SSL Problems with StayOnline Hotel Internet Providers - Networking

I have been using an HP laptop with Fedora installed at various hotels
and locations across the US. I have been connecting to wireless hotspots
with three different laptops using madwifi and Intel drivers and Fedora
4 through my present Fedora7 configuration without significant issues.

In October, I was in Maui at a Marriott and could connect to the
wireless service and bring up Google, digg, and slashdot, but when I
tried to connect to Gmail, Yahoo-Mail, and my companies OWA-webmail
connections it just never loaded and eventually timed out. The router
was in the suite, so I connected via wire and had the same experience.

I spoke with the StayOnline support person on the 800 number and they
wanted to walk me through diagnostics that were windows based. I tried
to fake it, but I am not very familiar with all the Windows GUI's, so I
had to punt. They told me they ONLY support windows...duh. I dual boot
so I can use IPASS in the airports, so I booted into XP and everything
worked just fine.

I just had the same experience in a Marriott courtyard in Waco last
weekend. Same thing, but I did NOT try windows. I did turn off SELinux
enforcement, and then ALL firewall without any change. I could ssh to a
remote Linux system I have through DynDNS which is also weird to me.
But if I tried to display back through the ssh (I used ssh -X)connection
it timed out.

Has anyone seen a problem like this? Anyone having NO problems with
"StayOnline"? Can we compare configs?

Thanks,

Rick

PS: I can't upgrade to Fed8 yet because the NetWorkManager config for
WPA2-enterprise changed and I can't connect to wireless in my office
anymore. Something about the CA-certificate form.

On 2008-02-07, Rick Stuart wrote:
> I have been using an HP laptop with Fedora installed at various hotels
> and locations across the US. I have been connecting to wireless hotspots
> with three different laptops using madwifi and Intel drivers and Fedora
> 4 through my present Fedora7 configuration without significant issues.
>
> In October, I was in Maui at a Marriott and could connect to the
> wireless service and bring up Google, digg, and slashdot, but when I
> tried to connect to Gmail, Yahoo-Mail, and my companies OWA-webmail
> connections it just never loaded and eventually timed out. The router
> was in the suite, so I connected via wire and had the same experience.

I had an odd issue with an FC6 laptop on a hotel wireless network where
any encrypted traffic (ssh, https) would hang after a certain amount.
The fix was to turn off TCP window scaling
(echo 0 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_window_scaling). Some googling revealed
that some routers have issues with TCP window scaling - I don't know why
it only affected encrypted traffic in my case, but the fix may be worth a
shot for you.

--
Joshua Baker-LePain
Department of Biomedical Engineering
Duke University

I'm at the Marriot in Groton CT connected via my Nokia N810 which runs Maemo Linux. Can ssh out using my F8 laptop but always freezes after 20 seconds - cannot get any web pages. Same happened last time I was here. IT support could not figure it out although they tried very hard to see wnat the problem was. What a pain - I connnect everywhere else. I guuess I won't be staying at Marriots any more.