Gadgetory

so if you've ever stayed in a nice hotel you know that it can be a real treat plush bedding those fancy little soaps in the bathroom and the seven dollar sodas in the minibar well anyway all those things can go a long way towards making you feel like a real VIP until that is you connect to the guest Wi-Fi and it's so slow that it makes your fancy laptop if you like something right out of 1995 but why is hotel Wi-Fi often barely functional even at high-end resorts let's start with the obvious volume unlike at home where you might only have a few people connected to your network at once hotels have to handle hundreds or even thousands of connected devices but come on John it's not like these hotels don't plan to fill all the rooms with guests so surely they can account for this right well you're right they could but part of the problem is do see business model of hotels which try to draw people in with visually appealing rooms common areas hot tubs continental breakfasts you name it this means if optimized network infrastructure doesn't look flashy in the brochure it can often get pushed to the bottom other list of priorities so because of this their sense can end up seriously flawed in a number of ways for starters when's the last time you saw any routers or access points just hanging around the resort hotels off the cram their equipment into closets maintenance areas and even ceilings so things don't look too messy but trying to hide it behind a bunch of obstacles can reduce signal strength and therefore range and speed and many hotels also use older equipment that there are in no hurry to replace for example hotels often signed contracts with outside companies to provide equipment and services for a certain length of time sometimes years so if the hotel has a bunch of routers and access points deployed that only support older standards replacing them to be very costly depending on what the contract says and it isn't like new equipment is cheap to begin with and if your hotel is using older equipment chances are it's only offering a connection of the congested 2.4 gigahertz band which is compatible with almost all Wi-Fi devices but it's more successful to interfere us there's a new were five gigahertz bands when lots of devices are in close proximity which would happen in the hotel the hotel's network might also be using 802 point 11 and routers that don't have as much throughput as newer standards like wireless AC so when you combine all this with the fact that the hotel's high-speed internet connection is being split across hundreds or even thousands of guests it can result in serious bottlenecks but hold on a minute wouldn't it make more sense for the hotels to just spend money on better hardware and attract visitors with fast Wi-Fi well some hotels are indeed doing this but many others are still for some reason holding on to the idea that shoddy Wi-Fi will get customers to give up watching movies and other stuff on their laptops or tablets and instead of spring for hotel provided pay-per-view and although it's pretty easy to see that hotels will probably have to give up on this at some point what can you do with the meantime if you're stuck in a place with slow Wi-Fi well a good investment to make if you're a frequent traveler is a small wireless router that you can take with you you see many hotel rooms also offered wired internet access often over that Ethernet port that you find hiding next to the lamp plug a router into it in AP mode and bam you have your very own Wi-Fi network and since you likely won't need a signal outside of your room and inexpensive short range solution will probably do especially if you use the less crowded five gigahertz band that we were talking about before and if you're really pressed for space and your tiny travel bag there are even travel sized routers that are a little more than just a single Ethernet port plus an antenna another option is to simply avoid staying at hotels with poor Wi-Fi in the first place there are websites that pop those specifically the crowdsource estimated speeds of hotels in many different cities so if you're going to need a reliable internet connection on your next trip keep these listings in mind just make sure you also look at the rest of the reviews you don't want to rush to book a hotel with fast Wi-Fi for Netflix only to feel something unexpected biting at your legs when you try to chill and Stingo tried to chill are you finding yourself never having any time to chill because you're always racing the clock is a freelancer less challenging but with the growth of the internet there has never been more opportunities for the self-employed so to meet this need check out fresh books cloud accounting software designed for the way you work it's the simplest and easiest way to be more productive get organized and most importantly get paid quickly create and send professional-looking invoices in less than 30 seconds and setup all online payments with just a couple of clicks and get paid up to four days faster automatically see where your client has seen your invoice and put an end to the guessing games no matter whether you run a landscaping business a production company maybe a website where you talk about hotel Wi-Fi speeds whatever you're doing fresh books can handle it fresh books is also offering a 30-day unrestricted free trial to our viewers they claim it just goes a FreshBooks column slash tech lucky and enter tech cookie Andy how did you hear about this section alright guys thanks for watching this episode as fast as possible like is if you like it dislike it if you didn't leave a comment with your ideas for future videos check out our other channels check out channel super-fun maybe we'll do something super fun at some point with little Hotel soaps maybe we'll buy some things from a minibar that'll be super fun and super expensive um but yeah anyway don't forget to subscribe and we will see you next time