Jennlog

A few months ago I was excited to learn that Denver Airport’s WiFi was free.

On my second visit to this service, they appear to break the Web by encapsulating websites within a Sub-frame so they can display persistent text ads from Google.

This framing not only obfuscates the actual location of a web page (It seems stuck on the initial request location and never varies from that page address), but it destroys almost every webpage dashboard layout I attempted to view.

Denver WiFi forced frame breaks Yallery

Even the Yallery pop-up window was corrupted. This negated the only solution we could find that would allow people with 1024×768 sized displays, but on browsers crowded with toolbars and sidebars to display Yallery.

Cookie? What Cookie?

This “man in the middle” encapsulation also kills IP-based identification as a result of proxying the request and removing all state.

Blah.

I haven’t flown much this last year and a half, but the thing that always annoyed me about the Denver airport was the lack of free Internet access — Inside the Red Carpet Club, or outside in the main terminal areas.

I was a United 1K and Red Carpet Club member until the beginning of this year — I travelled domestically and internationally a ton, so I spent a bunch of time in the DEN Red Carpet Club and in the terminals.

Nothing annoyed me more than being in a lounge I was paying for already, and being asked for my credit card so I could check my email and do other assorted things — especially while the other Star Alliance partners and other large international Airlines rarely charge for Wi-Fi access in their lounges.

Denver International Airport officially announced that they were no longer charging for their Internet access, and have experienced a 10x increase in users since it went free. Travel is now just a little less painful for all of us in Colorado who fly with a computer, iPhone or LocationFree TV.

I seem to remember the Daily Camera article (I am locked out of the Daily Camera website and need an account now?) quoting a DEN spokesperson saying that they went free because it would allow the airport to better serve their customers and they wanted to be a leading-edge airport.

Maybe this statistic expressing a 10x growth in users will assist United and other US carriers find a more helpful approach to providing Internet access to their lounge membership. Maybe this news will assist other airports in freeing the Wi-Fi hostages in airport lounges. Only time will tell.