Hotel WiFi Disservice

I too travel alot and am no stranger to hotel living and odd internet service.

one more troubleshooting/fix I have discovered. There are times when I can connect to the net, but any download I try will hang after a few seconds. I can maintain a solid connection to IRC or World of Warcrack, but heavy use, not a chance. So while trying to figure out why, and realizing that if that was the ISP's normal service that they would have no customers at all, I figured out that it had to be something on my end. It was, sort of, swapping the state of the receive buffer did the trick for me.

in /etc/sysctl.conf I have set:

# CUSTOM CHANGES net.ipv4.tcp_no_metrics_save = 0 net.ipv4.tcp_moderate_rcvbuf = 0 # increase TCP max buffer size setable using setsockopt() net.core.rmem_max = 16777216 net.core.wmem_max = 16777216 # increase Linux autotuning TCP buffer limits # min, default, and max number of bytes to use # set max to at least 4MB, or higher if you use very high BDP paths net.ipv4.tcp_rmem = 4096 87380 16777216 net.ipv4.tcp_wmem = 4096 65536 16777216

after making those changes, sysctl -p to load them in, and tah dah, full bandwidth and no hanging. Sometimes adding : ifconfig eth0 txqueuelen 1500 will bump up the max data rate as well, although this takes a little fiddling with to get it maximized.

So I unpack at a La Quinta, fire up, and everything seems to go find. The wifi service is detected, connects just fine, resolves name servers, and ping works.

I fire up Konqueror, and get redirected to their authentication service. Fine by me, I understand, so I find the "continue with sign-in" button and...

...and that's it. Nothing I do makes any difference, not a button on the so-called "service" works.

So I try Firefox. Same thing.

I fire up VirtualBox and WinXP. Firefox again gets exactly the same problem. No error, just complete disfunction.

But Internet Exploder breezes right in, authentication works, and everything is fine. Linux and associated software then works great for the rest of our stay, so I assume it logged the MAC address as "allow" or something to that effect.

La Quinta got a very nasty letter from me about that, I can assure you. Haven't been back since.

I've had mixed luck with LaQuinta. I've generally been able to get it to work under Linux and I don't have IE installed, however in several cases I've dealt with such weak signals I couldn't get it to work in my room and had to sit in the lobby to use the Internet.

I've had similar experiences with other mid priced chains though, so I'm not saying that LaQuinta is significantly worse.

Yes, signal problems I could understand. This was not a signal problem, the hardware "connection" came up without any problems at all.

I've noticed a trend (perhaps my sample is small) in the last couple of years toward open wifi - anyone can use their network.

Stayed at an Extended Stay one trip, default was picky but they have great outsourced tech support. The person I talked to not only knew Linux, but knew Gentoo well enough to try a few things that I was unaware of at the time. When that still didn't work he went in and auth'd my computer via MAC address. After that, it was smooth sailing for me.

I've had similar good experience with Extended Stay America.

The hotel I wrote about is the La Quinta in downtown Atlanta. My housemate was able to login with Firefox once she had DNS working. No problem there.

Bob I think they are just trying to maximise virus distribution through their network.

I've also stayed at an Extended Stay hotel and had the exact experience that azerthoth did. When I dialed them up, I was asked if I was using "Windows or Mac?". I told them "Ubuntu". "No problem" they said, just "right-click Network Manager, close and reopen Firefox...", etc. The guy actually knew what Ubuntu was, how to troubleshoot their network with it, and I was connected in seconds. More people should have this experience, instead of Bob's.

As noted in the comments there, both Comfort inn and Hampton Inn offer free wifi, and it almost always works with Linux. As I noted, Country Inn and Suites also seems to be a good chain in that regard, though I haven't stayed at enough of them to be as sure as I am with Comfort Inn and Hampton Inn. Some Comfort Inns also offer a wired connection, but most don't seem to.

> I've also stayed at an Extended Stay hotel

Which is now bankrupt. :(

@jdixon: Do you know the details? Are they in Chapter 11? Are they still operating their hotels? In addition to the WiFi service they are also pet friendly which has been important to me at times.