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R6300v2 and Facebook Wi-Fi
Dear community, I just have bought Netgear R6300v2 to use it in my bar with Facebook Wi-Fi function. The latest available firmware V1.0.4.6_10.0.76 is installed, Guest access is enabled, but every t...
I notice there has been no solution posted to this as of yet. I PM'd Dexter and was told I would be contacted by a support expert but have not yet heard.
I actually got a working solution by downgrading the firmware. I downgraded the firmware to 'Firmware Version 1.0.3.28' available here.
But... and it's a BIG 'but'...
The splash page / Facebook check in page is completely bypassed and does not appear for https requests - that is - basically the entire web nowadays. e.g. Google, Facebook, phone apps including 'what's app', etc.. Completely unfeathered access with no gains from the Facebook hotspot service.
I am not sure yet as to whether this is a constraint of Netgear or of Facebook. Does anyone know? A few searches have lead to me believe the issue exists on other Facebook wifi enabled routers.
I have toyed with the idea of blocking the https port so that all traffic runs over http therefore ensuring authentication through Facebook check in. I am just unclear right now as to the implications of that i.e. will websites work e.g. gmail, google search etc. or throw an error. And of course consumer trust. Thoughts?
Let me elaborate more.
(tl;dr: If you want a really working Facebook Wi-Fi solution, find an alternative, I've finally used a gateway from a cloud-manged brand, it worked really nice but I have to pay both hardware and yearly fee)
(Declaration: Not IT professional, now deployed FB Wi-Fi Solution from another brand instead, and my 6300v2 is now vacant)
Initially I checked Facebook Wi-Fi supported list showing quite some brands (some are pricey enterprise products, and some are more affordable/residential ones), among the list I chose R6300v2.
However, the Facebook Wi-Fi worked in a way -- Blocking Port 80 only and leaving all the rest ports opened, this is probably the laziest solution since almost no firewall rules are being touched, the router just tap 80 connection, moreover, since HTTPS is blocked and Facebook has been using a CDN (i.e. you can't determine what website the client is requesting), if they block HTTPS it will be too difficult to implement, so they left HTTPS (and other non-80 Ports) free. (Technical side: I think they just deploy a simple proxy server to divert all 80 traffic with a gatekeeper mechanism, non-80 traffic are directly routed out)
However, the world has changed a lot. Nowadays, most applications are using HTTPS as primary protocol (Google, Facebook, WhatsApp.... you name it!), even Google Chrome and some other browsers are prompting unsafe alert in non-HTTPS website, and under the current working mechanism, all these websites and services are freely accessible (without doing checkin/code/not even a button), not only HTTPS, if you got a VPN (Whatever, PPTP, L2TP or just SSH Tunneling), by connecting it you have jail-broken the walled garden, so the Facebook Wi-Fi feature is basically useless.
Well, Netgear is not the only brand that have such problem, you can enjoy non-80 port access other consumer brands (some enterprise brands, too) Facebook Wi-Fi routers.
The ultimate, technical way to solve this is implement a firewall-based mechanism, blocking all non-Facebook connection (regardless ports), the description in this open souce package has enough insight to make facebook IPs inside walled gardened (tl;dr: Cache DNS queries, and dynamically releasing IPs that matching Facebook/FBCDN domain names Reference: https://github.com/mhaas/fbwlan), the large memory and flash size is more than capable to incorporate such features. It's up to how much works Netgear would like to done. (Well, maybe it isn't Netgear's fault, if you look into GPL of R6300v2, FBWiFi part is precompiled, and you may notice other consumer-grade routers with Facebook Wi-Fi are all ARM-based, maybe it's Facebook's issue, but unlikely, it's rather someone not want to disclose the code)
If I have access to the official API on FB Wi-Fi, I would never buy this router.