How to check for unrestricted Internet access? (captive portal detection)

Question

I need to reliably detect if a device has full internet access, i.e. that the user is not confined to a captive portal (also called walled garden), i.e. a

Answer 1

This has been implemented on Android 4.2.2+ version - I find their approach fast and interesting :

CaptivePortalTracker.java detects walled garden as follows - Try to connect to www.google.com/generate_204 - Check that the HTTP response is 204

If the check fails, we are in a walled garden.

private boolean isCaptivePortal(InetAddress server) {
    HttpURLConnection urlConnection = null;
    if (!mIsCaptivePortalCheckEnabled) return false;

    mUrl = "http://" + server.getHostAddress() + "/generate_204";
    if (DBG) log("Checking " + mUrl);
    try {
        URL url = new URL(mUrl);
        urlConnection = (HttpURLConnection) url.openConnection();
        urlConnection.setInstanceFollowRedirects(false);
        urlConnection.setConnectTimeout(SOCKET_TIMEOUT_MS);
        urlConnection.setReadTimeout(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("Probably not a portal: exception " + e);
        return false;
    } finally {
        if (urlConnection != null) {
            urlConnection.disconnect();
        }
    }
}