On Nov 3, 2009, at 8:51 PM, mark [at] edgewire wrote:
Hi all,
Just out of curiosity for those whom may manage Hotel Wifi networks (I know I know, not really ISP level but since we're on the topic of port blocking). Does anyone actually make an effort to be blocking port 443? I've had that experience at a few Hotels in Philippines and I can't think of a valid reason as to why those ports would be dropping traffic. Would like to hear from anyone whom has had this experience.
I've found that some public (eg: Hospital) networks have very draconian security policies on their guest wireless. The University of Michigan hospitals block IMAP over SSL (tcp/993), SMTP-Submit (tcp/ 587) and all the vpn software I had at my disposal. This blocking is becoming more common to force people to HTTP/HTTPS ONLY based systems. They make utilizing these networks from a mobile device hard, and quickly forget your mac authentication quickly and are overall poorly run (no feedback loop to get things unblocked that are legit). I have found that I am having to vpn-out more often from these 'guest' networks to obtain "real" internet access. I recommend running a few gateways (eg: pptp, ipsec, openvpn) to get around these issues. (I have found some well run hotel networks that intercept tcp/3128 and send it to a local squid cache). - Jared