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'Free Wi-Fi' Hotspots - misleading name?
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david16
30-04-2016
It’s fair to assume that in-store free wifi can in many cases easily be a mifi unit with a 3G sim card inside it rather than fixed line wifi.

They have no obligation to provide public wifi at speeds of 100+ mbps.
jonmorris
30-04-2016
The offering of Wi-Fi now is increasingly providing a very good service, with routers that can cope with lots of users - and fast connections behind them. Decent dual-band setups with decent antennas, and if there's more than one AP then chances are they're configured properly (and enough companies offer turn key solutions for pubs, restaurants, retail because they know customers now demand decent Wi-Fi_.

I can now get 30+ Mbps on many Wi-Fi services I use, and that has changed my views on using Wi-Fi because it's actually very fast. A year or two back, I'd never even bother with most Wi-Fi unless it was in a location where I had no mobile access. Now I actually will use Wi-Fi in preference to mobile data, or should I say my phone will.

I will often use a VPN but when you've got a good reliable connection, the impact is minimal. Can't remember the last time my VPN connection failed.
brymbo76
30-04-2016
Originally Posted by de525ma:
“Well, for a start, there are over 1.5 million apps in the App store alone. That would be some list to curate! Who's going to do all this testing?”

Well obviously I wouldn't be asking for a Wi-Fi hotspot to list that many apps!
I just meant the Top 10 or so Apps and other applications people tend to use in everyday life like the ones I stated at the beginning: "email or Apps such as LINE, WhatsApp, Skype, Facebook, Facebook Messenger, eBay, Dropbox and open the Internet Browser".
de525ma
01-05-2016
Originally Posted by brymbo76:
“Well obviously I wouldn't be asking for a Wi-Fi hotspot to list that many apps!
I just meant the Top 10 or so Apps and other applications people tend to use in everyday life like the ones I stated at the beginning: "email or Apps such as LINE, WhatsApp, Skype, Facebook, Facebook Messenger, eBay, Dropbox and open the Internet Browser".”


Well that's not strictly what you originally said:

Quote:
“Well I still think each 'Free Wi-Fi' Hotspot should specify which apps you can and can't use before wasting time trying to connect to them.”

but OK - and who is going to constantly look at this top 10 of apps (it will change, over time), and all their latest updates, and test them, for a service which they are giving you for free?

Quote:
“Anyway, 'Free Wi-Fi' should mean anything you can do on your Wi-Fi at home, you can do for free at any establishment displaying the 'Free Wi-Fi' logo.”

No. Just no. You just cannot use home-grade network setups in public places. Home network equipment is permissive by default, as the owner will have few devices and know exactly who owns and operates the equipment that uses it. When you operate a public network, you have to protect your network, and the users of your network from a multitude of threats including malware infested computers from unsuspecting users to those who will use your open WiFi network to conduct nefarious activities. This is why firewalls are there. To protect you as a user, and to protect the network itself. This has a side-effect of making some apps not work as expected in all cases. It's much safer this way.

Incidentally most public WiFi networks allow your listed apps. FON hotspots are a little trickier because they typically run from Homehubs, which are not designed to handle lots of users at once. They are also much more restricted, depending on the age of the equipment.

For e-mail: Standard in-the-clear SMTP access on port 25 is routinely blocked by just about everyone to prevent spambots using networks to send millions of emails. Standard email traffic is "in the clear" and you should ensure your mail settings use SSL if you're going to be using it over open hotspots. Otherwise it is trivial for another user on the network to read your emails as they arrive and as you send them.

In the end, you are using someone else's network, free of charge. If they don't want a service running on it, that's up to them.

Quote:
“Either that or the level of connectivity should be more easily explained alongside the 'Free Wi-Fi' logo to explain to people who don't understand much about 'Free Wi-Fi' as to what you can and can't do at that particular 'Free Wi-Fi' hotspot you are connected or trying to connect to.”

It's not a simple thing to explain in a few words. Anyone's expectation of a public wifi network should be that you can use it to view websites through a browser. The rest is a bonus.
Rossby41
01-05-2016
Just to put my penny in the pot here. There's local McDonalds about 5 mins up the road from me. I can get better speeds on 4G (with the O2 network) than I can on their WiFi.
brymbo76
01-05-2016
Well you certainly have picked up and like to pick up on every single little thing I say in exact detail, that's all I can say, de525ma.
Anyway, as for speed, i'm not too bothered about that as long as it's not as slow as a snail.
I'm more interested in the connectivity side of Wi-Fi than the speed side of Wi-Fi.
And I'm not asking for someone to go around testing Wi-Fi spots all around the country.
But surely when someone offers a Wi-Fi hotspot, they must be able to choose which apps they want to offer at the time of offering their hotspot before it goes live?
errea
02-05-2016
Install & run the BT WiFi App and you will autologin into BTWifi / BTOpenzone networks.

For O2 WiFi, The Cloud and Wherever else as known networks and your phone will autoconnect when they have same names ( e.g. Sainsburys). If they are not working then enter a random web address (e.g. www.su.se) and the start page will appear.


Originally Posted by brymbo76:
“So if it's nothing really to do with the encryption, does anyone know how I change the settings on the apps or on the phone or something to allow me to carry on using them apps on other Wi-Fi connections without being restricted to Wi-Fi connections such as my BT Home Hub that require a password?”

-GONZO-
02-05-2016
Originally Posted by errea:
“Install & run the BT WiFi App and you will autologin into BTWifi / BTOpenzone networks.

For O2 WiFi, The Cloud and Wherever else as known networks and your phone will autoconnect when they have same names ( e.g. Sainsburys). If they are not working then enter a random web address (e.g. www.su.se) and the start page will appear.”

Exactly, as a BT customer I use the BT WiFi app quite often and have never had any issues and it's so simple to use once you've entered your login details and first selected the BT hotspots you'd like to use then will automatically login thereafter.
Even with the likes of The Cloud etc is simple enough, even though it may automatically latch onto the WiFi hotspot you still need to open the browser to activate the login page.
Skie
02-05-2016
If you install the BT certificate it will also connect to their hotspots automatically with no need for the app or logging in. Uses a slightly different ssid (wifi-x) but is functionally the same.
de525ma
02-05-2016
Originally Posted by brymbo76:
“Well you certainly have picked up and like to pick up on every single little thing I say in exact detail, that's all I can say, de525ma.
Anyway, as for speed, i'm not too bothered about that as long as it's not as slow as a snail.
I'm more interested in the connectivity side of Wi-Fi than the speed side of Wi-Fi.
And I'm not asking for someone to go around testing Wi-Fi spots all around the country.
But surely when someone offers a Wi-Fi hotspot, they must be able to choose which apps they want to offer at the time of offering their hotspot before it goes live?”

No - this isn't how it works. App vendors can implement connectivity in many different ways. And they also can change this as time goes on. It's all fairly low level - apps typically communicate to their central servers through the internet, using TCP/IP. Without going into too many details - network requests go to a server on a specific port. Some of these are reserved, 80 and 443 for HTTP (that's the protocol which retrieves web pages), 21 for FTP, 22 for SSH etc.

e.g A web request to http://www.example.com is really a request to example.com's web server on port 80.

Those ports which are essential to internet services have to be open on public networks. But it's standard practice to close the rest - any open port can be abused. Every open port is a hole in the wall that protects your clients from malicious web traffic and your network from badly behaved clients.

So if I make an app, and it uses the internet to connect back to my server on port 5000, there's no guarantee that port 5000 will be open on everyone's network everywhere. Outgoing ports (those that send data from your device to a remote server) are normally all open on home networks. This isn't necessarily the case on public networks.

For decentralized protocols, like P2P, games or some video calling services, your device will send a uPnP request to your router to temporarily open an incoming port to it so that others can connect to your device directly. But uPnP requests can come from any piece of software. There's no easy way to tell at the network level which application sent the request, and for what purpose.

So it is good network administrator practice to decide which ports are going to be open on your network, and what for. In reality, this means very few. If a really popular app consistently uses one port, you may find the vendors convincing the admin to open that port. Or it may be open if your network admin uses that app .

But services like uPnP will be switched off. You don't want someone coming to your cafe every day to swamp your nice WiFi zone by sending spam or seeding hundreds of TV shows and movies, after all
d123
02-05-2016
Originally Posted by brymbo76:
“Well you certainly have picked up and like to pick up on every single little thing I say in exact detail, that's all I can say, de525ma.
Anyway, as for speed, i'm not too bothered about that as long as it's not as slow as a snail.
I'm more interested in the connectivity side of Wi-Fi than the speed side of Wi-Fi.
And I'm not asking for someone to go around testing Wi-Fi spots all around the country.
But surely when someone offers a Wi-Fi hotspot, they must be able to choose which apps they want to offer at the time of offering their hotspot before it goes live?”

If you're not happy with the service offered at one of these wifi points you could always ask for a refund on the access charge paid .
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