
Choose hotels by the quality of their WiFi - gozmike
http://www.hotelwifitest.com/
======
danielpal
One thing that I noticed, is that the more expensive the hotel, the worst is
the WiFI. Same applies when I have to pay for WiFI - the more I pay, the worst
it is.

I've found that 3 star hotels that offer free WiFI usually have the best
speeds/service. Whereas 5 star hotels that usually charge $14.95 daily have
the worst.

~~~
terhechte
Oftentimes, the reason for this is that those hotels were particularly early
in offering their guests internet access but then bought into a draconian
external service provider with awful service, high fees, very long contract
duration, and slow speed. Usually, when I'm in an expensive hotel with awful
(paid) internet, I speak up and they explain this to me.

The last hotel where that happened explained to me that management bought into
a internet contract in 2005 that will last until 2015 at which point they plan
to simply rent their own DSL. But until then they're, by contract, obliged to
offer their guests only their contract partners awfully slow internet.

Just like in business, small companies / hotels can move faster.

~~~
cynicalkane
The standard solution (via Coase's theorem of economics) is that they should
just buy out the contracts, but it seems this isn't happening. I wonder why
this is.

~~~
jpatokal
Because the customer doesn't find out that the wifi is crap until they've
already bought it, and they don't have an easy way of disputing the charge
either. So unless repeat customers complain/start walking, the hotel has
little incentive to pay money to fix this.

------
TimJRobinson
Tip for travellers: Learn how to set a static IP address on your devices. I've
been travelling through South East asia for the last 3 months and at about 20
- 30% of the hotels I stay at the WiFi works fine but their DHCP does not. I
presume this is because most routers in default config cache IP address for
clients and when they run out of free IP address they just fail to assign new
ones to new clients. If you notice the wifi works but your computer or phone
times out when connecting set your ip settings as below:

IP Address: 192.168.1.xxx (xxx being between 50 - 200) Netmask: 255.255.255.0
Gateway: 192.168.1.1 DNS: 192.168.1.1

This has worked for me in 90% of cases and you get your own private WiFi (as
none of the other guests can access it ;)). There was one place I stayed at in
hanoi where I got my own 90Mbps / 40Mbps connection due to nobody else being
able to get on.

Sometimes the ip is 192.168.0.xxx and on rare occasions it's been 10.0.0.xxx.

I've tried to help hotels fix this issue as I go but it seems most either get
some tech to setup their router or plug it in and keep the default settings
(sooo many places have 'admin' as their router password) and don't know how to
fix it.

~~~
dec0dedab0de
_xxx being between 50 - 200_

You're probably better off with a lower number that would likely be outside of
the dhcp pool. It's fairly standard to set aside the first 5-20 addresses for
future network equipment.

~~~
wikwocket
I am not sure whether the people who set up off-the-shelf residential routers
with default settings are going to follow standard best practices for network
design... ;)

------
bduerst
I used to do consulting and traveled 100%. The term "High Speed Internet" is a
common misnomer with Hotels, and was a bane of my existence, because it
typically meant > 56k but < 1 Mbps speeds.

These were with Hyatt, Marriott and Hilton hotels, mind you. If aggregaters
like Hipmunk could incorporate this speed data, the way that they have with
in-flight wifi, then hopefully there will be a push to improve this standard.

~~~
alexis
I thought the same thing (re: hipmunk) -- working on it!!

~~~
JacobAldridge
Hey Alexis - have you evolved completely from kn0thing these days? (Wow does
that sound meta-physical. Haven't we all evolved from nothing?)

I find the whole 'real name online' discussion fascinating, and would love to
hear your thoughts / experience. (Apologies if my google-fu has failed to
produce any previous explanation on your part.)

------
wwweston
While we're at it, can we also choose them by the actual things that let you
get a good night's sleep -- whether the beds are not only nice enough but fit
your preferences, whether the rooms are acoustically isolated enough you can't
hear your neighbors walking (or watching TV or talking or getting busy),
whether the temperature controls of the room work efficiently, and whether the
room doesn't smell offensive.

Right now, hotel ratings are completely broken for personal bed comfort (I
find I'm slightly more likely get a decent night's sleep at a Motel 6 than at
a Fairfield, because I'm more likely to find memory foam beds at the latter --
yes, I know they're great for some people, but they're absolutely horrible for
anyone who doesn't sleep well when warm and wants something more supportive
than conforming).

There's some correlation between ratings and the other things (and it's nice
to see more hotels going smoke free), but it's by no means certain.

I'd love to see a rating of internet reliability, but I can get internet in
other ways if I need to. If I'm paying for a room for the night, there's no
other way for me to sleep, and my experience is that it's generally a
crapshoot as to whether I'm going to get a good night's sleep or not.

~~~
calbear81
Within a hotel, rooms in the same category can have widely varying
characteristics. Rooms with ocean views could have full views, others could
have a sliver view. We've collected tips on quiet rooms, large rooms, and
rooms with a view for about 30K+ hotels on Room77.com under the "Insider Tips"
section on the hotel pages.

------
janjongboom
While the WiFi in most hotels is horrendous, wired internet is pretty awesome
most of the time. A network cable is always in my suitcase and my laptop can
run as an access point for my other devices. A separate access point could
also come in handy (you have very small ones nowadays).

During JSDay.it people had a lot of time even connecting to the WiFi while I
was running at 80 mbps.

~~~
guelo
Sorry, we've moved on to the future, we're too cool to have laptops with
useful ports anymore.

~~~
zevyoura
I realize this is a joke, but if it's a reference to Apple laptops, it's worth
noting that an ethernet plug literally will not fit on recent models of the
Macbook Pro or Air; they're simply too narrow. I'd much prefer a narrower
portable to an ethernet port; when I need one I'm happy to use a dongle.

~~~
jimmaswell
>I'd much prefer a narrower portable to an ethernet port

Why? How in the world is a standard laptop with an ethernet too "thick" for
you? Do you routinely try to slide your laptops under doors or through mail
slots? Making laptops ridiculously thin doesn't solve anything except making
them look thinner.

~~~
zevyoura
Thickness generally has a very strong correlation with weight. Weight is
probably the single most important factor in a laptop for me. I didn't realize
how much of a difference it made until I switched to an Air.

~~~
jimmaswell
I'm dangerously out of shape and carrying around my laptop bag with >10lbs of
stuff in it doesn't bother me. Functionality is worth the weight unless you're
averse to carrying a few extra pounds I guess.

~~~
paulfurtado
What do you have against external ethernet adapters? I don't see how requiring
an external ethernet adapter is a worse trade off than adding extra pounds and
size.

~~~
jimmaswell
An external ethernet dongle is more likely to break or get lost. Wasn't there
a push against dongles a while ago? Are they becoming normal again? There's no
VGA port either which is a necessity for me. No CD drive either. Is this thing
a laptop or a big smartphone with no touch screen? No numpad either, wow.

~~~
konspence
> An external ethernet dongle is more likely to break or get lost.

Sure, but it's replaceable for the cheap cost of ~$10 - 20.

> There's no VGA port either which is a necessity for me.

2007 called, they want their already-deprecated video standards back.

> No CD drive either.

2000 called, they want their already-deprecated media storage standards back.

>Is this thing a laptop or a big smartphone with no touch screen?

Clearly a laptop.

>No numpad either, wow.

Now I'm convinced you're trolling.

~~~
Larrikin
Personally I think its absolutely ridiculous I paid $3000 for my Mac Book pro
and I don't have a numpad with crucial keys like home, end, page up and down
because they wanted the the track pad in the center. My old vaio laptop that
was the same size fit the numpad just fine. I ended up buying having to buy
one just because I was much slower at programming without it.

~~~
callum85
Yes it's ridiculous you paid that much if those features are crucial to you.
You're very wrong if you think those features are crucial to everyone. I
definitely want the track pad in the middle more than having page up/down etc.

------
alwaysdoit
I'd like latency as well as speed. A lot of hotels I have been to have really
high ping times.

~~~
yaro2
Yes, latency is very important. We found that there is a strong negative
correlation between bandwidth and latency (faster connections tend to have
lower response times). That's why we decided to focus on speed first. We are
planning to add ping testing as well.

~~~
LukeShu
I'm sure you guys are on it, but: See apenwarr's 'Blip' for checking latency
in the browser:
[https://github.com/apenwarr/blip](https://github.com/apenwarr/blip)

~~~
TheLoneWolfling
Locked up FF when I tried it.

~~~
LukeShu
Really? I've been using it in FF on GNU/Linux since it was announced 2013-04
without any issue (other than switching to a different tab seems to throttle
connections). I've got the latest FF 31. What version/OS/graphics do you have?

~~~
TheLoneWolfling
Got it.

It was NoScript: NoScript set to allow scripts globally and it works, set to
disable scripts by default and it freezes FF.

------
sveiss
I'm really more interested in packet loss/reliability than speeds when I'm in
a hotel. 5Mbps, 50Mbps, or 500Mbps, all are fine if they work reliabily. When
they don't, they're all equally bad. Trying to use Skype or SSH in the
evenings in a hotel is frequently a horrible experience.

~~~
noja
In my experience high speeds means exactly that.

------
pud
Sometimes wifi is great in one room, but the signal doesn't reach another
room. I HAVE A DREAM that, one day, people review the wifi of different rooms
in the same hotel.

I'm so glad someone built this. I've been wanting it (or to build it) forever.

Even if I'm not picking up the tab, I'd rather stay at a crappy hotel with
great wifi--vs a Four Seasons with crappy wifi.

Hopefully hotels realize this and start competing on wifi quality.

~~~
alok-g
As a start, knowing mean and sigma may be a better option.

------
cpr
The potential downfall of general measurements like this is large conferences
like WWDC, where if there's a geek in every room, the whole-hotel performance
is going to suffer unless they've provisioned massive peak bandwidth.

(Thinking of the Marriott near Moscone.)

~~~
CanSpice
You could plot the average performance over time, which would show not only
how well or poorly a hotel does in general, but how it weathers high-volume
events like conferences.

------
andyv88
Someone should really make an 'Airbnb' for High Speed Internet Connections
around the world. Hotels, universities, internet cafes, business centres - a
lot of businesses would pay to find high speed internet locations around the
world for business trips

~~~
jackweirdy
There is commitcoffee.com, which goes a tiny step towards that for coffee
shops

------
mdellabitta
Someone needs to cross-correlate this with bedbug reports.

------
benzesandbetter
Nice! I've wanted something like this for a while. Glad someone built it.

Seems like ping time is missing, which is critical to me. Also, would be great
to have some measure of ping/speed/reliability over time, either via repeated
automated testing or guest ratings.

I've often stayed at places which had decent speed, but unserviceable ping
times, which is really a buzzkill for VoIP and online meetings.

Another issue is wifi that is fast, but unreliable. I've experienced a lot of
that since moving to Brazil; Internet that just goes missing at intervals too
regular to ignore.

Would be interesting if a widely-used service like speedtest.net would enable
some tagging of IP addresses to pool results, so you could see the aggregated
results for a given hotel over time.

------
paines
This is heavily dependend on your hardware. In June I visited Australia, and
technically speaking it was a nightmare using an iPhone5 (Greyhound Buses
worked 80% of the time, Hostels like 30%). All Android users had a much better
Wifi experience. Now back here in Berlin I see the same trend. I started a new
job and I am staying each week in a different hotel. I just got an Nexus 5,
and when I compare it next to my iPhone 5 in the same place, most of the time
Android can connect to the Wifi, why the iPhone5 can't. Speed of course is a
complete different story. I am wondering if this is an iPhone5 or iOS issue in
general.

------
bjornsing
Here's another one: [http://speedspot.org/](http://speedspot.org/)

------
ejr
The key measure we should all be paying attention is "Confidence".

Ex: Some of the hotels in New York show very high speeds, but also
"Confidence: 9.2%".

    
    
      Confidence value shows how thoroughly the WiFi has been tested at this hotel. 
      The confidence value depends on several factors, including the number of 
      speed tests taken, how recently the tests occurred, and the diversity of tests 
      in terms of the time of day, day of the week, and point within the travel season.

------
DigitalSea
This is brilliant. As a developer, whenever I have to travel somewhere, a
decent connection for moving files around is paramount. You often see, "High
Speed Internet" being advertised at most hotels, it is usually anything but
high speed.

Speed is a crucial factor for me when staying somewhere. Nice hotels seem to
focus on the service and aesthetics, but the poor old Wifi connection gets
left behind.

------
cnst
I used to be fond of requiring high speed internet access in the hotels.

I gave up, upgraded to Unlimited 4G on my T-Mobile line, and don't worry about
these things anymore. Problem solved! :-)

Unfortunately, you're very unlikely to be getting decent speeds and latency at
the hotels, and most managers don't even care.

~~~
thejosh
Yeah, but if you're travelling internationally it's a PITA. :)

~~~
cnst
Are you referring to the throttling of 128kbps for T-Mobile US postpaid
customers travelling internationally? :-)

Well, yeah, that ain't gonna be fast, but, if hotels abroad have as crappy the
internet as those in the States do, that's still likely to be a huge
improvement. :-)

Or you could always get a local SIM for some more unlimited fun.

------
r00fus
Seems like a tough thing to accurately score - you have issues of coverage (do
certain floors or the lobby have coverage vs. the rooms), dropped connections,
over subscriptions at peak times, inconvenience of re-entering user info, etc.

------
spacefight
Also don't forget to establish a VPN connection. This might sometimes even
help with slow running DNS resolvers in place over DHCP and it helps for sure
to protect both your surfing habits and your unencrypted traffic.

------
pjbrunet
Good reason to get a Clear hotspot, no more looking for the working WIFI
connection, or cafe password, or trying to get the "I agree" TOS page to load.
(PS: I'm not invested in Clear, have no affiliation.)

~~~
silviogutierrez
Sadly, it seems like Clear no longer takes new customers.

I'm grandfathered in... at least for now.

------
wahsd
I hope this catches on and it can be used to shame and blame hotel chains. I
can't recall a single instance where hotel wifi, let alone wire, as even
remotely fast.

These hotels normally charge $20-50 per day of internet and they provide
shitty service. It drive me mad. I have learned that you can complain and get
some significant bonus points out of it. I wish more people complained about
the internet service in order to push for faster speeds and better latency,
let alone not having your connection drop.

~~~
yaro2
That was the original idea of Hotel WiFi Test: use social media pressure to
call out hotels with slow WiFi. That's still an important use case. Then, to
our surprise, we found that some hotels provide very good WiFi (and in most
cases it is free). Showcasing such hotels is win-win: travellers get fast
WiFi, hotels get more business for their effort.

------
jonknee
Between shoddy quality and security, I just tether to LTE. That means no
Netflix, but Netflix usually runs especially poorly at hotels anyway.

------
cblock811
I used to work in the hotel industry in everything from Doubletree up to Ritz
Carlton. Wifi was one of the most frustrating amenities we offered because it
was always terrible! As an avid traveler who probably spends too much time on
his computer I got annoyed as a guest as well. Cheers to the people behind
this website. I'm sharing it with everyone from my old industry.

------
JohnTHaller
Better tip: Just bring your own hotspot. If you're a frequent traveler, your
life will be SO much better. If you're not a frequent traveler, using the
hotspot feature on your phone and paying for it just that month (if you don't
already) is often faster and cheaper than a couple days of hotel paid wifi.

Hotel wifi is spotty and incredibly insecure compared to a wireless hotspot.

------
jusben1369
With the increasing amount of bandwidth (in US plans anyways) I wonder if the
days of hotel WiFI is short lived anyways. We'll all be hotspotting it soon if
we aren't already. Maybe if you are staying somewhere longer than a week and
doing a lot of work in your room....but that seems like a small subset.

~~~
yxhuvud
Hotspot is very nice when possible, but you really don't want to do it when
traveling internationally.

Paying $10 to use the internet would be fine, but paying that much for a 20MB
quota makes it a nonstarter.

~~~
kalleboo
Nowadays I get a local prepaid SIM card the minute I get off the airplane
while traveling internationally.

------
mandeepj
If I experience trouble with WiFi during my stay at a hotel then I just
connect to internet using hotspot created from my android phone. I understand
not everyone have android phone.

Anyway, we are in a hotel for couple hours only. Rest of time either we are
sleeping or we are outside either working or enjoying our vacation.

------
kudu
Seems nice, although I have a 60Mbps line at home, and am only getting 30-40
Mbps on the speed test.

~~~
yaro2
kudu, are you getting 60Mbps at
[http://www.speedtest.net](http://www.speedtest.net) ?

~~~
wahsd
try [http://www.speekof.me](http://www.speekof.me)

~~~
sp332
Typo: [http://www.speedof.me/](http://www.speedof.me/)

------
msoad
I gave up on public WiFis on Starbucks and hotels years ago. I pay for LTE and
I'm pretty happy with it. I pay $120 for two lines and 10GB data. For me it's
reasonable and I never hit 10GB limit.

For people who travel a lot this website is a great resource.

------
cpfohl
Tried typing "Boston" and nothing in the UI changed. Looks like it's 500-ing.

~~~
jeroen
Same here:
[http://www.hotelwifitest.com/hotels/nl/amsterdam/](http://www.hotelwifitest.com/hotels/nl/amsterdam/)

Edit: it's working.

------
CSMastermind
Watch out for the hotels where people report 30-40 mps. People are getting
those speeds when there's no one else on the network. Which is awesome until
you have a full house and no per-user cap, then it will be unusable for most
guests

------
brokentone
It's hard enough to use availability of free wifi as a booking filter, let
alone quality. Wonder if there isn't space for an independent filtering
service -- taking the listings from elsewhere and simply sorting by your own
criteria.

~~~
yaro2
brokentone, what is quality in your opinion? Is it connection speed? If it is
more complex than that, what would be the best way to quantify it? Most hotels
offer free WiFi, so it is easy to skip hotels with paid WiFi. We will add more
filters (including this one) soon.

~~~
coroxout
"Most hotels offer free WiFi"

This may be true in the US but I don't think it's necessarily true in Europe.
Too many hotels in the UK/Ireland claim to offer "internet access" which turns
out to mean no wifi (or mysteriously permanently broken wifi) and one ancient
PC in reception which nobody can tell you the password for. Germany was better
for wifi but often had paid wifi in the rooms and free wifi only in reception,
which I guess still lets them advertise it as "free".

Still, I like the site idea. If I could use the site to avoid the above, all
the better.

~~~
scarygliders
I'm sitting here in a Travelodge in Scotland and their WiFi access amounts to
30 minutes free then I'd have to pay for it - NOPEKTHX.

So I'm using my android phone as a hotspot - it's probably more secure than
attaching my laptop to the hotel's service anyway - plus my plan (3's The One
Plan) allows unlimited hotspot use anyway, so why not.

I remember being in a decent hotel in Singapore a decade and a bit ago which
had wired internet access and I was curious and ran wireshark on my laptop
booted into Linux - it was a horrifying sight of port scans and SMB exploit
attempts.

I laughed.

------
adamonduty
I wish I could add some comments while submitting the speed test. The wifi in
my hotel is free, but the speed I'm receiving is only obtainable by using a
code provided by the front desk. The normal speeds are quite a bit slower.

------
passive
Based on a stay two weeks ago, I've been craving just such a service. Their
reports match what I experienced, at least on the negative end. Now I just
have to convince our travel agent to use this for future bookings. :)

------
itazula
A number of older hotels have decent wired connections. Otherwise, if both the
wired and the WiFi is bad or non-existent, I use my personal router (WiMAX)
and connect that way. My phone is good option too.

------
elwell
I'm in a hotel right now, so I did the test feature. I must say I'm impressed.
A couple clicks and it correctly found the right hotel instantly and did the
test seamlessly. Bravo.

------
r00fus
Why are the confidence% so low across the board?

------
namDa
I hope network infrastructure gets advances more quickly so hotels with lower
speeds will realize they have fallen behind.

------
andor
What are the estimations based on? Apparently not on price, hotel category or
an interpolation between other close hotels.

------
Robadob
It would be nice if the nightly rate were either localised to the currency
local to the hotel or of the visiting ip.

------
thatben
Yet another idea I had and then assumed someone would get done. Just need to
promote it (and I'll use it)!

------
Cowicide
Would like to see this for coffee shops.

~~~
FrederikLi
Just check out the Original at [http://speedspot.org](http://speedspot.org)
and download the iOS or Android App. There you can find hotels, cafes,
restaurants, etc. Bigger Database too. Still pretty crazy how the bad copy
goes viral but not the original even if it's used by hundred thousands of
people each month ... but hey such is life.

~~~
Cowicide
Thank you, I'll check it out!

------
_asciiker_
This is great, is there an API? ...I still remember paying $10 per 30 minutes
of Wifi at the Ghana Airport

------
spullara
I tried to submit a support request to add the hotel I am sitting in and it
got a CSRF error...

------
GordeHead
Well, the quality of service here is actually non-existent seeing as how the
entire WiFi protocol is still vulnerable to interception, interruption within
milliseconds.

So, the word "quality" wouldn't necessarily be the word to identify the
current capabilities of any wireless network using the standard protocol suite
available to the user today.

------
csours
I would much rather choose a hotel on the basis of their A/C and air quality.

------
t4s0thcmdr
I prefer to choose hotels by the amount of bedbugs in the TripAdvisor reviews.

------
joshmn
Was considering doing this for all wifi networks. I have an API built in Rails
for it if anyone wants it (100k+ public wifi hotspots, such as coffee shops,
restaurants, etc), shoot me an email: josh@josh.mn

~~~
grinich
How did you build that database?

------
mark_lee
Any hotels should make wifi free and good as TV.

------
mark_lee
sometimes I'm really desperate to internet speed of those hotels, I wonder
those hotel managers still live in the 90's.

------
keerthiko
These needs to also be integrated with AirBnB

------
walruscop
Sweet!

------
known
Brilliant.

------
icantthinkofone
My wife checked us into the Sheraton in Tulsa (or was it Oklahoma City?) on
the return leg of our wide circle trip out west and she turned to me and asked
if I wanted to pay $10 for internet access. I almost exploded. One of the
managers tried to tell me the reason they charged for it was to be up front
about the costs of services they provided cause they were a "full service
hotel". If I wasn't so tired, I would have asked if they also charged for
soap.

The managers in the morning just stared at me blankly when I went off on them
in the morning. "Why do they charge for internet but not phone service?", I
asked.

~~~
mbillie1
The hospitality industry doesn't operate at nearly the same pace as the tech
industry. If you think back, 10 years ago it wouldn't have _seemed_
unreasonable for a hotel to charge for internet at all. They're likely under
contract, they realize an additional revenue stream, etc. It's hardly the
morning staff's fault.

~~~
icantthinkofone
Obviously you think the staff does not represent Sheraton in any way, shape or
form. With that thought in mind, no one at Sheraton represents them except ...
whom?

You also seem to want to ignore the fact that, on a 4000-mile, 10-day journey,
they were the only hotel that charged for internet. This doesn't include the
multitude of business trips I take every month where, again, I never get
charged for internet.

So, iow, charging for internet service is not the norm. Nor is charging for
telephone service. And don't mention it to the front desk. It's not their
fault.

