Wi-fi wonderings

[randomer]

I have recently been using hotspots a lot because of my new laptop. I was just wondering about how when I connect to a wifi connection, I am automatically re-directed to their page in all of my browsers and am denied access to other pages. So how do they do this? Thanks.

[Tritan]

The routers that are transmitting the WiFi signals have settings within to allow 'anonymous' connections but to direct all traffic to a certain page - for example a login page, where the user has to provide the correct credentials to pass through. This often comes at a small cost (how they make their money I guess). It's nothing fancy really - my wireless router at home has this capability :-)

[randomer]

Thanks for your answer Tritan.