wifi Archives - Page 3 of 7

October 4, 2012

Cross Country WiFi

I have mentioned, okay moaned, about the lack of wifi on Cross Country trains and the problems with using 3G in their Voyager trains as their construction was very good in blocking phone and 3G signals.

I realised it must have been some time since I last travelled with Cross Country as on my most recent trip with them I was astonished and surprised to find that there was wifi…

Gosh!

This I had to try. Alas it wasn’t free and when I checked the tariffs it wasn’t cheap either.

There are two tariffs, one based on elapsed time and the other on total minutes.

So for a one off long journey then it will cost you anything up to £6.

Now I don’t use Cross Country that often, but did consider the total minutes package. For £18 I would get 30 hours of wifi that was valid for a year.

In the end for the test I went with the one hour for £2. I did like how I could pay by SMS, but that does mean you need a phone signal!

Overall the speeds were low compared to potential 3G speeds. This isn’t a service you could use for doing certain things, the terms of use explicitly say you can’t use it for catch-up TV (ie iPlayer), downloading large files (ie system updates) or file sharing.

Cross Country WiFi

So how did it go. Well apart from a couple of glitches on my journey, I was quite pleased with the performance. I can’t really expect decent wifi when travelling through a tunnel for example.

On the return journey I decided to rely on 3G and the experience was awful in comparison to Cross Country WiFi. It think it is a serious option if I need internet when travelling by train, especially Cross Country.

January 6, 2012

Happy with the Airport Extreme

I am pleased with my new Airport Extreme which I recently installed to replace an unreliable old Airport Express. Since I installed it, it has remained up and broadcasting (and accessible) without any problems.

My old Airport Express, configured for legacy 802.11g devices, would often “disappear” from the network and even though it was still broadcasting, the Airport Express wouldn’t accept connections, nor could it be found via the Airport Admin Utility. As a result my 802.11g devices (such as the iPhone) wouldn’t be able to connect to the network and wouldn’t be able to stream video or download stuff. My main challenge was with my wireless Canon printer which was 802.11g and not been able to print was very annoying. It got to the point where the Airport Express was failing on a daily basis and needed to be unplugged and plugged back in again.

I did consider replacing the Airport Express with the new 802.11n Airport Express, but having had two Expresses go on me, I decided to stump the extra cash and get an Airport Extreme. I had a few reasons, the main was that if my existing Airport Extreme failed I had a replacement on hand. It comes with three ethernet ports and I can then have a few more wired gigabit ethernet devices on the network which is of course much faster than wireless and means more stable Skype and video streaming on more devices, as well as faster file transfers. I can also add a USB hard drive as network storage too.

I didn’t get a Time Capsule as they seemed to add very little to the equation, cost more money and have in my mind more things to go wrong.

So, so far I am pleased with the Extreme and it is doing what I need it to do.

October 1, 2011

WiFi with my Coffee

Last summer I posted a couple of blog posts about free wifi and coffee. In August I noted that some coffee shops in LA were getting rid of the free wifi because of problems with people nursing a single coffee and using the wifi all day and the way that a place full of people just using laptops would “kill” the atmosphere. In July I did think, despite Ofcom’s warning that providers of free wifi would be held liable for the actions of users on their network, that we probably would still have free wifi, but we would need to register to use it.

Since then I have noted a couple of things, my local coffee shop (a Costa franchise) has free wifi and it does have strings, you need to register before you can use the internet, and you need to have a code from the barista. So we have no “no strings” wifi there.

However I was pleased to see one of my favourite coffee chains (not sure if this is the case with all branches) have moved away from an expensive wifi hotspot model to free wifi model.

In Caffé Nero on Bedford Stree in Covent Garden I went in for a coffee and was pleased to see that they were offering free wifi.

They are using the The Cloud and from the marketing material in the cafe it did appear that this wasn’t a “no strings” wifi arrangement, you would need to probably register.

I only had my iPhone on me, so I decided to use that and give it a go, and was pleasantly surprised to find that once connected to the wifi I was good to go and no need to register. Now of course with my phone deal I have free wifi with The Cloud and BT Openzone so I am guessing that this was the reason I didn’t need to register as I already had at some other The Cloud wifi hotspot.

Now don’t get me wrong I much prefer conversations with my coffee, but if I am on my own and drinking coffee it’s nice to have some internet access to get on with a few e-mail or have an online conversation.

However I am hoping that as a result of Caffé Nero’s free wifi that other coffee places will follow suit.

September 26, 2011

Upgraded the Airport Express

After having a few problems with the Airport Express, usually resolved by unplugging it and plugging it back in again, I took the plunge and upgraded the firmware to version 6.3

I was having issues with it failing too often. Though most of my Mac hardware and the iPad run off my 802.11n Airport Extreme, I still have some hardware that can only use 802.11g and that is what I was using the Airport Express for. The iPhone is one example, but as it has 3G it was less noticable when the Express failed and the wifi didn’t work. However my Canon printer also connected to the 802.11g Express network and when the Express fell over, no one was able to print!

I generally don’t upgrade unless there are security issues or as in this case I am having problems with the hardware. The upgrade went fine and it would appear after a few days now to have solved the issue. The Express has stayed up without falling over, so I am keen to see if this will continue.

If it keeps falling over then I may need to get a new one, of course it would have to be the AirPort Express 802.11n model.

July 7, 2011

BT Openzone-H

Well though I am guessing that BT didn’t read my blog about BT FON, however a comment posted by Matt says that BT are aware of the problem i discussed and are changing the settings on the BT Homehubs so that instead of broadcasting the BT Openzone SSID they have renamed it to BT Openzone-H.

This will mean (if my neighbour updates their hub) that my iPhone problem will go away, as my iPhone will no longer connect to the wifi hotspot thinking it has free access as it was broadcasting itself as BT Openzone. The different SSID can be used by BT Openzone customers, but owners of devices such as my O2 iPhone won’t “recognise” the BT Openzone-H SSID as a BT Openzone SSID and so won’t connect. In my case that means my iPhone should connect to my home wifi network instead and I won’t get annoyed.

However it is slightly disappointing that rather than actually provide access to iPhone O2 customers through BT FON Hubs, BT are merely changing the SSID so that they don’t need to.

Pity.

July 3, 2011

I don’t like BT FON

I am sure most people who complain about BT FON are actually on BT Broadband… well I am not on BT Broadband and neither do I actually want to use a BT FON wifi hotspot.

So why don’t I like BT FON?

Well it’s an iPhone problem.

How?

Well…. according to my contract with O2 I have unlimited wifi access (or near enough) and I can use BT Openzone wifi hotspots. I will admit that though I like this useful feature, nine times out of ten it doesn’t work as it should and I fall back on using 3G. I think part of the issue is BT, and I will admit part of the problem has to me. Why is it my problem? Well…. it’s much more about my web usage patterns on the iPhone when out and about. When I use the internet on my iPhone as I suspect most poeple do this, I want to use it quickly and for short periods of time. In theory what the iPhone should do is when I take it out and attempt to use the web is, connect to the nearest wifi hotspot, authenticate and then allow me to have access to the web. I can then check that e-mail, check for train times, tube problems, use Google Maps to work out where I am and where I should be. However I find with BT Openzone is that it takes longer than I think it should to authenticate and allow me access to the web. Sometimes I even have to go via the browser first, before I can use an app. As a result most of the time I have tried to use BT Openzone it seems to have taken ages. So fine if you are based in a coffee shop, not much use when just checking the phone in the street. Sometimes I have found that my app isn’t working, realise that I am connected to wifi, so I turn off the wifi, use 3G and everything is much faster and easier.

So what’s this got to do with BT FON then?

Well as you might know if you have BT Broadband you can configure your router to allow others access via BT FON, thus allowing you to use BT FON hotspots and BT Openzone when you are out and about. It’s a ploy or feature of BT to increase the availability of BT Openzone beyond it’s own network of hotspots and use home broadband connections too. Now this is annoying if you are out and about and want to use your iPhone and there is a BT Openzone in the area, yay… well tough! As if the BT Openzone is actually a BT FON hotspot then this won’t work with your iPhone, you won’t be able to use the hotspot and no internet! So for many people they think yay lots more hotspots that I can use with my iPhone. However the reality is that unless they are “official” BT Openzone hotspots which do work with the O2 iPhone, if it’s a BT FON BT Openzone hotspot then this won’t work with the O2 iPhone, these extra hotspots are basically useless.

I am guessing that many of my BT Openzone connection issues are in fact down to these faux BT Openzone BT FON hotspots rather than specific problems with BT Openzone itself. Really it should either be fixed, or don’t use the BT Openzone SSID with BT FON routers.

Is that it?

Well not quite, a recent problem for me has arisen. The problems with BT FON and BT Openzone of course (as you might expect) happen in the main when I am out and about. But last month a neighbour (and I don’t know which one) must have got BT Broadband and is now broadcasting themselves as a BT FON wifi hotspot. As a result when I get home from work my iPhone fails to connect to my wifi network and connects to the faux BT Openzone network instead. I would just stick with 3G, but 3G speeds are not as fast as they should be where I live, so depend on wifi. So as a result I use my iPhone and find that things aren’t working, e-mail isn’t been delivered, etc… then I remember the BT Openzone glitch, go to settings, “forget this network” and my iPhone connects to my wifi without any problems. Of course once I am out and about and connect to BT Openzone in the wild, when I get home again the problem comes back.

Solution, I don’t have one. It’s just annoying really, so I don’t like BT FON…

Of course if you know different… is it just me?

April 30, 2011

Turn off the wifi

Following my previous post about the Nexus One battery life I received some useful suggestions from Gia and Dan.

If the Nexus One is searching for wifi access points then as Dan pointed out, this will drain the battery quite rapidly. This is not unique to the Nexus One, I have had similar issues with the iPhone 3GS and the Nokia N95. I had hoped that the issues would have been resolved with newer phones.

It’s interesting though to see the impact of wifi and the power requirements are still an issue.

It is the constant searching that has such a hit on the battery life, if the Nexus One is connected to a wireless access point then this has a lot less of an impact on the battery. That’s the reason why when using wifi on my iPad I don’t have similar battery issues as I am connected to wifi. Likewise when using the portable wifi hotspot on the Nexus One I find that I don’t have the battery problems either. Interestingly you don’t need to have the wifi turned on to use the portable wifi hotspot, the phone will turn on the wifi transmitter when you turn on the hotspot and turn it off when you turn the hotspot off.

I did find turning off the wifi did make a big difference to battery life on the Nexus One, so it is remaining off. Apart from having to turn it back on when I am using the phone at home, it hasn’t been such a big deal and hasn’t been annoying, whereas the lack of battery life was much more annoying. Still may follow Gia’s suggestions and get a new battery and use my old one as a spare.

April 17, 2011

WiFi, wot WiFi?

One of the real benefits of running Froyo (and now Gingerbread) on my Google Nexus One has been the facility to use it as a portable wifi hotspot. Despite often been in locations with free wifi, more often I have reverted to the Nexus One as the quality of the free wifi connection has left a lot be desired.

The other day for example I was in my local Costa coffee shop which has free wifi for customers.

It seems to take ages for my non-3G iPad to connect to the wifi and an age for the wifi login screen to come up. You have to create an account (which means I need to remember that account), you then need to enter your credentials and the “code” you are given when you bought the coffee. By which time you have drunk the coffee… The connection isn’t that good either, sometimes a little flaky, and if the connection drops, you need to go through the process again. So if I am rushed for time, I will probably use my Nexus One and turn on the wifi hotspot feature whilst I am queing for coffee, so that when I sit down it is up and running and my iPad will connect automatically. Now I know you could say, why didn’t you get a 3G iPad then you wouldn’t need this, well in reply I would say that I was already paying for 3G on the Nexus One and why would I want to spend more money on another 3G connection? I have a legacy T-Mobile Web’n’Walk Plus account that allows me to use my phone as a modem (or as I can now as a wireless hotspot).

Another time I do use it is at conferences. Most conferences I attend now actually have had decent wifi so haven’t had to worry… however recently at a conference in Harrogate, the conference wifi, which though free, would normally cost £4 per hour, was somewhat flaky, basically I don’t think it could cope with the number of delegates who had multiple wifi devices, iPads, phones and laptops.

As a result I got a better connection from the Nexus One than I did with the conference wifi. This is something I have written about before on my e-Learning blog. That though was written in 2007, here we are four years later, the iPhone has proved quite popular, we now see more smartphones with wifi and there is of course the iPad.

You would think that conference venues would know that decent robust scalable wifi is not just an extra these days, but a standard requirement for events.

Till that happens, I am pleased I can continue to get my own wifi through the Google Nexus One.

August 9, 2010

No more wifi

An interesting article from LA about how some coffee shops are not just getting rid of free wifi, they are getting rid of wifi full stop!

Coffee shops were the retail pioneers of Wi-Fi, flipping the switch to lure customers. But now some owners are pulling the plug. They’re finding that Wi-Fi freeloaders who camp out all day nursing a single cup of coffee are a drain on the bottom line. Others want to preserve a friendly vibe and keep their establishments from turning into “Matrix”-like zombie shacks where people type and don’t talk.

I do like to go to coffee shops and have been known to use the wifi. I agree though that sometimes you go into some coffee shops and everyone is huddled behind their laptops using Facebook or similar. Coffee is about the conversation.

Photo source.

August 6, 2010