R6300v2 and Facebook Wi-Fi

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.

I have a netgear r6300v2 with latest and when I set up the facebook wifi it allows me to connect and surf the internet but it doesnt require me to check into my selected facebook page. How do I fix this?

I downloaded the latest firmware and it didnt work.  I then downloaded the previous version and the Facebook wifi link did work and I was able to set it up.

It worked on my phone when I tried it, but when my customer did the same, he got a different response.  My phone is Android, his phone is Apple.

In any case whether you get it to work or not, its a waste of time because users can "skip check-in" which totally defeats the reason for having the option.

The way the product is marketed says that users "check-in and like your page before getting free wifi".  This is incorrect and false advertising.

You can hit the business Facebook page and "skip check-in" and still get free wifi.  So whats the point ??

I dont have enough money to take on Netgear in court over false and mis-leading advertising but if I did, I would.

In fact I have less money now from when I started on this project as I have purchased the router but my customer, quite rightly, wont pay me for it as it doesnt do as it was supposed to do.

DexterJB I did never receive the patched bundle the support team promissed, I did signed the NDA and everything but no response back, this is obviously going nowere, nice customer service.

So far I  have not found any solution, and neither Netegear nor Facebook care about it, I just went with hotspotsystem and they have some free plans that can work very similar as a promissed by Netgear or Facebook.

Grüsse!