<story><title>Hotel Wi-Fi blocking: Marriott is bad</title><url>http://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2015/01/hotel-wi-fi-blocking</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>72deluxe</author><text>Cisco sell a Wireless LAN controller, which can send disconnect packets to &amp;quot;rogue&amp;quot; APs that get set up, rendering them useless. This is particularly important at events where the airspace is severely cramped, such as big arena events, racing, horse racing etc. where the myriad of APs to provide coverage of free wifi to pundits would have to compete with these other APs. In a severely crammed airspace, this would help to encourage the other AP providers to turn their boxes off.&lt;p&gt;And getting a mobile telephone call in such events is even trickier, given that 50,000 people are in one space and the masts to serve them are oversubscribed. If they all suddenly want to place bets or browse the web, that&amp;#x27;s incredibly difficult to provide on the mast, so providers will set up additional masts for big events (like the big horse-racing events here in the UK). That&amp;#x27;s why they provide free wifi too, and having other APs set up and attempting to provide wifi over the airspace doesn&amp;#x27;t really help.&lt;p&gt;I wonder if Marriott hotels have the same approach in order to provide better wifi coverage? I have been in numerous hotels where the wifi coverage was great if you&amp;#x27;re sat in the bar but abysmal if you&amp;#x27;re down the other end of the building (where the hotels here in the UK are large old buildings with thick walls, very tricky for wifi).&lt;p&gt;Irritating if you&amp;#x27;re trying to use your phone to provide wifi to your laptop in order SSH to your own box at home or to get content via your mobile (which might be faster than their Internet access in some cases). I suppose you could just use a Bluetooth PAN instead (and it uses less power!)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>michaelt</author><text>&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  Cisco sell a Wireless LAN controller, which can 
  send disconnect packets to &amp;quot;rogue&amp;quot; APs [...] 
  this would help to encourage the other AP 
  providers to turn their boxes off.
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
Perhaps I should make a product that detects controllers sending fake deauth packets, and does the same thing in return.&lt;p&gt;This would help &amp;quot;encourage&amp;quot; people who buy the Cisco product to turn that feature off :)</text></comment>
<story><title>Hotel Wi-Fi blocking: Marriott is bad</title><url>http://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2015/01/hotel-wi-fi-blocking</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>72deluxe</author><text>Cisco sell a Wireless LAN controller, which can send disconnect packets to &amp;quot;rogue&amp;quot; APs that get set up, rendering them useless. This is particularly important at events where the airspace is severely cramped, such as big arena events, racing, horse racing etc. where the myriad of APs to provide coverage of free wifi to pundits would have to compete with these other APs. In a severely crammed airspace, this would help to encourage the other AP providers to turn their boxes off.&lt;p&gt;And getting a mobile telephone call in such events is even trickier, given that 50,000 people are in one space and the masts to serve them are oversubscribed. If they all suddenly want to place bets or browse the web, that&amp;#x27;s incredibly difficult to provide on the mast, so providers will set up additional masts for big events (like the big horse-racing events here in the UK). That&amp;#x27;s why they provide free wifi too, and having other APs set up and attempting to provide wifi over the airspace doesn&amp;#x27;t really help.&lt;p&gt;I wonder if Marriott hotels have the same approach in order to provide better wifi coverage? I have been in numerous hotels where the wifi coverage was great if you&amp;#x27;re sat in the bar but abysmal if you&amp;#x27;re down the other end of the building (where the hotels here in the UK are large old buildings with thick walls, very tricky for wifi).&lt;p&gt;Irritating if you&amp;#x27;re trying to use your phone to provide wifi to your laptop in order SSH to your own box at home or to get content via your mobile (which might be faster than their Internet access in some cases). I suppose you could just use a Bluetooth PAN instead (and it uses less power!)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>busterarm</author><text>I recently worked for an ISP providing service to some Marriott resorts.  This is my opinion and in no way representing either company, but this is exactly what Marriott is trying to do.  Marriott is not using any sort of wifi jammer like the author is suggesting; in fact such devices would block their own wifi signal.&lt;p&gt;The most typical problems with wifi in resorts comes down to construction; most of these were built years before wifi was a consideration and are constructed in a way such that even with commercial APs you will get a very poor signal even with the APs in each unit.  There&amp;#x27;s one such property I know of where guests only get wifi in the one room with the AP and out on their balcony and no where else in the hotel besides the pool &amp;amp; lobby.&lt;p&gt;Also they often use authentication pages that mean you can&amp;#x27;t get on with a device without a browser...but when you have 200 guests sharing a 100Mbps connection, you don&amp;#x27;t want someone hooking their Xbox or AppleTV anyway.</text></comment>