[NoCat] Nomadix patents captive portal solution

[Rob Flickenger]

I thought you might find this interesting.  Someone brought this to my  
attention:

http://www.nomadix.com/company/pressroom/pressrelease.asp?id=PR01200401

I think the critical phrase from the press release is: "This  
redirection takes place regardless of the host computer's settings and  
without altering the user's browser settings."  Check out the full text  
of the patent:

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser? 
Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=/netahtml/search- 
adv.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&d=ptxt&S1=6,636,894&OS=6,636,894&RS=6,636,894

While they might like to make it sound like they've patented the  
captive portal, they've really only patented their wacky arp  
implementation.  They look for any machine being ARP'd for that doesn't  
receive a reply, and issue an ARP reply using the gateway's MAC  
address.  Combined with some DNS strangeness, this lets the gateway  
bring up a splash page even when the client requests a private intranet  
page, or even if they are using static IP address settings rather than  
DHCP.

NoCatAuth does none of that.  We considered it for a while, but I don't  
think it's worth the effort, as it's really easy to confuse both the  
client and the gatway.  I still think that software implementation  
patents are detrimental to innovation, but this one doesn't seem to  
pose an immediate threat to our project.

Still, it is interesting that they've gone and patented it.

--Rob