Choose hotels by the quality of their WiFi
hotelwifitest.com
hotelwifitest.com
I've found that 3 star hotels that offer free WiFI usually have the best speeds/service. Whereas 5 star hotels that usually charge $14.95 daily have the worst.
The people that stay in these hotels normally aren't paying for the rooms (business trips for instance), so the company will pay the cost of the wifi for the duration of the stay without question
5 star resorts usually ding you for lots of things, its how they make money (travelling next week to Thailand, psychologically prepared but at least the internet is free).
Ah, I know that. (WEll actually, I don't. Ive never stayed in a 5 star hotel before). but, I was just making the point.
> 5 star resorts usually ding you for lots of things, its how they make money (travelling next week to Thailand, psychologically prepared but at least the internet is free).
Thailand is fine for that. I stayed there last year, (around this time) for about a month, and stayed in 4 star accomodation most of the time for less than 30 bucks a night (euro) for two people, and we always got breakfast, wifi, and towels. My advice is book one night in a hotel, and go in to the reception and ask how much it is to stay on. You'll normally get 3-400 baht off.
Now I want to go back to thailand..
Every time my company schedules a stay in such hotels, I happily downgrade my stay to somewhere else.
The last hotel where that happened explained to me that management bought into a internet contract in 2005 that will last until 2015 at which point they plan to simply rent their own DSL. But until then they're, by contract, obliged to offer their guests only their contract partners awfully slow internet.
Just like in business, small companies / hotels can move faster.
We bumped up their ISP plan to proper business class and got an upgraded router to boot. I ran wire from it to each floor via existing conduit and set up APs. No middle-man slave master for internet and certainly anyone else can service the setup after I was done. No other contract except their ISP. Everyone was happy.
A neighbouring place just a few turns away had wireless quite early from some archaic monster and they charge a hefty fee too. I have better reception on my cell when I'm in a low valley than at that place - 2 bars max. All the guests were huddled in the lobby.
I am new to HN so not sure how to message you outside this thread. Do you have any links that could point me in the direction to do some of my own network setup at home? I'm just a beginner but would love to start learning and fix some stuff
Edit: Here's the full playlist of his networking videos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rL8RSFQG8do&list=PLF360ED108...
Thanks for the help everyone
They dont have to break their contract - pay the "external service provider" their fees, and still have money left over to pay for a real service - fast and non-shitty WiFi.
When it comes to 4 or 5 star hotels, I am surprised by this bullshit.
What they are in effect saying to you is "we made a bad business deal and it costs us too much", to which I replied -in a similar situation, 4 star hotel with 1992 wifi (yes it didnt exist at the time so shitty was it) -- "I must have made a bad trade myself, to pay for stay with wifi when the wifi in fact imaginary, good day" and never went to that hotel again, found a 3 star later on with 100mbps and uncongested wifi.
Its not like paying for good WiFi will bankrupt them.
Exclusivity clause in the contract possibly. They could buy out the rest of the contract, but that could be quite expensive (and the other party is under no obligation to agree unless there is already an option defined in said contract).
Even if the WiFi exclusivity is not explicitly stated there might be a clause about the hotel ensuring there is minimal interference with the service and setting up another set of APs on the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands could be claimed to breach that clause if the provider wanted to get litigious.
For chain hotels it is even harder as the decision of who to use to provide the service could be out of their hands.
What kind of dumbmass businessman signs such a contract? No matter the price, the contract should have included "responsibility to meet customer expected speeds and availability of the wifi service provided". And then cut the contract because they arent in fact providing a usable wifi.
I think its just a bullshit excuse to keep paying very little while not giving a crap about their customers - since they got the 4 or 5 star rating anyway.
This website is great - I will use it.
I'm surprised that many business people sign bad contracts, but it happens a lot especially with long term contracts like these.
So it's in the terms.
I considered replying to that comment stating how I would write the telco's legal department to get them to release this provision but to be honest given the way lawyers feel they need to represent their companies the answer would probably be, "no."
I would say words to the effect of: 'this is a historical provision from a time when it was unclear what pace the Internet would be adopted, by buying into such a long contract early, we supplied (telco) with much-needed sales commitment which thanks to early adopters like us is part of why your company (telco) was able to take an early lead in deploying out (infrastructure). At that time nobody could have guessed the speed with which infrastructure would be deployed, and unfortunately the speed we have contractually bought into no longer serves our customers. For some context, visiting executives have actually resorted to visiting the reception area of the fleabag inn down the street, where they even have hostel "dorm-style" rooms (6 beds to a room), and probably pay around $79.95/month for their 100 megabit package simply due to how late they were able to deploy. This reflects very poorly on us, and we have had to make various excuses, but of course never giving (telco's) name, as the guests might not have all of the above context. As we are materially affected in our business by some of these experiences, however, we have had to review our possibilities. We believe in the contract with (telco) and agree that its financial terms are valid, made sense at the time, and we are happy to honor it until its expiration. However, one clause in particular prevents us from pursuing unrelated mitigation. A good technical solution would be to offer a parallel, current solution, while continuing to pay the full terms of our contract with you. What is preventing us is, specifically, clause 7.6 of the attached contract, that states we are obliged not to offer a parallel service to our guests. We'd like your permission to be relieved of this requirement, as it is becoming an unconscionable burden, but does not impact you financially in any way. I am sure you agree that (telco) would not pursue legal action for doing the absolute minimum we can to service business customers, and in fact as we agree with and understand our contract we are happy to continue to make payments on it during the full term. We would simply like to be able to augment the level of service we had agreed, which no longer lets us compete effectively, and seek your permission to do so whilst honoring the full payment and other terms of our contract with you. Thank you for your attention."
To be honest I couldn't think of a way to do that so that a corporate lawyer would say, "sure." Well, the above is worth a shot anyway.
Seriously, to include "no parallel service" in a contract but also not to include "contract is invalid when or if telco does not keep up the speed, availability and reliability to the following requirements X and Y and Blah". Requirements such as "to provide a stable connectin with throughput X% of latest wifi standard after at least 6 months and latency Y to Z*1.2 amount of rooms.".
Sure, a hotel can mess it up, and us as guests can mess up as well and happen upon a 4 or 5 star hotel that costs a leg and doesnt have wifi. This website/application we will mess up less.
I'm not sure that many places would be under a 10-year contract; that sounds like too long a contract (especially if the company wants several grands for support on a regular basis; I think 3 to 5 year contracts would be much more common and reasonable). Even if they are so long, crappy WiFi could as well be ground for breach-of-contract, and they should be able to have the vendor get busy.
Anyway, something to be aware of.
I'm not a lawyer but that feels pretty clearly like fraud.
The fact that the hotel is incompetent in preventing that fraud by relying on UserAgent seems less important than intent of user when changing UA string.
> he causes a computer to perform any function with intent
> to secure access to any program or data held in ***any***
> computerTo get charged under this law, you would have to be accused of the unauthorized access of something on the router itself, since that is the only relevant computer you aren't authorized to use. The charges against you would have to be based on the theory that sending packets with a spoofed MAC address or user agent is accessing the routing program and tables on the router in an unauthorized manner. That argument delves much deeper into the law than just the first clause.
Here's one BBC article that talks about it: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6960304.stm
> The Communications Act 2003 says a "person who (a) dishonestly obtains an electronic communications service, and (b) does so with intent to avoid payment of a charge applicable to the provision of that service, is guilty of an offence".
Seems pretty clear. A person is paying for hotel access; notices their Apple-device using colleague is not paying; spoofs the user agent; - these seem to cover all the points of dishonesty with the intent to avoid paying for a service.
Even if the hotel is in a country that doesn't have that particular law there is probably some fraud law that covers the actions. (I realise now that I should have mentioned the fraud because that's the more serious offence and it seems some people missed my point).
That doesn't make it any less illegal to use the useragent to deceive someone about what equipment you're using purely to avoid paying a charge.
In particular, in more serious legal matters, the fact that you admitted you understood the intent of the policy would be held against you. Courts simply don't buy into the idea that "if something is technically allowed, it's authorized", any more than it's legal to enter through a window if a door is locked.
If by "arguments like this," you mean following the law but with suspect motives, then one of the strengths of the legal system in the US is that the courts absolutely accept arguments like these.
In criminal matters, you typically need both intent and some act forbidden by statute before a finding of guilt. You can't indict someone for ill will.
Intent alone is not generally sufficient for a conviction is the US, save for some cases of special liability (attempts, or some forms of aider and abettor or conspiracy). Sometimes intent doesn't matter at all, but that's generally reserved for traffic cases or statutory rape, where intent would pose special difficulties proving beyond a reasonable doubt at trial.
I can think of only a few notable counterexamples where a court made inferences about true intent and made a finding against a party despite a standing rule that would have let them off. MGM v. Grokster could be read that way. Grokster ran a service with "substantial noninfringing uses," which was previously sufficient for a defense of fair use. However, Grokster was found to infringe based on their constant encouragement for people to use their services to infringe. Grokster had "the object of promoting [their service's] use to infringe copyright, as shown by clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement." You could read that as a sort of retroactive punishment for ill intentioned behavior.
Here's the twist though, that wasn't criminal law. There's generally a much higher bar for criminal law to strictly apply statutes as written. In civil law, both parties are citizens with equal rights before the courts, so there's more of a balancing test. In criminal law, most presumptions run against the state.
This isn't just a US twist. A German scholar of jurisprudence, Friedrich Carl von Savigny, was one of the first to argue that criminal (and tax) laws must be interpreted as narrowly as possible, because people deserve fair and clear warning of what is allowed and prohibited. See also the "Rule of Lenity" in statutory interpretation, whereby ambiguous criminal statutes are interpreted in favor of the defendant (wikipedia points to McNally v. US and a few other relevant cases): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statutory_interpretation#Canon...
This isn't just a convention in the US though, judges cannot extend criminal laws to criminalize novel activity, because that would violate prohibitions against "ex post facto" laws under Art. 1 Sec. 9 of the Constitution. Ie, the Constitution forbids making some act a crime after it happened, the state must provide advanced warning. (Well, technically it's a violation of 14th Amendment Due Process, since Art. 1 Sec. 9 only binds the legislature, but similar principles apply). A fuller treatment can be found on this issue from the Supreme Court in Bouie v. City of Columbia and Rogers v. Tennessee. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bouie_v._City_of_Columbia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogers_v._Tennessee
Although dissenting, and again not in criminal law, Scalia provided a nice quip on the subject in the recent Aereo opinion: "It is the role of good lawyers to identify and exploit [legal loopholes], and the role of Congress to eliminate them if it wishes." American Broadcasting Cos. v. Aereo, Inc., (Scalia, dissenting)
(To the point of the intent required by the CFAA, which might be in question here, Kalow v. Springnut would probably be illustrative: http://blog.internetcases.com/2008/07/17/cfaa-requires-inten... )
I was responding to the naked phrase "technically allowed," which in hindsight is ambiguous (ie, "allowed under the law via a technicality," or "technologically feasible").
Rereading, I still think I interpreted correctly the first time, but really can't be sure.
Good catch.
Obtaining goods by deception seems to cover this. Especially with the public admission of "I siged on, and had to pay, but discovered that my colleague did not have to pay so I was deceptive about the equipment I used, and the only reason I was deceptive was to avoid the requirement to pay".
There is no element in the discussion about needing to change user agent for work or anything else.
Surely this has come up before now, yes?
http://www.volokh.com/2013/01/14/aaron-swartz-charges/
But no, I probably can't find cases in courts. But then, I probably wouldn't be able to find cases where people steal the pillows, but that happens although it is a different law.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/travelnews/10223157/What-c...
> I spoke to the Metropolitan Police on the law regarding towel-lifting. “It is a crime,” its spokesman said. “If we were to receive allegations, we would follow them up.” In reality, it appears most hotels would be more likely to blacklist a guest over a petty theft, charge the items to their card, and save the police the trouble.
This is likely to be the case with fraud, which is both civil and criminal. The criminal fraud is probably tiny (unless you do it in every hotel you go to) and the hotel probably doesn't want the negative publicity. And they probably don't want to encourage the practice of user agent spoofing. So if hotels do care, and do take action, they'll just charge the credit card and block-list the user.
You also ignore all the "piggybacking" cases?
Here are a few: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_piggybacking#Unite...
Here's the Met Police saying that they intend to prosecute all such behaviour: http://www.reuters.com/article/2007/08/22/us-britain-wireles...
Still: I'm not sure how you conclude that it is not fraud just because no-one has been to court yet.
I said that the same reasons why there has not been a court case are the reasons why the above commenter can safely write what he has written without fear of prosecution.
aka "false pretenses" or misrepresentation statutes.
Sure, this could fall under those statutes in jurisdictions where that covers services. Defendant would have several ways to make that case a nightmare, to the point where I see it as basically absurd to prosecute, but still conceivably illegal.
I wasn't trying to comment on whether there's some action involved in logging into a network that could satisfy some element in criminal law though. There absolutely could be some "actus reus" from a login.
I was really just intending to respond to the general comment about courts accepting arguments of the sort like, "this is technically permitted under the law, therefore legal." Maybe I misread that point though, maybe cynicalkane's "technically allowed" meant "allowed by the protocol" not "technically allowed by law."
In which case, consider my wandering diatribe above thoroughly moot. :)
The hotel gets an additional customer. The employee gets to stay at a slightly more expensive place than the official budget allows. The employer loses.
I'm ignoring the speed/latency/packet-loss etc., of course.
Jeff: Okay, this is weird. I can’t seem to connect.
Casey: Oh, okay.
Jeff: So, one of the things where you connect and then you have to go to the webpage…
Casey: Oh, right, make sure that you pay your $15 a day or…
Jeff: Yeah, exactly. I call them downstairs and they’re like, “Yeah, the system that takes the orders for the [inaudible 15:00] was down,” not the internet, the chip where they just want to charge you the bullshit. This was a $400 a night place, mind you.
Casey: Right.
Jeff: It’s not cheap.
Casey: Oh, yeah. This is what I said. This is what I just said on a recent episode of Jeff & Casey… The one with the whale actually, the whales when we were talking about Blackfish… I said the more you pay for your hotel room, the more likely you are to get fucked on the internet. If you pay $50 a night for your hotel room, you get free internet. You get… If you pay… If the cost of your hotel room is less than what you pay per month in internet charges at home, you will get free internet…
Jeff: If there are bugs, you get internet.
Casey: Right. Yeah. I don’t know how that’s possible but that is the truth.IP Address: 192.168.1.xxx (xxx being between 50 - 200) Netmask: 255.255.255.0 Gateway: 192.168.1.1 DNS: 192.168.1.1
This has worked for me in 90% of cases and you get your own private WiFi (as none of the other guests can access it ;)). There was one place I stayed at in hanoi where I got my own 90Mbps / 40Mbps connection due to nobody else being able to get on.
Sometimes the ip is 192.168.0.xxx and on rare occasions it's been 10.0.0.xxx.
I've tried to help hotels fix this issue as I go but it seems most either get some tech to setup their router or plug it in and keep the default settings (sooo many places have 'admin' as their router password) and don't know how to fix it.
You're probably better off with a lower number that would likely be outside of the dhcp pool. It's fairly standard to set aside the first 5-20 addresses for future network equipment.
These were with Hyatt, Marriott and Hilton hotels, mind you. If aggregaters like Hipmunk could incorporate this speed data, the way that they have with in-flight wifi, then hopefully there will be a push to improve this standard.
For this subset of society, wifi speed is a crucial deciding factor. Top 3, for me, at least.
If you are in a Virgin Mobile (Sprint) 4G area with coverage - then buy one of their hotspots (used on ebay to save $$$), $5 a day buys you all the data you can eat & it stays fast. You can connect more than 2 devices. Save $86 a week.
Alternativly, get on Verizons pre-paid plan: $45 a month for unlimited voice & text, subscribe to auto-pay & you get 1GB a month for free. You can buy an additional 3GB for $20 - you have 90 days to use up the data, the use your iphone as a hotspot.
Virgin would give us around 1.7gigs per week at the $5/day. It would be more expensive at our levels.
I find the whole 'real name online' discussion fascinating, and would love to hear your thoughts / experience. (Apologies if my google-fu has failed to produce any previous explanation on your part.)
So a faster uplink does not mean, that you get fast internet. People are just selfish and greedy.
Where's your hotel? How'd you manage to get 100Mbit uplink? :-) Most hotels I've stayed at have either Cable (if it's 3* or below), or DSL / T1 (if it's something like 3*+ Hyatt Place), and they're all ridiculously slow.
Right now, hotel ratings are completely broken for personal bed comfort (I find I'm slightly more likely get a decent night's sleep at a Motel 6 than at a Fairfield, because I'm more likely to find memory foam beds at the latter -- yes, I know they're great for some people, but they're absolutely horrible for anyone who doesn't sleep well when warm and wants something more supportive than conforming).
There's some correlation between ratings and the other things (and it's nice to see more hotels going smoke free), but it's by no means certain.
I'd love to see a rating of internet reliability, but I can get internet in other ways if I need to. If I'm paying for a room for the night, there's no other way for me to sleep, and my experience is that it's generally a crapshoot as to whether I'm going to get a good night's sleep or not.
During JSDay.it people had a lot of time even connecting to the WiFi while I was running at 80 mbps.
Why? How in the world is a standard laptop with an ethernet too "thick" for you? Do you routinely try to slide your laptops under doors or through mail slots? Making laptops ridiculously thin doesn't solve anything except making them look thinner.
Sure, but it's replaceable for the cheap cost of ~$10 - 20.
> There's no VGA port either which is a necessity for me.
2007 called, they want their already-deprecated video standards back.
> No CD drive either.
2000 called, they want their already-deprecated media storage standards back.
>Is this thing a laptop or a big smartphone with no touch screen?
Clearly a laptop.
>No numpad either, wow.
Now I'm convinced you're trolling.
Still inconvenient at least. USB Ethernet dongles also have the possibility of not being able to be used for network booting.
>2007 called, they want their already-deprecated video standards back.
Make it DVI or whatever you want then. I still need a video output for another monitor.
>2000 called, they want their already-deprecated media storage standards back.
I use the CD drive for things like DVDs or old PC games. Bluray disks are used now as well. Disks are not dead.
>Now I'm convinced you're trolling.
I like using the numpad so I must be a troll.
There is thunderbolt, DisplayPort, mini HDMI, and micro HDMI. Any small form factor laptop has at least one of these. DisplayPort, mini HDMI, and micro HDMI are all standard connectors. Mini HDMI and micro HDMI can be converted to DVI with connectors only and no additional active electronics.
> Still inconvenient at least. USB Ethernet dongles also have the possibility of not being able to be used for network booting.
If you're already carrying around an ethernet cable, just leave the NIC attached to the ethernet cable. You said it yourself that you have no issue carrying around 10 pounds worth of electronics, an ethernet dongle only weighs a few grams.
Note that many laptops simply do not support network booting, however these newer laptops (especially the macs) have proper networking built into the EFI firmware. Additionally, note that USB 3 and thunderbolt have pushed the bar for what you can do with external peripherals. If your only option for wired networking was a USB 2.0 networking adapter, then yes, I agree, that would be a joke. The USB 3 and thunderbolt NICs are actually quite good though. The USB 3 NIC that is sold by Apple supports every networking standard you would expect a built-in NIC to support and can achieve gigabit speeds without issue. It is additionally supported by the linux kernel out of the box. I actually find these NICs to be quite valuable when working in data centers as I can connect my laptop to multiple networks which have an air gap between each other by using multiple USB 3.0 NICs.
Samsung Series 9 ultrabooks don't actually use USB or Thunderbolt for the external NIC, instead they just use a connector that is thinner and provide an adapter to attach a normal ethernet cable to it. This allows them to have a normal onboard NIC and still maintain the thin form factor.
The thing that has reignited support for external peripherals is really USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt since they provide enough performance to support high bandwidth external devices.
Note that I'm not an Apple "fanboy" by any means, I use a work-issued Macbook Pro because it is relatively compact and sports a 500gb SSD, an 8-thread I7, 16GB of RAM, and exceptional battery life. I run linux on it and booted OS X fewer than 5 times so I don't actually benefit from Thunderbolt and as a linux guy I don't advocate proprietary connectors. It's really hard for me to say that Thunderbolt is inconvenient though when I see colleagues plug a single Thunderbolt cable into their laptop which is daisy chained to multiple 32-inch displays, gigabit ethernet, external hard drives, and multiple USB peripherals without any performance issues. As the industry continues to push the bar for high speed external buses, we'll continue to see the practicality of external peripherals increase.
Different form factors suit different purposes and different people. I own multiple laptops because of this, but I actually far prefer high performance desktops over laptops as I work on enterprise virtualization software and frequently need multiple hardware-accelerated NICs, a physical raid controller, 32-64GB of RAM, etc. No laptop meets these requirements so I go with the most portable form factor possible instead of using something in the middle which I find to be a mediocre compromise between portability and performance (adds more size and weight, but doesn't actually help me get more done). Most people have far lower requirements though and a macbook air will work just fine.
The important thing to remember is that no one is taking away the other options and all parts of the industry benefit directly or indirectly from the advancement of technologies which allow laptops to be made thinner, lighter, and less power hungry. Buy whatever suits your taste, it's great that we have options.
It costs £25 (US$42, so this isn't some cheap junk), and of the twelve reviews, six give it one star and two give it two stars.
The point of using ethernet in preference to wifi is to get the dependability of battle-tested 30 year old technology; and using an ethernet dongle deprives you of that.
[1] http://store.apple.com/uk/product/MC704ZM/A/apple-usb-ethern...
Apple will charge something absurd for their adapter.
A Marriot in Seattle gave me link but no address. I followed the ethernet cable behind the desk to a DSL style modem that connected to the hotel's phone system. I checked it out and essentially, instead of running Cat5 wire, they re-used the phone lines and were basically doing in-house DSL to each room. I called the front desk and was told that they had discontinued their wired internet.
Other Marriots and Hiltons I've tried since didn't even have the little device there, just a sad ethernet cable hanging down from the desk.
Thankfully, my current job provides a hotspot, so most of the time I just use that. The cost of the room and wifi don't bother, it's the fact that the speeds are horrible during non-peak times and non-existant during peak times.
It was NoScript: NoScript set to allow scripts globally and it works, set to disable scripts by default and it freezes FF.
But latency is a HUGE problem in Brazil[1], and in probably any country that's far removed from the major backbones.
Yes, I can watch Youtube just fine in Brazil but I can't tell you the number of times that Skype video or other highly interactive apps wouldn't start or conk out because of poor latency.
The public has no comprehension of latency, but it's really important that this gets factored in somehow, especially for places like Brazil that generally have poor latency.
[1] http://brazilsense.com/index.php?title=Wi-Fi_and_Internet_se...
Brazil's poor latency may be partly explained by the fact that a lot of their connections have to go through the US and Canada:
"The shape of the Internet varies considerably when examining individual regions. In Europe, the majority of cross-border capacity is between European countries, while in Latin America and the Caribbean the majority of international capacity is connected to the U.S. & Canada."[1]
"More than 80% of Africa's and Latin America's international Internet bandwidth connect to cities outside their regions. In the case of Latin America, 60% of the region's interregional capacity connects to a single city, Miami."[2]
Also, because of Brazil's distance from the economic center of the Internet, they probably don't get the advantage of unpaid peering relationships.
[1] http://www.telegeography.com/assets/website/images/maps/glob...
[2] http://www.telegeography.com/assets/website/images/maps/glob...
Why would proximity to China matter? They probably have the worst internet in Asia (outside of DPRK of course).
I'm so glad someone built this. I've been wanting it (or to build it) forever.
Even if I'm not picking up the tab, I'd rather stay at a crappy hotel with great wifi--vs a Four Seasons with crappy wifi.
Hopefully hotels realize this and start competing on wifi quality.
(Thinking of the Marriott near Moscone.)
Seems like ping time is missing, which is critical to me. Also, would be great to have some measure of ping/speed/reliability over time, either via repeated automated testing or guest ratings.
I've often stayed at places which had decent speed, but unserviceable ping times, which is really a buzzkill for VoIP and online meetings.
Another issue is wifi that is fast, but unreliable. I've experienced a lot of that since moving to Brazil; Internet that just goes missing at intervals too regular to ignore.
Would be interesting if a widely-used service like speedtest.net would enable some tagging of IP addresses to pool results, so you could see the aggregated results for a given hotel over time.
Ex: Some of the hotels in New York show very high speeds, but also "Confidence: 9.2%".
Confidence value shows how thoroughly the WiFi has been tested at this hotel.
The confidence value depends on several factors, including the number of
speed tests taken, how recently the tests occurred, and the diversity of tests
in terms of the time of day, day of the week, and point within the travel season.Speed is a crucial factor for me when staying somewhere. Nice hotels seem to focus on the service and aesthetics, but the poor old Wifi connection gets left behind.
I gave up, upgraded to Unlimited 4G on my T-Mobile line, and don't worry about these things anymore. Problem solved! :-)
Unfortunately, you're very unlikely to be getting decent speeds and latency at the hotels, and most managers don't even care.
Well, yeah, that ain't gonna be fast, but, if hotels abroad have as crappy the internet as those in the States do, that's still likely to be a huge improvement. :-)
Or you could always get a local SIM for some more unlimited fun.
I'm grandfathered in... at least for now.
These hotels normally charge $20-50 per day of internet and they provide shitty service. It drive me mad. I have learned that you can complain and get some significant bonus points out of it. I wish more people complained about the internet service in order to push for faster speeds and better latency, let alone not having your connection drop.
Hotel wifi is spotty and incredibly insecure compared to a wireless hotspot.
Paying $10 to use the internet would be fine, but paying that much for a 20MB quota makes it a nonstarter.
Anyway, we are in a hotel for couple hours only. Rest of time either we are sleeping or we are outside either working or enjoying our vacation.
Edit: Ran another test on your site and got 61.4 Mbps. It might have been an issue on my end, not too sure. Great work!
Edit 2: Ran yours once again and got 31 Mbps. There seems to be an issue with consistency, although this could be my ISP.
(They still suck, because HD Netflix is unusable at peak times without a VPN.)
For people who travel a lot this website is a great resource.
Edit: it's working.
This may be true in the US but I don't think it's necessarily true in Europe. Too many hotels in the UK/Ireland claim to offer "internet access" which turns out to mean no wifi (or mysteriously permanently broken wifi) and one ancient PC in reception which nobody can tell you the password for. Germany was better for wifi but often had paid wifi in the rooms and free wifi only in reception, which I guess still lets them advertise it as "free".
Still, I like the site idea. If I could use the site to avoid the above, all the better.
So I'm using my android phone as a hotspot - it's probably more secure than attaching my laptop to the hotel's service anyway - plus my plan (3's The One Plan) allows unlimited hotspot use anyway, so why not.
I remember being in a decent hotel in Singapore a decade and a bit ago which had wired internet access and I was curious and ran wireshark on my laptop booted into Linux - it was a horrifying sight of port scans and SMB exploit attempts.
I laughed.
So, the word "quality" wouldn't necessarily be the word to identify the current capabilities of any wireless network using the standard protocol suite available to the user today.
The managers in the morning just stared at me blankly when I went off on them in the morning. "Why do they charge for internet but not phone service?", I asked.
You also seem to want to ignore the fact that, on a 4000-mile, 10-day journey, they were the only hotel that charged for internet. This doesn't include the multitude of business trips I take every month where, again, I never get charged for internet.
So, iow, charging for internet service is not the norm. Nor is charging for telephone service. And don't mention it to the front desk. It's not their fault.