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On a particular wireless network, most internet access is blocked by a captive portal but certain websites are not blocked, e.g.:

I want to access a website that is not blocked. When I try to connect, however,

  1. iOS automatically displays the captive portal after connecting.
  2. iOS automatically disconnects after I close the captive portal.

How can I escape this aggressive automation?

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4 Answers 4

Reset to default
2

As documented in the Apple knowledge base:

If you cancel before logging in to the network

Tapping Cancel on the Log In screen disassociates the device from the captive Wi-Fi network.

If you joined the network from the Wi-Fi screen using the ⓘ button, or you joined less than eight minutes ago, you'll see a message telling you the network isn't connected to the Internet. You can choose one of these options:

  • Use Without Internet: this option will dismiss the Welcome screen, turn off Auto-Login for the network, keep your device associated with the network, and allow you to interact with the network in other ways.

  • Use Other Network: this option will dismiss the Welcome screen, disassociate your device from the network, and return you to the Wi-Fi Settings screen. From there, you can choose a different network.

  • Cancel: this option will return you to the Welcome screen.

Therefore you can (now—I don't know in which version of iOS this was introduced) click cancel and then "Use Without Internet".

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To implement a Wi-Fi popup login page:
1) DNS request for www.apple.com must not fail
2) HTTP request for http://www.apple.com/library/test/success.html with special user agent CaptiveNetworkSupport/1.0 wispr must not return Success.

If you find a way to invert one of these result it shouldn't popup

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I'm not sure you can disable the captive portal system; can you log in to the captive portal so apple.com is reachable?

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  • No, I'm asking on behalf of people who cannot sign in at the login page but still need access to non-blocked network resources.
    – ændrük
    Jun 18, 2012 at 19:55
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What you are seeing here is completely expected with a locked-down wireless network which requires authentication. A well-designed captive portal keeps you from accessing the internet for a very good reason - security - and this is obvious because you need credentials to authenticate to this University's user directory through the portal. This is also borne out by the fact that you can only access the University's internal web-site/network without credentials.

I'm not trying to cast aspersions on your ethics or motivation, but without more information it does appear as if you are trying to hack past this portal authentication page without proper credentials. You neglect to mention that you have successfully authenticate to the captive portal on a regular basis and you do not indicate that this portal authentication login page is spurious and unexpected.

If you are trying to hack past the authentication, then you may be opening yourself up to legal prosecution if you are caught, successful or not.

Again - your motivation to get past the portal seems suspect without further information.

On the other hand, if you are not trying to hack the portal, perhaps a Tech Support request to the University's IT staff is in order. You may not be the only one trying to get to the blocked site.

No flames please. Just doing a bit of 'due diligence' for the greater good. Please don't use this site to get information on how to break the law.

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  • I appreciate your concern, but I believe you may not have an accurate understanding of the situation. The "internal" web pages are, and are intended to be by the university, available to both authenticated and unauthenticated users. On a less-automated wireless device, e.g. a laptop running Mac OS X, one can associate with the wireless network and then navigate to the internal site via a web browser without ever having to sign in. I am simply trying to reproduce this common procedure in a new operating system.
    – ændrük
    Jun 18, 2012 at 22:34
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    The OP was very clear, they are only trying to access the unblocked URLs, apple is being a bit too helpful, they should have a button to disable ... I think I will try this one divertednetworks.net/apple-captiveportal.html
    – nhed
    Mar 25, 2013 at 13:17

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