I planned on traveling lightly, using only my N800 instead of my laptop. So I ran a test at the hotel before ditching the laptop. The hotel has free wifi, and with the Windows laptop, I open IE, and I'm redirected to a sign-on page. I assumed that Mozilla on the N800 will work the same way. But when I tried it, no redirection happened. Is there a setting somewhere? I tried with and without the proxy option.

Any advice? I did search the forum before posting a newbie question. The only advice I found was a setting for Opera, and I'm using OS2008.

Allen

My employer uses such a login system, and it my N800 has no trouble with it. That doesn't help you beyond letting you know that it may be something particular to your hotel's system.

What happens when you attempt to view to a web site, say Google, on your N800?

Open window one. Enter login id for hotel, password, etc.
Click on open new browser window, navigate to desired website.

Unfortunately, there is no window one. There's no place to enter the login id, no place to enter the password -- when I use my N800.

The "normal" thing, with my laptop is, no matter what web page URL I enter, I get redirected to the hotel login page and I'm fine. But with my N800, there's no redirection, so there's no way to enter the login and password.

I even copied down the redirected web page address (the URL that my laptop browser was redirected to) and typed that in manually into the web browser on the N800. No page opens. Blank web screen.

Are you saying that the redirection to the sign-on page didn't work? Or the redirection to the page you wanted after you signed on? If it is the latter, mircofab's advice should get you going.

If it is the former, you should be able to just go to the signon page directly if you can get the URL for it. If not, then figure out the IP address that the wireless access point gave you (*) and try browsing to a similar IP number but with the last number replaced with a 1 (eg. your IP 10.1.45.58 ... browse to 10.1.45.1 or 10.1.1.1). That is usually the gateway machine and hopefully hosts the login proxy page too.



(*) There are a few apps that give you this info: iphome and homeip being two that I know about. If you are able to get root access with your terminal 'ifconfig' will give you that info too. There may also be a way to dig that info out of your wireless properties through the normal built-in interface but I have forgotten and don't have wireless access right now to check for you.

edit: ... Was typing this while you were responding essentially answering my questions. With your laptop, try to find the direct IP that the URL refers to and manually type that in. It could be that your DNS isn't working right for some odd reason.

Edit edit ... the quickest way on a Windows machine is just to open the command line (Run... "cmd") and 'ping <hostname part of URL>'

good luck with this. I have yet to find an answer to this question and i have given up trying, seriously.

The one useful suggestion I have found in all the posts on flaky wi-fi connectivity is to mess with the power setting of the connection setup. Even though this did not work for me, it was at least something to try.

Let's slow down a bit. When you click on the connectivity icon on the top and then hit select connection do you see the hotel wifi
listed? Does it have an unlocked lock next to it? The hotel may have more than one wifi stations and you have to select the right one. When you select, does it tell you that you are now connected to station such and such? Now try to open a known web page. Does it try to connect? if it does and say server not found try to enter now the url from your laptop. Does it say server not found?

Speaking of connecting; make sure and wait till it stops scanning, before picking the right one.

I've used my N800 in hotels/b&bs in the UK/Ireland and the US without much problems.
Recent non work trip - left the laptop behind.

Process is as described above... that is, select unlocked sid, make sure you get an ip address, start web browser. Enter roomnumber/key/login info they provide you... or buy the time.

With the desktop tools like iphome you can easily see if you have an ip.

Yadin,
Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes, it tries. Yes, I did that, see above "URL that my laptop browser was redirected to".

Thanks for the questions, I am looking for troubleshooting, and I know you are trying to help. I did post this in a newbie section, because I'm a noob with the N800, but not a noob with hotel wifi :-). In fact, I'm the guy my coworkers come to at new hotels and say "oh, you got it working, show me how".

I get connected to the wifi, there's no WEP or WPA password. The authentication is done with a web page with username and passwords. I just do not get redirected to the page where I would type in the username and password.

I've described as best I can the situation, I need redirection to work. Unfortunately I have now returned home and posted my question. I thought it would be something simple to enable redirection.

Allen