Member Avatar for hani1987

hello

I am a BE computer student and needed information for my BE project.
The project is as follows
We are developing a web application for a company. This involves setting up a wi-fi hotpot for the company. So whenever a user enters the wi-fi area , he should be taken to the companies homepage or homepage of our web application irrespective of the webpage typed in his browser.After the 1st page is displayed, the user should be taken thru a series of more pages without allowing him to access the internet. Once he has seen all these mandatory pages he should be allowed internet access.

So i wanted to know about how to redirect the user to our web application homepage and not allow him to visit any other website unless he sees all the mandatory pages.

I thought of disabling the address bar until he sees all the web pages but i dont know how to do it ,

I am using the following

Apache 2.2.8
Tomcat 5
jdk1.5
Windows XP sp2

I hav connected Apache and Tomcat.

Plz Help!

Regards

Hanish

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— this is a classic captive‑portal problem, not something solved by "disabling the address bar." Modern browsers and mobile OSes do not allow web pages to hide or lock the address bar reliably, and trying to do so breaks security/UX. The correct place to enforce "see these pages first" is at the network gateway: intercept DNS/HTTP and force clients to your splash/app pages until they are authorized.

Put a gateway (router or Linux/FreeBSD box) between Wi‑Fi clients and the Internet and run a captive‑portal/hotspot service. Common options are pfSense or CoovaChilli; commercial AP controllers also offer this. Typical flow: DHCP sends the gateway, firewall blocks outbound traffic by default, and the gateway either redirects port 80 or answers DNS with the portal IP so the browser lands on your splash/homepage. Use a walled garden to keep the mandatory pages and company domains accessible while everything else stays blocked.

Integrate your Apache/Tomcat web app as the portal UI. After the user finishes the required pages, the portal should tell the gateway to whitelist that client (usually by MAC or IP) or authorize via RADIUS (see FreeRADIUS). Example whitelist action on Linux might be:

iptables -I FORWARD -m mac --mac-source AA:BB:CC:DD:EE:FF -j ACCEPT

Watch out for HTTPS: you cannot transparently redirect HTTPS without certificate errors, and some apps never trigger a browser redirect. Test with multiple devices, use the OS captive‑portal detection behavior, and debug with tcpdump / firewall logs to confirm DHCP, DNS and redirect rules are working. Respect privacy and disclose monitoring to users. Forum note: avoid crossposting — ’s etiquette reminder applies.

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Member Avatar for jwenting

don't crosspost, wannabe criminal.

Member Avatar for hani1987

don't crosspost, wannabe criminal.

i am not crossposting simply .... m not sure where my project should be ... coz it includes JSP,Web development and mayb software development. kindly help.

Hanish

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