-1

I was at a restaurant recently and the public Wifi access page of the restaurant had the following message:

image

PEAK HOURS To better serve customers, Wi-Fi access is limited to one 30 minute session for non-mobile devices between 11 am and 2 pm.

I was curious as to how the mobile and non-mobile devices are differentiated on Wi-Fi networks?

Sarat Velijala
  • 3
  • 2

1 Answers1

3

Whatever wifi system the restaurant uses probably has some sort of device identification capabilities built in to it. The MDM system I use at my day job does. It uses a combination of characteristics to determine device type: MAC address, DHCP behavior, peer name protocol usage, and (this one surprised me the most) update checking (i.e., if it connects to Windows Update, it's probably a Windows PC; if it checks for Apple iPhone updates, it's an iPhone; etc.).

longneck
  • 23,082
  • 4
  • 52
  • 86
  • Interesting. I understand that MAC addresses or even DHCP (DHCP Fingerprinting) could be used to determine the OS. So we could differentiate the mobile OS (Android, iOS) from the non-mobile OS (Windows, OS X.etc.) and subsequently differentiating the devices. Could that work? – Sarat Velijala Aug 09 '16 at 14:45
  • Isn't that what I said? – longneck Aug 09 '16 at 14:48
  • Yes! Thanks! I would upvote your solution but apparently I do not have adequate points to do so :( – Sarat Velijala Aug 09 '16 at 14:53