Re: Breaking the internet (hotels, guestnet style)

[Owen DeLong <owen () delong com>]

On Dec 9, 2009, at 10:41 AM, Stephen Sprunk wrote:

> Jens Link wrote:
> > Owen DeLong <owen () delong com> writes:
> >
> > > I expect my connections to my mail server to actually reach my  
> > > mail server.  I use TLS and SMTP AUTH as well as IMAP/SSL.  Many  
> > > of the "just works" settings in question break these things badly.
> >
> > One of my customers has an appliance for his WLAN guest access access
> > which filters out AAAA records. :-(
> >
> > jens@bowmore:~$ dig AAAA www.quux.de @8.8.8.8 +short
> > jens@bowmore:~$
>
> That, unfortunately, is not uncommon.  Actually, it's one of the  
> _less_
> broken systems I've seen, since IPv4 presumably keeps working.
>
> One major vendor of hotel guestnet equipment returns an A record for
> 0.0.0.1 if you do an ANY or AAAA query for any hostname--even ones  
> that
> don't exist.  At least with WinXP, you have to disable IPv6 just to  
> get
> IPv4 to work!  Worse, their tech support sees nothing wrong with this;
> if you disagree, all they'll do is offer a refund.  Unfortunately,  
> "take
> your money elsewhere" doesn't work when you've already paid for the
> hotel room--and they know it.
I've actually extracted significant rebates from Hotels where their  
internet
was provably broken, and, their third-party provider would not resolve
the issue.  More than just a refund of the IP fees. In one case, 1/2 the
cost of my multi-night stay.


Owen