Free Internet on Trains

On many public WiFi hotspots, free access is limited to a certain amount of time per 24 hour period — usually an hour. In some cases, like on the cross-country trains in the UK, you are allowed 15 minutes(!) of gratis Internet access before being asked to pay an extortionate amount for continued surfing on a flaky-at-best connection.

In many cases, these public hotspots identify your machine with its MAC address, so the simplest workaround is to change your MAC address. If you’re running OSX, you can use the following Bash function to switch to a new MAC address. Sometimes the script reuses the previous address, so you may have to keep running remac until a new address is output. Add this to your .bashrc or perhaps an .aliases file that you source when you start your shell.

function remac {
  sudo /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Resources/airport -z
  sudo ifconfig en0 ether $(openssl rand -hex 6 | sed 's/\(..\)/\1:/g; s/.$//')
  sudo networksetup -detectnewhardware
  echo $(ifconfig en0 | grep ether)
}

N.B.: You will have to reconnect to the public hotspot after changing your MAC address. This is because the remac function needs to restart your WLAN card in order for the new MAC address to take effect.

Some may argue that this is stealing. I would argue that Internet access ought to be a basic human right and charging for it like this is grossly unethical in the first place. The government provides free access to public libraries; why should the World’s largest and most well-connect library be any different.