Question on public WIFI access points

I'm in a hotel that provides WIFI Internet access. They have a number of
access points which run unencrypted. My initial attempts to connect to it
through Linux were unsuccessful. I was able to scan the access points
through iwlist but DHCP couldn't get an IP address. I then booted into XP
and used a Broadcom utility to find the access points and to attach to one
of them. After I did that a web based registration page popped up which
asked for my name and company. It also had an option to assign an IP
address to me. I did all that and then rebooted Linux (FC5). DHCP worked
at that point and I was able to get to the Internet. I'm assuming that
when I registered and asked for a IP address it took my MAC address and
put it into a table along with the assigned IP.

My questions are,

1) How did Windows access that registration page?

2) Was the communication with the access point MAC based prior to my
asking it to assign an IP address? What protocol was used?

3) Is there some way to do this registration from Linux?
.