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Choose hotels by the quality of their WiFi

hotelwifitest.com

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Re: Choose hotels by the quality of their WiFi

#61

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.

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.

Re: Choose hotels by the quality of their WiFi

#62

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.

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.

Re: Choose hotels by the quality of their WiFi

#63
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

brokentone, what is quality in your opinion? Is it connection speed? If it is more complex than that, what would be the best way to quantify it? Most hotels offer free WiFi, so it is easy to skip hotels with paid WiFi. We will add more filters (including this one) soon.

"Most hotels offer free WiFi" 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 receptio…

That is because we tend to have good UMTS/HSDPA connections in most cities.

Re: Choose hotels by the quality of their WiFi

#64
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure you guys are on it, but: See apenwarr's 'Blip' for checking latency in the browser: https://github.com/apenwarr/blip

Locked up FF when I tried it.

Really? I've been using it in FF on GNU/Linux since it was announced 2013-04 without any issue (other than switching to a different tab seems to throttle connections). I've got the latest FF 31. What version/OS/graphics do you have?

Re: Choose hotels by the quality of their WiFi

#66
post #61

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.

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.

Re: Choose hotels by the quality of their WiFi

#67
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

brokentone, what is quality in your opinion? Is it connection speed? If it is more complex than that, what would be the best way to quantify it? Most hotels offer free WiFi, so it is easy to skip hotels with paid WiFi. We will add more filters (including this one) soon.

"Most hotels offer free WiFi" 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 receptio…

I'm sitting here in a Travelodge in Scotland and their WiFi access amounts to 30 minutes free then I'd have to pay for it - NOPEKTHX.

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.

Re: Choose hotels by the quality of their WiFi

#68
I'm really more interested in packet loss/reliability than speeds when I'm in a hotel. 5Mbps, 50Mbps, or 500Mbps, all are fine if they work reliabily. When they don't, they're all equally bad. Trying to use Skype or SSH in the evenings in a hotel is frequently a horrible experience.

Re: Choose hotels by the quality of their WiFi

#69
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Re: Choose hotels by the quality of their WiFi

#70
post #68

I'm really more interested in packet loss/reliability than speeds when I'm in a hotel. 5Mbps, 50Mbps, or 500Mbps, all are fine if they work reliabily. When they don't, they're all equally bad. Trying to use Skype or SSH in the evenings in a hotel is frequently a horrible experience.

In my experience high speeds means exactly that.
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