http://neverssl.com/ my friend.

Or if you need to use paid wi-fi for free, you can always use

https://github.com/yarrick/iodine

I use http://plop.org, a whole four characters shorter!

I like that one. My domains for this purpose are: http://i.net/ and http://ip4.me/ (or http://ip6.me, if you know you have IPv6 connectivity)

But is that guaranteed to never use SSL?

http://cnn.com for me :)

Thanks! Never knew this site existed.

http://example.com is my go-to for those.

That is a much better suggestion, thanks.

Heh, I use http://foo.com

The options I use are the ones the browsers themselves use:

http://gstatic.com (Chrome uses http://gstatic.com/generate_204 , which returns a 204 No Content)

http://www.msftncsi.com (Windows, desktop and mobile, uses http://www.msftncsi.com/ncsi.txt. NCSI is "Network Connectivity Status Indicator")

http://captive.apple.com (macOS / iOS)

because those are likely to be extraordinarily well-maintained and reliable.

Unfortunately sometimes some captive portals allow just this one site through and not the others. Looking at you, United WiFi, which whitelists gstatic.com, but fortunately not msftncsi.com.

I've been using 1.1.1.1 for years. It's easy to type and seems to call up interstitial screens fast, especially the NYC subway wifi portal, where seconds count.

Of course this thread makes me wonder if I've been doing it wrong.

1.1.1.1 is assigned to APNIC Labs in Australia. It isn't always reachable for their own reasons.

Using 1.1.1.1 makes a http request, which lets the captive portal take over, so good job, but you are actually hitting a group that actually exists, and what if they suddenly launch a HTST site on that IP? It might break your method.

http://apple.com will probably always work since that's what ios uses when you join a network.

I think specifically this url: http://www.apple.com/library/test/success.html

It's http://captive.apple.com/. That's always my go-to.

...wow I never understood that this was why that happens

I'm glad someone else has a go-to site for this. I use my university alma mater's website.

I totally had to figure this out for myself to use the Wi-Fi on a Southwest flight. Man, I thought I was clever!

pretty funny is that i use nytimes for exactly the same reason, wonder how many others are using it this way :)

That's what I use http://http.rip for :D

http://purple.com - also useful for seeing if someone's internet is working over the phone or not. "Go to purple.com and tell me what you see". Is the answer "purple"? Hooray!

I just run `curl -v http://google.com` in my termainl and click the redirect link. No risk of caching that way.

cbc.ca. You can do it with one hand.

Including the period?

no

Actually, it shouldn't matter. A trailing dot in a hostname signifies a fully-qualified domain name, rather than a relative domain name. Without the dot the router's dns service could technically return 'cbc.ca.some.othersite.net.' as the FQDN.

For those interested, learn more at: http://www.dns-sd.org/trailingdotsindomainnames.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fully_qualified_domain_name

They meant the period in the middle (as in, "can you type the full thing, including the period in the middle, with one hand?"). I read it the same way as you did, initially.

I did, too, and I was the original replyer (is that a word?). But, if you visit cbc.ca once, you can do it with one hand in the future as it's the first option in the autocomplete dropdown.

http://dingleberrypie.com, my personal test domain.

You can't use a respectable site for that sort of a redirect! Use a tabloid like drudgereport.com ;)

Hah, I use http://httpbin.org.

Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1172/

I use bing.com for that :D