I've heard about this thingy that circumvents the pay for data wifi and let's you use wifi for free ? In airports,libraries and similar any understand this and is it that easy ?

http://www.amazon.com/HooToo-Wireless-Travel-Performance--TripMate/dp/B00HZWOQZ6/ref=sr_1_2?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1448309248&sr=1-2&keywords=hootoo

Edited 23 November, 201510 yr by seboni121

That link just seems to suggest you can share a connection, so you pay for one connection and then connect as many devices as you want.

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Also the nano version looks to need a wired connection and then creates a private wireless network.

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Yes you connect it to your own Ethernet and prime it ?, then you can connect it cabled or wifi to a broadband wifi signal then piggyback the system and relay internet wifi to you tablet or mobile ?

But I can't see anything that suggests it would "defeat" paid access in somewhere like a hotel or airport.  In fact for the nano version it says you turn up at a hotel plug it into a ethernet connection and then you have your own private network - but you still need have the access in the first place, but you can pay for one device and use many.

At a guess, it's a clever implementation of a VPN - I've seen some pretty interesting stuff recently, including hiding full web surfing inside the payloads of ICMP packets (Windows normally sends a 32 byte payload consisting of abcdef...repeated, but you can replace that with any text-based protocol such as HTTP).

 

The way I imagine this is that you connect it to a piece of software/hardware on your home network in order to give it a "base", and it does something like ICMP encapsulation of traffic to attempt to evade the captive portal systems in use in hotels/airports/conferences and the like where pings may not be blocked by the paywall.

 

Or, as trundlenut says, it doesn't do any of that at all and it is purely a way to share one paid-for connection between multiple devices. Which is possible.

The way I imagine this is that you connect it to a piece of software/hardware on your home network in order to give it a "base", and it does something like ICMP encapsulation of traffic to attempt to evade the captive portal systems in use in hotels/airports/conferences and the like where pings may not be blocked by the paywall

This is the way that I've been told it works? Someone has just bought one so I will let them experiment and review

I think all of their network devices listed on the Hootoo website just work as wireless bridges, some can connect to external wireless networks some need an ethernet connection.  There's nothing in the manuals to suggest anything more. In fact there seem to be quite a few issues with services which use DNS redirection to a login page with the Hootoo device preventing you from reaching the login page, thus preventing any access to the internet.

Edited 23 November, 201510 yr by trundlenut

A pen tester once told me it's possible to get a slow connection through these by forcing the traffic to use UDP. I've never actually bothered to investigate further.

Depends on what's in place. It's no harder to block ICMP than it is to block UDP than it is to block TCP, really. The difference is that ICMP is hugely useful for troubleshooting network issues, so it's more likely to be allowed without having to log into the captive portal, so that genuine IT staff can use their kit to diagnose problems without having to arse about finding today's captive portal password, this week's set of admin credentials (which should be rotated to avoid being leaked and used by the public), etc.

Can we speak English please what's icmp,udp,tcp oh wait I know that one don't you put that sores ?