NetworkManager and dhcp problems in hotels

["Miles Lane" <miles lane gmail com>]

Hello,

I often find that in hotels, setting up a wifi connection is a
two-stage process under Windows XP.  First, I must connect to the
access point and then, when I open a web browser, I am redirected to a
log-in/sign-up screen.  Once I have paid for access, my network
requests start going through.

I often find that something breaks down in this process when I am
running Linux.  Tonight I have been trying to get a wifi connection
working at a Shilo Inn Hotel, which provides free wireless, but still
redirects my first browser connection attempt to an agreement page.
Unfortunately, I had to boot Windows to get to the page.  Also, when I
try to use NetworkManager in Ubuntu 6.06.1 LTS (very current NM code),
I get:

Internet Systems Consortium DHCP Client V3.0.3
Copyright 2004-2005 Internet Systems Consortium.
All rights reserved.
For info, please visit http://www.isc.org/products/DHCP

Listening on LPF/eth1/00:12:f0:5e:db:2f
Sending on   LPF/eth1/00:12:f0:5e:db:2f
Sending on   Socket/fallback
DHCPREQUEST on eth1 to 255.255.255.255 port 67
DHCPACK from 192.168.21.254
SIOCADDRT: Network is unreachable
bound to 192.168.21.10 -- renewal in 6356 seconds.

I have:   network-manager     0.6.2-0ubuntu7

After hunting about on the web, I eventually found the suggestion that
I needed to use "route" to add a default gateway.  After some
experimentation, I found that:

      route add default gw 192.168.21.254

got my connection working.

So, here's my question, why does WindowsXP set up this automatically
and NetworkManager doesn't?  Is this a bug in NM or in dhclient3 or in
dhcdbd?  Who should I follow up with?
Since I have run into this issue many times, I suspect it is creating
trouble for many, many other Linux laptop users.

Thanks,
          Miles