Hotels w/ High-Speed Internet Access?

jroysdon asks: "I'm going on a company-paid conference trip to LA for Cisco Networkers in late June. Cisco has a list of hotels nearby that they've nogetiated rates with, but the first 3 I've checked don't have any high-speed internet access (just data jacks for modems). At $.60 a pop per local call, I might as well find a place that's going to get me a decent connection, and plus the company's paying for it and some of the time I'll be spending keeping up on company email, etc. Does anyone know of a good travel site that lists geek-friendly amenities like high-speed internet access, or even 802.11 wireless? At this rate, I'll probably be staying 11 miles away instead of a few blocks so I can have something better than a modem. The hardest thing is getting the 800-number attendants to understand what I mean when I ask: 'Do you have RJ-11 data ports in any of your rooms?'" Honestly, until broadband access becomes a bit more common-place in the US (much less everywhere else), you won't see many hotels offering ethernet service as a selling point, however it would be nice to see a website that lists them as they show up.

Comments

Crowne Plaza

[Crewd]

I stayed at the Crowne Plaza at the L.A. Airport about 2 months ago and they had high speed access in each room. Phone # is 310-642-7500.

Mariott Hotels

[rhedin]

Most of the high end Marriott hotels (Marriott, Rennaissance) I've stayed at have high speed access in the rooms provided by STSN.

There's a little box on the desk with an RJ-11 connection for modems, a USB port and a 10BaseT connection. The closet has a USB cable and a ethernet patch cable.

It's not free- generally there's a $10/day or so charge for the service.

STSN has a web site at STSN Home with a lookup function to find hotels with the service.

FYI, the Wyndam Checkers hotel is listed.

rob.

Re:Mariott Hotels

[Rupert]

My colleagues had cable modems long before they were available in my area. I would listen to tales of fantastic download speeds, and be faintly jealous, but really, it didn't sound that much better than 56k.

Then I stayed at a Marriot in Dayton, Ohio. There was a cable modem in the room (which needed to be rebooted, which needed 3rd level support, plus moving the fscking huge television cabinet, but I digress). $9.95 a day. It fits neatly under "Phone Calls" on the expense voucher. So I gave it a try.

I was an instant convert. I got a cable modem on the first day they were doing installations in my neighbourhood.

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Re:Mariott Hotels

[DeusExLibris]

Actually, it's not just the high-end Marriotts. I frequently travel to they bay area and all the Courtyard Marriotts (definitely NOT high-end) all have STSN.

However, my experience is that STSN provides mediocre service at best. I have used it in at least half a dozen different hotels over the past year and usually get 100-150K throughput. Not a lot of additional speed for $10/day.

Finally, on a more positive note, I recently stayed at the Four Seasons Austin (sometimes it pays to travel a lot). I do not remember the name of the service, but it wasn't STSN. I-something, I think. But it rocked! Averaged 300K+ on the few measurements I did.

Re:Mariott Hotels

[TheSync]

I just stayed at the Hampton Inn Oakland airport, and they had STSN with both Ethernet and USB. I didn't measure throughput, but the Ethernet was clearly was a lot better than the 56k dialup I've had to use at the Hyatt Regency! It just used DHCP, trivial to get operation, just plug and go. $9.95/day.

BTW, if you ever have to go to San Francisco, keep Oakland airport in mind. It is almost always cheaper to fly into than SFO, and Dollar and National rental cars are right there outside the terminal.

Re:Mariott Hotels

[jfunk]

Disclaimer: I work for a competitor in this space called SolutionInc. I do not speak for them and none of what I say is official. What I can say is that ours is Linux-based. :-)*

Your speed could probably be explained by the fact that it gets tunneled through Salt Lake City. IIRC, when I was in a Marriott in San Francisco there were, something like, 18 hops back to Halifax, and I was behind two or three levels of masquerading. Apparently, you can do a PPTP VPN only if you're the only guy doing it. IPSec is generally out of the question.

In fact, it's fairly rare to get a real IP in a hotel. Our server allows the user to select whether they want a masqueraded or real IP when you open up a browser, if the site has any and you're willing to pay a few extra dollars.

Ooops, I've rambled...

I-something, I think.

That's CAIS' I-Port, now owned by Cisco. It runs on a Windows NT server.

Re:Mariott Hotels

[tjrw]

Kbits/s or Kbytes/s ?
I recently stayed at the Marriott Marquis in Manhatten for the Linuxworld Expo and the STSN hookup there was getting ~70Kbytes/s !
That's a great deal faster than dialup and allowed me to download ~200MB of updates after I had to re-install my laptop following an APM/UDMA snafu (incredibly badly trashed root partition).

YMMV :-)

Tim

Hate to think what they'd charge..

[Stormie]

Hotels are such bastards when it comes to phone charges. I've had some rotten ones in my time, but my wife just got back from Atlanta where she was reporting on the IBM PartnerWorld conference.. while there, she had to dial back to the UK a few times to upload some stuff to her work - the hotel billed her $US30.00 a MINUTE for the international calls..

(don't know what they should cost, but our rate for calling the US from here is 3p (~4.5c) per minute)

So if they'll mark up a phone call to 600x it's actual price, I shudder to think what they'd charge you for high-speed internet access..

Re:Hate to think what they'd charge..

[VP]

The STSN service mentioned above is about $10/day in the places where I have seen it advertised.

Re:Hate to think what they'd charge..

[raju1kabir]

Oh come on. Did she make a 5-second call and you extrapolated from that? There are some shysters out there but I highly doubt any of them are charging two thousand dollars an hour for $5 phone calls.

What's the name of the hotel?

RJ11 ... for Data Access?

[CyberKnet]

Forgive me for asking, but isnt RJ-11/RJ-12 for phone cabling? I know that it was used for early networking among macintoshes, but I was under the impression that RJ-45 was the networking clip of choice.

Perhaps this is why the 800 number zombies arent understanding what you're asking?

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Re:RJ11 ... for Data Access?

[detritus.]

You're right -- However that does bring a feasible solution to mind without having to rewire 300 rooms.. There are RJ11 networking solutions that could seamlessly allow a hotel to implement a decent network connection.
The negative side, correct me if i'm wrong, there is no industry standard for RJ-11 networking, not to mention the expense of buying a RJ-11 NIC. Surely would be cool if they could implement ethernet over RJ11 and then have RJ-45 to RJ-11 converters ;)

- Slash

Negotiated rates

[Tony Shepps]

Cisco has a list of hotels nearby that they've negotiated rates with,

Which protocols did they try?

Re:Negotiated rates

[srhuston]

Which protocols did they try?

My guess would be Dynamic Hotel Cost Protocol.

Or maybe Symmetric Negotiation of Motel Prices.

Speaking of hotels with high speed access

[wmulvihillDxR]

There was a recent local report of a hotel in the area (Carbondale, IL) that was running a prOn site out of the hotel! Here is the story from the Southern Illinoisan. Guess they had enough "access."

Hilton Garden Inn

[CrayDrygu]

I stayed at a Hilton Garden Inn recently (HGI Denver Airport, this past summer), and they had a RJ-45 in the room I stayed in. I think I figured out it was $10/day or so, which isn't bad if you ask me.

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W Hotels

[acoopersmith]

The W Hotels chain advertises that their rooms include "hi-speed Internet access ports, web browser television and two-line cordless telephones." (The chain is owned by the same corp who owns Westin, Sheraton, Four Points & Caesar's.) There's only a handful of them around the US, but they do have one in LA.

Re:W Hotels

[Robert S Gormley]

Also one in San Francisco... very nice, nightclub-like. The Sheraton Rittenhouse in Philadelphia also has a T1, and 10baseT ports in each room, configurable by DHCP. Very nice :-)

Yes, here's the web site

[peccary]

http://www.geektools.com/geektels/

Has a list of hotels all over the world and what kind of geek amenities they offer.

No auto link, cuz you'll want to remember it, and I'm sick of goatse.cx links.

Re:They already do

[srhuston]

The converters are made by Tut Systems and cost about $170 for a 1 megabit converter.

Well, it would depend on the actual wiring you've got there, but at the college I worked for a lot of the old wiring was over RJ11 cables, and we just used RJ11-RJ45 patch cables. Okay, so they wouldn't hold 100Base-T or Gigabit, but they work fine for 10Base-T, and much easier than rewiring a few whole buildings.

You're obviously asking the wrong question.

[Wakko Warner]

Why not just ask "Do you have high-speed Internet access?" rather than "Do you have an rj-11 port with shielded twisted pair copper wiring leading to a DSLAM in the basement with dual redundant power supplies and a sump pump in case of flooding or other emergencies?" Ask something the people at the front desk can understand, and you'll find an answer more forthcoming.

- A.P.

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* CmdrTaco is an idiot.

Here is the ultimate list of geek hotels

[rambleon1979]

http://www.geektools.com/geektels/

"hacking" STSN hotel Internet access

[rayd75]

I stayed at a Radison in San Jose a couple of weeks back and found that until you purchase it, the STSN service seems to only redirect HTTP requests to the "purchase me" page. You still have access to the gateway. I was able to sign on to AOL(work-provided), AIM, and connect to my corporate VPN with no problem... And at no charge. I had to use an IP for the VPN as DNS apeared to be blocked, but hey still not bad for free. Sure this is off-topic, but I couldn't help myself.

They already do

[eap]

My apartment complex has ethernet over RJ11 lines. It comes into my apt and plugs into the back of a converter which converts it to regular RJ45, which plugs into my NIC.

The converters are made by Tut Systems and cost about $170 for a 1 megabit converter.

Why they didn't just wire the place with cat 5, I don't know.

Re:They already do

[detritus.]

I guess I should better explain myself, I was thinking more along the lines of something similar to Diamond's HomeFree networking, being able to simultaneously transfer voice/data over a single RJ-11 line. Definitely would make implementation a snap, that is, if there's a standard...

- Slash

Hiltons generally...

[darkonc]

I've stayed at Hiltons in a number of places, and they tend to have ADSL lines in the suites,. It seems to be a relatively new development.

I know that the Costa Mesa Hilton (Newport Beach) has ADSL (I was there last month). I presume that other LA area Hiltons have it as well.
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LodgeNet.Com

[SEWilco]

LodgeNet supplies high-speed Internet service in hotels. Go to the LodgeNet Guests page and you can search for a hotel. There are three in L.A. at the moment.

High-Speed Hotels

[donkeytom]

I know Darwin Networks provides Internet access for some hotels around the country. Looked for a list at http://www.darwin.net but didn't see anything right off. Looks like an up-and-coming company, though.