Jun 21, 2015

HOW TO CIRCUMVENT HOTEL-INTERNET RESTRICTIONS, AND GET YOUR APPLE-TV ONLINE.


So you've checked into a hotel, and you brought you AppleTV to enjoy your movie collection in the cloud while on vacation. But alas.... the internet in the hotel, requires you to agree to "terms and conditions" which is a page that you're re-directed to in Safari when you choose the WiFi. Or, a panel that comes up when you log on via an iPhone. But the AppleTV doesn't have Safari, and no panel pops up, so the internet won't work. What do you do?

Well, here's what you do. You need to spoof the MAC address of the AppleTV on your Mac, to get the device approved on the network. That's a very complicated technical way of saying that your AppleTV has an ID and the ID needs to be put on an "approved list" that the internet in the hotel has sitting somewhere in it's memory.

A MAC address has nothing to do with Mac and Apple, but is a word that basically means network-ID. No devices on the planet has the same MAC address, and hence a network can blacklist or vice versa specific devices.

Alright, so all that tech mumbo-jumbo is out of the way; here's how you do it.

First you have to figure out what the "Wi-Fi Address" is on the Apple TV, and write that down somewhere, let's call that the "AppleTV Wi-Fi-address". Then you have to figure out what is on your Mac, so you can set it back after you're done.

So here goes:

  1. Go to Settings on your Apple TV and choose "Network" and jot down the thing under Wi-Fi Address. It goes something like this: xx:xx:xx:xx:xx
  2. Open up the application "Terminal" on your Mac. It's located in the Utilities folder within the Applications folder.
  3. In the terminal type the following, or copy it from here and paste it and hit enter. networksetup -listallhardwareports 
  4. It shows you a list of all the network interfaces on your computer. The one you're looking for is either called en0 or en1. Note the the one that's called Wi-Fi and write that down, or copy it somewhere. Let's call that "Mac Wi-Fi address".
  5. Now here's the magic. Type in the following and hit enter, but replace the "xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx" part with the "Apple TV Wi-Fi address". sudo ifconfig en0 ether xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx
  6. It will ask you for your computer password. Type that in, and hit enter.
  7. Then go to the Hotel Wifi, and then launch Safari and accept the terms and conditions.
  8. Disconnect from the wifi (Choose another one, or "forget the network").
  9. Go back into the Terminal and type the following: sudo ifconfig en0 ether xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx tand replace the x's with the "Mac Wi-Fi Address" and hit enter.
  10. Go to your Apple TV and connect to the hotel Wi-Fi again, and voila, you're online.