wyebot sensor is able to automatically authenticate through most basic captive portal types including:
The sensor is generally not able to automatically authenticate through captive portals that require human intervention such as SMS or CAPTCHA, but you can reach out to the Wyebot support team to discuss your specific portal type.
The easiest way for the Wyebot team to add support for a new captive portal type is to have a sample of a successful login. Most web browsers have the ability to save a debugging trace of its interaction with a web page in a format called an HTTP Archive (HAR file). This HAR file contains all the needed HTTP information for the Wyebot engineering team to understand how to automatically login through the portal.
The goal of this process is to connect a laptop to the captive portal wireless network, successfully authenticate through the portal and then save the HAR file of the transaction. Each WLAN vendor implements their captive portal slightly differently (hence the need for this process), but in general they all will redirect the browser session from the user-requested web page to a different page that forces the user to login or click-to-accept-terms. Traffic is either partially or completely blocked until the authentication succeeds.
A HAR file can be captured from either a Windows or Mac laptop using most browsers. We recommend using a Windows laptop because Macs will sometimes use their native captive portal authentication before the web browser tries to redirect the session. See this page for how to record and save a HAR file for different browser types:
https://toolbox.googleapps.com/apps/har_analyzer/
Note: The HAR file will contain sensitive information such as the username and password used to login. It is recommended to create a separate user account for use by the sensor so personal information is not captured.
This process generally works best when using a laptop with no wireless networks configured or saved on it. Start as follows:
The most common issue encountered is if the web browser opens the captive portal authentication page in either a new tab or a new window from the original tab. The HAR capture process is per-tab, so the capture started in the original tab will not capture the authentication if it happens in another tab. If this happens, do the following:
If you run into any other problems or have questions about this procedure, please contact us at support@wyebot.com