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rdorsch's avatar
rdorsch
Aspirant
Feb 10, 2021

"This site can’t be reached" error on Chromium

Hi,

 

I tried to login into the managment console of the JGS524PE. Works well with Firefox, but with Firefox I cannot change e.g. VLAN settings. See also https://community.netgear.com/t5/Smart-Plus-and-Smart-Pro-Managed/VLAN-802-11Q-Assignments-cannot-be-changed-anymore/m-p/2002748#M17148 where the solution was to switch to chrom(ium).

 

Everything worked nicely with chromium 83. After Updgrading to Chromium 88, I realized that I get a

 

This site can’t be reached

ERR_CONNECTION_REFUSED

 

Looking at the URL, I noticed that chromium 88 switched to a https connection.

 

E.g.

 

http://netgear/login.htm

 

changes after submit to

 

https://netgear/login.htm

 

(and I assume the switch does not support https traffic)

 

This is not the case with firefox, but as mentioned above, there the other issue bites... :-/

 

Any idea or hints how to resolve this is very welcome.

 

Thanks

Rainer

 

3 Replies

  • schumaku's avatar
    schumaku
    Guru - Experienced User

    Leaving alone that Chromium in not Chrome - even the "same" web browsers can behave different on Linux vs. Windows - as you already learnt from the VLAN config issue. What is flawless when using Chrome or Firefox on Windows or MaxOS (or even a Android or iOS phone - try it!). I'm convinced there is a tiny flaw on the Smart Managed Plus http/JS code causing the VLAN problem requiring a fix (and not a workaround by using a different browser DanielZhang please).

     

    As the switch doesn't do a redirect from http to https (lack of https ...) the problem is clearly on the browser side. Not enough more and more browser implementations are patronizing users spilling out "insecure" messages near to the URL field up to full page messages with well hidden "bypass" options, the latest "development" goes that far like parsing the URL or prohibiting the submission of forms based on labels and variable names (like login, password, ... or password **** fields), remove less secure ssl, and so on. What is well meant in the Internet facing code, is rubbish on the typically reasonable secure private network. You can do some experimenting, like explicitly call http.//netgear/ without the darned /login.cgi or /login.htm ...  and you might see what happens closely monitoring the http traffic 8-)

     

    Well possible, there is some setting where Chromium can be tuned on being less aggressive or intrusive...

    • rdorsch's avatar
      rdorsch
      Aspirant

      I agree, fixing the javascript glitch would be the correct solution.

       

      I tried quite some things to convince chromium to avoid https, but no success so far.

       

      Right now I found with konqueror still one browser which works. I would love to use a commandline utility to get rid of these issues.