[Discuss] Use Linux laptop as wifi router? Is that even the right solution?

[John Abreau]

Another option would be to figure out how to fake the browser
authentication with curl or wget, so you can script it. I did this a few
months ago for a phpbb forum.

On Wed, Dec 31, 2014 at 1:16 AM, David Kramer <david at thekramers.net> wrote:

> I recently became the proud owner of a Roku 3 box.  Very happy with it
> minus one or two small details.  For grins, I brought it with me on
> vacation, and immediately ran into the problem that the hotel wifi
> requires an authentication page be filled out, which the Roku can't do
> since it doesn't have a browser.
>
> Googling around on my laptop for a while, I've seen the following
> solutions for this problem, some of which involve doing things with my
> Linux laptop (Kubuntu 13.10 currently):
>
> 1) Change my laptop's MAC address temporarily to that of the Roku,
> authenticate, then try to connect with the Roku.  Sounds reasonable,
> except that it didn't work.  Not sure if I didn't change the mac address
> right.  Might have to retry this, as it's the option that doesn't
> require more hardware.  I found conflicting instructions on how to do
> this on the command line, and every single page that talks about Network
> Manager shows different options, since it changes so much and is
> different betweek KDE and Gnome, etc.
>
> 2) Add a USB WiFi stick onto my laptop and set it up as a
> router/repeater/whatever: I already have one, so nothing to buy but I
> would have to bring it with me.  Don't have it right now so I couldn't
> try it out, but here too I found lots of incomplete or unclear info.  If
> there's a straightforward way to do this, please let me know.  If I need
> to upgrade to the latest Kubuntu I'll do that.
>
> 3) Pick up a travel router and use it to NAT.  I see differing
> information on whether the hotel network will see one MAC address or
> each device's MAC address. This option really only works if the hotel
> has wired internet (the hotel I stay at the most does).  But apparently
> you have to run it in a specific mode that not all support, but I
> couldn't find a consistent name for that mode, other than "Bridged isn't
> what you want".  Some pages mentioned that some units can go "wifi to
> wifi" with half the bandwidth.  I'll have to find that link.  Maybe it
> does sending and receiving on different channels or something like
> that.  I would be OK with spending money on this if need be, and I knew
> it would work.  I also have a WRT54G I'm not using that I could test it
> out with before buying something smaller.
>
> Did I miss any options?
>
> Does anyone have recent info on how to do any of these?
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
>
>
>
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John Abreau / Executive Director, Boston Linux & Unix
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