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Expensive Hotels Really Do Have Faster Wi-Fi
OpenSignal, by means of mobile apps for iOS and Android, has been amassing data on Wi-Fi and cell-network signal strength. They released yesterday a few of their findings on the speed of Wi-Fi available at U.S. chain hotels (download speeds, specifically). Though it shouldn't be surprising that (as their data shows) more expensive hotels generally have faster speeds, I know it hasn't always matched my own experience. (Hotel chains also vary, even within brands, in whether the in-room Wi-Fi is free, cheap, or exorbitant.) If the in-room connection is flaky or expensive, though, from the same report it seems you'll do better by popping into a Google-networked Starbucks location than one fed by AT&T, and McDonalds beats Panera Bread by quite a bit.
If WIFI is free, everyone will use it, clogging up the pipes. If there's a charge, less people will be on, making more BW available for those who shell out the cash. I also hope that the hotels that charge use the money to miantain the infrastructure, but that's wishful thinking on my part.
Part of this could indeed be network infrastructure - more expensive hotels can afford more robust networking solutions and wireless installers worth a damn that can optimize the way the network works. Other reasons could be upstream - more affluent hotels in more affluent areas will find cable companies caring *just* enough to split nodes where necessary, so the fancier hotels are less limited by their upstream providers.
More likely though, people in ritzy hotels simply aren't using the Wi-Fi. Even if they're not spending the night with a hooker, they're probably using the pool or the spa or the movie theater or the 75" 4K TV in their room to use their own laptop. Some certainly will, but there's a difference between "available for use" and "the only thing to use", which is more the case with the budget hotels.
I've tried the free wifi at a number of Panera locations in different states over the years and generally found theirs to be amongst the worst of all free wifi setups. Half the time I couldn't even get a google search to work after logging in.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
No, cheaper hotels have slower WiFi if they have any WiFi at all.
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
In other news most Porsches have better acceleration and handling than most Fords, a large cruise liner fits more people than your dinky boat and a nuclear bomb has more 'bang' in it than a firework would.
You can't handle the truth.
I find that it does not matter what the hotel costs, or how fancy it is.. the internet sucks. I tend to tether to my phone and use LTE as the hotel internet is worthless for anything other than check email.. Certainly not Netflix streaming.
I came, I conquered, I coredumped
Expensive Hotels Really Do Have Faster Wi-Fi
How about that shitty motel I visited a couple of years ago in a small town population 12K? Dirty, small, shitty, smelly, noisy (walls so thin I was actually considering joining in the nightly party next door where the couple went at it all the time).
But you know what? They had REALLY FAST WiFi. 30/30! Way better than I had in Copenhagen with my poor 8/8.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
Quick, stop the presses, god things cost more than bad ones.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Oh, I'm a cheapskate most of the time, but occasionally I'll see how the other half lives. I find the divide is more complicated, though -- I've stayed in some total dives (boy, have I!) and a very few 4- or 5-star places, and for the most part I'd rather be somewhere in the middle. For the most part, I'm not offended by small rooms or lousy views, would rather allocate money on interesting food ;) This can go too far, though: once I made the mistake of camping at a KOA (note: quite good Wi-Fi, though mysteriously not on this list) in New Orleans, in August, and that was a lousy idea on several fronts.
I've definitely found some of the worst Wi-Fi in some of the more expensive places, though, and it rankles to pay $10-20 in some places for the privilege of hooking to the in-room network, a trend that's at least on the wane I think. In places like Las Vegas, at least the trade-off is there in gambling-subsidized rooms ;)
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Being someone who used to directly support internet services for businesses, including hotels, I an assure you that most of the time, it's because the hotel does not spend the money to have a connection speed to support the number of occupants at the hotel. Most big chains will probably have a 50x5 connection for their guests to use, while some will continue to use a 10 or 15x2 connection for their guests. Not very many hospitality businesses use fiber, yet. In most if not all cases, the speed reverved for each user will be limited to anywhere from 256k to 2MB. I don't recall ever seeing anything faster than that.
flea-bag motels have no free amenities. Motel 6/hilton/whatever will give you wifi and hbo. Expensive hotels have no free amenities.
The few hotels I have stayed in that were nicer than my socio-economic class had shitty wifi that was 20 bucks extra per night. The midrange motels all have shitty wifi that is free. In most cases, tethering to my 4g phone is the best option.
is this because the wi-fi is actually worse, or because they are large, comfortable, and have free coffee refills meaning a lot of people are camping out to use the wi-fi?
no one really wants to stay in a McDonald's for any longer than necessary, but a Panera is tolerable.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
for the user, does it matter who the provider ultimately is? not really. empirically, in major cities, the starbuckses with google-branded wifi give a better service than the others.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
I get widely differing performance at different hotels in the same chain, for some chains, and consistent performance for others. And of course, different performance in the early evening than in the early morning. So these numbers are basically garbage.
Same - for me a hotel is a room and place to rest. I spend as little non-sleeping time in a hotel as possible so the giant, expensive hotels are a waste for me.
Conversely, I seem to find (in the UK at least) that cheaper ones and shops are more likely to have free WiFi, while pricier hotels and bigger chains seem to be more likely to charge for it. The poshest one I've spent any time in - part of the same chain as the Savoy in London - charges crazy prices (and has lousy mobile reception), though it's a rock-solid signal throughout the large building; a much cheaper hotel nearby just had a Wifi access point on ADSL somewhere, with no password, for anyone to use.
A question of attitude I suppose: a small hotel thinks £20 or so a month is a trivial investment to make guests happier, like having newspapers in reception; a bigger chain sees it as spending millions across the chain to roll out a service which should generate revenue.
nice small directional antenna and small tripod + pocket router with antenna wire coming out running OpenWRT...
I have my choice of faster wifi from my hotel window.... Starbucks is really fast after hours.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
This may come as a shock to timothy, but expensive hotels usually have bigger rooms, better views, and are more conveniently located also.
Better hookers as well.
Well, more expensive ones, anyway.
...for Internet access, hotels ALWAYS cheap out on the pipe, regardless of what we advise. I still know of many hotels that their only pipe is a pseudo-T1 line.
You mean you sleep in a cardboard box under the bridge?
You are welcome on my lawn.
As a Common international business traveller,, I know very well the issues with hotel wifi.
First of, there is the dodgy reception interference issue. What compounds this is as soon as the wifi is flaky in a hotel, everybody gets the 3/4g wifi hotspots out compounding the problem. My solution is a high power (600mw) usb wifi adapter and high gain antenna in my suitcase. Cuts through all the crap. This one was a boon in a hotel in Lawrence Kansas, and whenever I get stuck in THAT room with sucking wifi reception.
Second is the throttling issue, where each device is throttle. Once I found In a nice hotel in Orange county had wifi hard throttle to 1mbps, I also found I could use the external USB adapter, the laptops internal adapter, and the rooms wired ethernet, and carefully created routing table, to get 3x 1 mbps streams....
I've once had the whole wifi in a hilton hotel come down, after the main login server got a virus, (short hills NJ). On the other hand the best wifi I've ever had at a hotel was at a hilton group hotel (doubletree in chesterfield MO).
I practically live on the road and I stay in some pretty cheap places. Most of the time the wifi is fairly slow, but sometimes I'm surprised by how fast it is.
Right now I'm in a $43/night Scottish Inn in a small city in Tennessee and I'm getting over 14 Mbps downstream. Last month I stayed in a $45/night motel in Baldwin County Alabama and had close to 30 Mbps at times (averaged over 20). More than enough to read and post on slashdot.
The very worst motels for internet are Motel 6 and Super 8. When will the motel owners realize you can't share a dial-up connection?!?
A lot depends on the internet service available to the motel and how many people staying there are using it. Remember, a lot of motels, especially the lower priced ones, are owned by individuals, and their attitude towards technology determines how much importance they place on having fast internet for their customers. Some really don't care.
Also, let me take this opportunity to say "Hello!" to all my Patel friends.
OK, I'm waiting to see how it works for the NASCAR championship in November, when there's going to be a couple hundred people watching streaming race clips all weekend... Might need to keep a fire-extinguisher next to the router...
A few years ago I found myself at a DC hotel, 5 star, payed by NASA. After arriving after 10 pm, I spent 10 pm to 12 trying to find a room with working wifi or ethernet !
The Hotel staff helped me to find a room with a working wifi or ethernet !
It was mind-boggling and interesting that at a 5-Star DC hotel (US Government Payed) in the late-hours and wee-hours I became a "tester" for their wifi and ethernet.
We found out a lot of "things" with their network (In the same hotel, New York Governor [Eliot Sptizer] and his "accomplice" were having quite and night) and I hope that the information I gave them helped them. Looks like it really did !
True story.
I travel a ton and stay in dozens of different hotels every year. Domestically, and in maybe 50% of the foreign cases, the high priced hotels had worse and slower internet up until a couple of years ago. For the last 2 years they have gotten better, on the average. Oh, I was in a 5-star Vegas resort last night that had horrible bandwidth. In the past, my joke was accurate that the difference between a Four Seasons (just an example) and a Super 8 is that at the Super 8 the internet worked and was free. The most important thing to me in a hotel is computer use. The fancy suites in major hotels are often set up for entertaining friends and DON'T even have a computer desk. I ask my wife to book me into Super 8's whenever possible.
OK a new size TV
At least I expensed that to my company.
I used to say that. And when I travel on the cheap, I also try to stick to that. But then, I had some good hotels paid for the company when travelling for training and work, and the difference is quite noticeable. And I also stayed on one of the best hotels in Philippines, and believe me, it was worth every penny.
OpenSignal is unusable. They don't even have 0.1% of the real coverage.
My city shows up having zero coverage for 4G and my history shows up as having 4G signal 68% of time.
I submitted data for months and they never included it.
Perhaps, but I've something about a conference where wireless experts (= people who wrote the specs or a similar bunch) found that their hotel (probably a mid-class one) had woeful wireless connectivity, so they teamed up (like the two dozen of them), pulled out their expensive gadgets and vastly improved the hotel setup made by some clueless guy - who instantly reverted it once they were gone, just to be on the safe side. ;)
Ezekiel 23:20