whats this comcast xfinity garbage?

[ComputerRepairTech]

its hijacking my customers dns at the modem level I cant seem to get by it. Anyone familiar with this horrid practice from comcast?

 

[phaZed]

I just had a customer with this problem. Of course she thought it had a virus, which it did, but when she got home she was getting 403 and 404 errors on almost all pages. Google worked, albeit slow.


The modem is stuck in "Captive portal" and their router is not authorized to use the network and their servers are redirecting.

You will need to have the customer call the xfinity # @ 1800XFINITY so that they can re-authenticate the modem. It's on Comcast's side, not yours

http://forums.comcast.com/t5/Connec...tall4-comcast-com-captive-portal/td-p/1309251

 

[ComputerRepairTech]

Thats exactly it, comcast told the client the problem was on their end. I had to go into the live chat with the client and straighten them out.

Thanks.

 

[anonymous Mac Tech]

its hijacking my customers dns at the modem level I cant seem to get by it. Anyone familiar with this horrid practice from comcast?

Its called a walled garden. Comcast has to add the MAC address of that modem to their provisioning data base if its not one of their pieces. This has been going on for over a decade, nothing to see here.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

It's being mis-named as a "walled garden".
Walled Gardens are more truthfully protected surfing allowing you to see only approved content that is done by ISPs, such as AOL back in the day....in the early days of AOL...their internet was a little different than the entire internet. Or in the early days of Yahoo...their GeoCities virtual world.

Think about the name..."walled garden"....the walls prevent you from seeing the entire world..what's beyond, you can only see the pretty garden that's in your yard (the ISPs approved bandwidth)

Other ISPs do this also..such as AT&T. Plug in a modem that has not been setup yet (setup with your PPPoE user/pass)...and you're forced to their captive portal "setup page".

 

[anonymous Mac Tech]

It's being mis-named as a "walled garden".

Possibly mis-named, but that's what we called them when I worked for them clearing walled gardens all day long.

 

[ComputerRepairTech]

This was more intermittent, it seems odd to let the dns work successfully half the time for a modem that may not be authorized to be on the system. I was able to remote in just fine and stay connected.

A truly strange practice in my opinion.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

This was more intermittent, it seems odd to let the dns work successfully half the time for a modem that may not be authorized to be on the system. I was able to remote in just fine and stay connected.

A truly strange practice in my opinion.

That's a different description than in your first post.
Unprovisioned modem, launch a browser...gets directed to their account signup page.

Once the account signup has been done (either via the portal, or...over the phone)....the new configuration file gets uploaded to the modem...modem loads it, reboots (and now it's been provisioned). You power cycle your router to get fresh DNS, reboot computer to pick up new DNS...and you're up and running!

Modem is either provisioned, or not. No in between.

Any new modem plugged in needs to be provisioned....either via web, or...the way I do it...directly via a phone call to their support...takes less than 10 minutes. Call up. tell them you need it provisioned...they'll ask you for the MAC address of the new modem (so they can see it on their network)....they'll upload a config file, modem reboots, done.

Now, even prior to it being provisioned...yes you can still often have a device behind it talk to the internet...via IP address. Although web traffic is captured via the captive portal (http and https). And sometimes...depending on what region/nodes you're on...you can trick it by plugging in your own public DNS servers (although usually this gets blocked...if not....usually the unpermitted traffic is picked up and eventually stopped). So dunno if this was attempted...which may have lead to your being able to remote into it via LMI or other...

 

[anonymous Mac Tech]

This was more intermittent, it seems odd to let the dns work successfully half the time for a modem that may not be authorized to be on the system. I was able to remote in just fine and stay connected.

A truly strange practice in my opinion.

Could be something "stuck" in the router that keeps bringing up the walled garden page? Seen that more than once.