There is a problem with the wifi in the conference centre at EGU2012. Some people can log on, but others cannot. They can connect to the wireless, but trying to browse the web results in ‘Page not found’ or DNS errors. DNS errors mean that the names of servers are not being correctly translated into the IP addresses they represent.
I was in the second group, until I just met some German dude who showed me a workaround:
- Connect to the EGU wifi as normal.
- Open a browser window. It will try to connect to http://hotspot.egu2012.local/login, but it will fail.
- Change the server name to the IP address, 172.16.0.1, so that the address becomes:
http://172.16.0.1/login?
- A webpage will open with a login button. If you try the button, it will also fail. Instead, save a local copy of the webpage. (File, Save Page As…. in Firefox).
- Edit your local copy, changing all instances of hotspot.egu2012.local to the IP address.
- Save the changes to your local copy, then open it in your browser.
- Click the login button, then surf away…
This just worked for me, I can’t promise that it will work for you. The German lad also said that you might need to redo it each time that you reconnect. And of course these instructions are of no use to you if you can’t actually get online to read them.
