For reference, here is the 'official' method from the Android 4.0.1 AOSP code base: WifiWatchdogStateMachine.isWalledGardenConnection(). I am including the code below just in case the link breaks in the future.
private static final String mWalledGardenUrl = "http://clients3.google.com/generate_204";
private static final int WALLED_GARDEN_SOCKET_TIMEOUT_MS = 10000;
private boolean isWalledGardenConnection() {
HttpURLConnection urlConnection = null;
try {
URL url = new URL(mWalledGardenUrl); // "http://clients3.google.com/generate_204"
urlConnection = (HttpURLConnection) url.openConnection();
urlConnection.setInstanceFollowRedirects(false);
urlConnection.setConnectTimeout(WALLED_GARDEN_SOCKET_TIMEOUT_MS);
urlConnection.setReadTimeout(WALLED_GARDEN_SOCKET_TIMEOUT_MS);
urlConnection.setUseCaches(false);
urlConnection.getInputStream();
// We got a valid response, but not from the real google
return urlConnection.getResponseCode() != 204;
} catch (IOException e) {
if (DBG) {
log("Walled garden check - probably not a portal: exception "
+ e);
}
return false;
} finally {
if (urlConnection != null) {
urlConnection.disconnect();
}
}
}
This approach relies on a specific URL, mWalledGardenUrl = "http://clients3.google.com/generate_204"
always returning a 204
response code. This will work even if DNS has been interfered with since in that case a 200
code will be returned instead of the expected 204
. I have seen some captive portals spoofing requests to this specific URL in order to prevent the Internet not accessible message on Android devices.
Google has a variation of this theme: fetching http://www.google.com/blank.html
will return a 200
code with a zero-length response body. So if you get a non-empty body this would be another way to figure out that you are behind a walled garden.
Apple has its own URLs for detecting captive portals: when network is up IOS and MacOS devices would connect to an URL like http://www.apple.com/library/test/success.html, http://attwifi.apple.com/library/test/success.html, or http://captive.apple.com/hotspot-detect.html which must return an HTTP status code of 200
and a body containing Success
.
NOTE: This approach will not work in areas with restricted Internet access such as China where the whole country is a walled garden, and where some Google/Apple services might be blocked. Some of these might not be blocked:
http://www.google.cn/generate_204
,http://g.cn/generate_204
,http://gstatic.com/generate_204
orhttp://connectivitycheck.gstatic.com/generate_204
— yet these all belong to google so not guaranteed to work.