Hacker News Reader

Comment by danielpal | Hacker News Reader

One thing that I noticed, is that the more expensive the hotel, the worst is the WiFI. Same applies when I have to pay for WiFI - the more I pay, the worst it is.

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.

View on HN

Oftentimes, the reason for this is that those hotels were particularly early in offering their guests internet access but then bought into a draconian external service provider with awful service, high fees, very long contract duration, and slow speed. Usually, when I'm in an expensive hotel with awful (paid) internet, I speak up and they explain this to me.

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.

Here we see in a smaller scale what a lack of ISP competition does to a region. This is basically what many municipalities bought into in order to afford Comcast's infrastructure 15 years ago.

I can corroborate this. I did a network setup at a B&B that hadn't had any wi-fi since the place got internet.

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.

Hey EJR,

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

"Eli the Computer guy" does some pretty interesting video tutorials on YouTube. He tends to go on and on a bit, but overall he does a nice job of explaining networking basics, how to run cables, use RJ45 connectors - this is very important if you run your own wire - and setting up routers/switches.

Edit: Here's the full playlist of his networking videos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rL8RSFQG8do&list=PLF360ED108...

Also, HN doesn't have a private messaging feature. If users don't put their email in the free-text field on their profile, there's no way to get in touch with them privately.

He probably also doesn't know that he isn't getting any 'notifications' for reply on his comments and most probably he's not going to see this either :D

Haha, I'm an avid reader of HN, so I tend to revisit articles to check for updates.

Thanks for the help everyone

The standard solution (via Coase's theorem of economics) is that they should just buy out the contracts, but it seems this isn't happening. I wonder why this is.

They don't care, switching is a pain and the given excuse is offered just to pacify the complaining customer. "Nothing we can do."

Because the customer doesn't find out that the wifi is crap until they've already bought it, and they don't have an easy way of disputing the charge either. So unless repeat customers complain/start walking, the hotel has little incentive to pay money to fix this.

Because even Coase himself showed that his theorem is BS in real life situations: "In this 1960 paper, Coase argued that real-world transaction costs are rarely low enough to allow for efficient bargaining and hence the theorem is almost always inapplicable to economic reality."

What is stopping them from offering a parallel much faster WiFi?

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.

> What is stopping them from offering a parallel much faster WiFi?

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.

> 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

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.

Yes, but any such clause is wrapped in arbitration requirements which cost time if nothing else.

I'm surprised that many business people sign bad contracts, but it happens a lot especially with long term contracts like these.

Your parent stated clearly "But until then they're, by contract, obliged to offer their guests only their contract partners awfully slow internet."

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.

Well, if they have such shitty people to sign such a one-sided contract... I doubt they could get their thumb out of their ass to try your worthy piece.

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.

This is true. I worked for a global telecoms company with hotel groups as customers for several years. It was shocking how slow some of their connections were, and expensive too.

I've asked a lot of hotels about these things, I was usually told that it's the hotel that doesn't want to pay a little extra for the higher speed uplink (by the support), or that they've already exhausted their budget for this year (believe it or not, the budget thing was at Hyatt House once).

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.

I was once in a Marriott that gave free Wi-Fi to Apple devices and charged all other devices. I didn't know about the Apple deal till a colleague on the same trip told me he was getting it free on his Macbook Pro. Needless to say, I spoofed my MAC address and User Agent and got it free as well. Not sure which one it was actually checking, but probably the latter.

Anyway, something to be aware of.

Good tip but is it sensible to admit to several criminal offences on a public forum?

IANL, but that probably isn't illegal.

A hotel says "free wifi for Ape devices. Everyone else has to pay". A hotel guess decides to misprepresen. What device they have. The only reason they misrepresent their device is in order to avoid paying the charge.

I'm not a lawyer but that feels pretty clearly like fraud.

Surely spoofing the user agent is unobjectionable at worst, and spoofing the MAC address perhaps only mildly discouraged? I can't imagine its actually being illegal (but, then again, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_piggybacking for unexpected illegalities).

Well, it depends what the hotel policy is. If it's "free wifi for Apple devices" then there's some kind of fraud happening.

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.

I'm not sure that I agree with that interpretation --if you stand on the street and say "free hugs for Georges", and I say "I'm a George", has fraud occurred? I guess that I mean --is any misrepresentation, even in the absence of a contract, a (legal) fraud?

Literally every browser out there sends a user agent that is in some way lying. Anyone trying to authenticate based on a user agent is a victim only of their own stupidity, not any sort of crime by their guests.

Good thing you're not a lawyer, because it's certainly illegal in the UK...

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1990/18

Good thing there are other countries in the world apart from UK and US.

It looks to me like that only clearly applies to unauthorized access to programs and data stored on a computer. Unauthorized routing of packets through a computer is not obviously covered by that law.

The very, very first clause:

    > he causes a computer to perform any function with intent 
    > to secure access to any program or data held in ***any*** 
    > computer

No. That's not sufficient to classify the action as illegal. If you're accessing a public website, but through a wireless router that the owner doesn't want you using without paying for, then the data you're accessing is still data you're authorized to access (it being a public website, after all).

To 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.

You're talking about computer misuse law - there are existing cases in UK and probably US that cover this.

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's an entirely different law from the one that peteretep cited. His assertion that it's illegal may in fact be correct, but his justification was complete bullshit. The fact that you've found a law that is relevant doesn't make him any less wrong.

Yes, people who are relying on user agents are stupid.

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.

You forgot the </sarcasm> tag.

There was no visible policy. As far as I'm concerned, it was free Wi-Fi for User-Agent X, so I used User-Agent X.

Whereas it's obviously silly to suppose that gaining access to Wi-Fi is a criminal act worth worrying about, it's also worth pointing out courts reject arguments like this.

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.

> courts reject arguments like this.

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... )

It's not about following the law with suspect motives. It's about the fact that following the technical protocol does not give you much defense against unlawful access charges.

That's absolutely correct.

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.

> 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.

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.

Can you find an example in case law where someone's been prosecuted for obtaining access to a system by spoofing their MAC ID or user agent string?

Surely this has come up before now, yes?

Are you making an oblique reference to Aaron Swartz?

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.

There's probably a reason for the fact that there has never been a criminal case such as you've described, and it's for that reason the above poster is safe in writing what he did.

So, you ignore the bits of the Swartz case which were about his access of a network by spoofing MAC address and user agent?

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.

Read what I wrote more carefully.

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.

> Obtaining goods by deception

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. :)

What about, say, Safari browser itself, which presents "Gecko" in it's useragent string? If it is a punishable offence, imagine how much money one can extract from Apple for doing so...

Did you even read the comment you are replying to? Intent matters.

Oh DanBC, your comments never disappoint.

Don't let Stephen Heymann or Carmen Ortiz catch you doing that. They indicted Gary Host on some pretty serious charges for this.

Maybe they think guests using apple are more valuable, but it's stupid thinking and doing.

They talk about this in one (hilarious) episode of the Jeff & Casey show: http://mollyrocket.com/jacs/jacs_0004_0011.html

    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.

> 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

I used to be a frequent business traveler... and while I didn't mind the charge, poor speed/reliability was enough to avoid a hotel on future visits.

5 star hotels aren't really for most business travels though. I mean, if you are an exec ya, but usually you just get a 4 star Hilton at best. 5 star hotels are for rich people who won't notice.

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).

> 5 star hotels aren't really for most business travels though. I mean, if you are an exec ya, but usually you just get a 4 star Hilton at best. 5 star hotels are for rich people who won't notice.

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..

Good resorts in Thailand are at least $200+ a night, though you can get beachside bungalows in Koh Chang for $40/night.

That kinda depends on the company policy. I'm a systems software engineer; I've had a fly-in interview with Goldman Sachs in NYC in 2010 from grad school (I was cold-called by a third-party recruiter company through LinkedIn or something), Goldman has placed me in Embassy Suites next door to their office -- supposedly, they even own the whole hotel. The internet was 9,95, and I was explicitly told that they won't pay [to their own hotel] for my internet. (The hotel stay itself was billed directly to their account, but internet access was excluded.)

You could panhandle for ten the bucks. OTOH, no company that expects a person to read or send an email, or do any other internet-ish thing can expect their employees to subsidize their business while on a business trip.

My company pays for me to have tethering on my iPhone so I not really supposed to also expense internet at a hotel. Of course this is fine for doing work stuff like email, but when you're in a hotel for 4 days it's nice to have Netflix, which obviously is not ideal on a tethered cell connection.

Last time I was in San Jose, I was surprised by how terrible the WiFi was at the hotel I stayed at. You could tell most of the guests were programmers, yet I could barely get 96k. And I specifically asked for a room close to the router. I guess maybe the boom in Silicon Valley means hotels can fill rooms without having competitive WiFi?

Could it simply be higher ratio of bandwidth hungry wireless consumers just saturating their reasonable network?

So true... I've stayed at the fairmont in SF and San Jose, both of which charge $15 for slow internet (unless you opt for the club where they usually bill you anyway and use your information to bombard you with ads). They even charge for the crap gym haha. I tend to steer clear now

The Fairmont put in wifi in the ninties, and let the dust collect. I worked at that facade. The Swiglets were too cheap to upgrade. RIP dad!

If you're an employee travelling on business, your company might have a per-night budget for hotel accommodation. If your budget is $150, then you can't stay in a $160 hotel. You _can_ probably stay in a $150 hotel which charges $15/night for internet access. You'll expense the hotel (within the budget) and expense the internet access fee (reasonable expense whilst travelling).

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.

Same experience. I can't believe that such high quality hotels have such low standards for internauts.

Every time my company schedules a stay in such hotels, I happily downgrade my stay to somewhere else.

Hotel chains are in a far worse situation: I stayed twice in a Novotel and I had to pay for a crap wifi, I'll never cross their path again.

Most of their customers don't care. They're either not price sensitive, expensing it or have some form of status with the hotel so the fee is waived.

Business travelers expense it and really don't care about the price.

I would wager most are staying at chains where they hold status and don't have to pay either way.

My experience is the smaller the hotel, be it 3 stars or 5 stars, the wifi is generally better. So population is also a problem. Though you can argue that a big 5 star hotel should provide exceptional service compared to a big 3 star hotel. That's true. But thought I'd throw my 2 cents.

Working even further down the line, free wifi even in tricky locations was the universal standard in hostels 10 years ago.

we had this exact convo @ lunch today. The worst is the double charge for "Turbo" bandwidth. No one charges for bathrooms why charge for WiFi the incremental cost per user is less.

I understand your point, but I wanted to mention that other countries do charge for bathrooms (even NYC charges for public washrooms), so you can use a better example in the future!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com