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Comment by SamuelAdams

11 hours ago

So is wrong to use captive.apple.com for tests as well? It's nice to know your network can reach the internet and these pages are generally fairly reliable.

[1]: https://captive.apple.com/

14 comments

SamuelAdams

Reply
lxgr  6 hours ago

These pages are unfortunately getting special treatment from quite a few networks these days, among other things to avoid iOS users getting stuck in a loop of trying to connect, and getting disconnected by the OS due to a "non-working connection" for local-only networks like in-flight entertainment systems.

It's a shame that we don't have any standards for the concerns of canonically testing Internet reachability and for authoritatively redirecting network users to a captive payment portal (without having to resort to ugly hacks that often break with TLS).

nemomarx  11 hours ago

If they say that it's not intended as a reliable service for testing purposes it can't be that reliable, and they might take it down or change the structure arbitrarily at any time, etc.

So yeah I would pick something simpler for a network access test probably?

98codes  3 hours ago

Just don't blame the user and/or their internet service when the service you're relying on inevitably goes down.

patmorgan23  9 hours ago

Why not ping 8.8.8.8 or 1.1.1.1 or time.windows.com? Things that are actually designed to be highly available services

  • ceejayoz  9 hours ago

    Is there any reason to believe captive.apple.com is any less "designed to be highly available" than time.windows.com?

    It's a static page that every Apple device relies on saying only:

      <HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Success</TITLE></HEAD><BODY>Success</BODY></HTML>

    • mixdup  7 hours ago

      The only risk is that Apple hasn't announced it as being reliable or promised to keep it up or the format the same in any way. They could 100% pull it out from under everyone, with modifications in their OSes prepared for the change

      1 reply →

  • encom  6 hours ago

    1.1 is enough.

      ~$ ping -c1 1.1
  PING 1.1 (1.0.0.1) 56(84) bytes of data.
  64 bytes from 1.0.0.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=56 time=7.89 ms
  
  --- 1.1 ping statistics ---
  1 packets transmitted, 1 received, 0% packet loss, time 0ms
  rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 7.888/7.888/7.888/0.000 ms

    • stavros  8 minutes ago

      When did this start working? Did they backport IPv6-style addressing, or did I just never know this?

    • nhecker  3 hours ago

      Thanks! I'd forgotten that 1.1 and 1.1.1 resolve. I'll not infrequently ping 1.1.1.1.1 with overzealous typing. That will, alas, not resolve.

      1 reply →