

IETF attendees reengineer their hotel's Wi-Fi network - fr0sty
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2012/032812-ietf-makeover-257762.html

======
ismarc
So, I used to work for a company that provided connectivity for hotels,
restaurants, stadiums and other hotspots (like temporary venues). In every
case, the network is designed for the common case. Hotels would be low churn,
low density, a coffeeshop would be high churn, medium density while a stadium
would be extremely high density, massive peak association rate but very high
churn. Tech conferences have the same use patterns and density of a stadium.
Unless there is prior arrangements and understanding of this, all hotels are
going to go "yes, we have interne, yes it's good and we'll charge $x for it"
and not notify the provider and not make any changes. Everything they did is
standard practice for setting up a high density network.

If you are the organizer of a tech conference, please, communicate that you
need special network considerations and get in contact with the hotel's
provider, or arrange to have your own provider brought in as soon as possible.
3 months lead time is cutting it close.

------
pwg
Single page link for those who would prefer to read the article whole, rather
than broken up into four separate pages:

[http://www.networkworld.com/cgi-
bin/mailto/x.cgi?pagetosend=...](http://www.networkworld.com/cgi-
bin/mailto/x.cgi?pagetosend=/news/2012/032812-ietf-
makeover-257762.html&pagename=/news/2012/032812-ietf-
makeover-257762.html&pageurl=http://www.networkworld.com/news/2012/032812-ietf-
makeover-257762.html&site=wirelessmobile&nsdr=n)

~~~
ars
Install AutoPager and don't worry about things like that anymore.

<https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/autopager/>
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mmgagnmbebdebebbcl...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mmgagnmbebdebebbcleklifnobamjonh)

~~~
vukk
Does it work with Readability?

~~~
cocoflunchy
Well I just discovered while reading this article that Readability does the
autopaging on its own ;)

------
fr0sty
One interesting fact (which is not quite intuitive) is that one way they
improved the WiFi network performance was by disabling the radios on a number
of the access points in the hotel.

Less is more in some circumstances.

~~~
brianpan
Along with that, they decreased transmit power which also helped reduce
interference.

And later they _increased_ interference, in order to add a 4th channel.

It's all about tradeoffs...that's why they pay engineers the (market-
competitive) bucks.

~~~
fennecfoxen
Alternatively, just buy something with features like Aruba's "adaptive radio
management" (ARM) that does things like this automagically:
[http://www.arubanetworks.com/products/arubaos/adaptive-
radio...](http://www.arubanetworks.com/products/arubaos/adaptive-radio-
management/)

 _(pretty sure Cisco has an equivalent but I forget its name...)_

Postscript: They talk about HP buying Colubris, but don't think the Colubris-
legacy equipment is current-HP stuff; they went and bought 3Com in 2010, and I
think that's where most of their current offerings come from.

~~~
smutticus
Motorola has something called Smart RF which is the same thing. Since
ExtremeNetworks and Brocade OEM the Motorola kit all 3 have it. I imagine all
major vendors have this now.

But you will never be able to completely remove the human from the equation. A
proper wireless site survey with someone walking around and taking readings
pre/post AP installation is really the best way to do things. I'm not really a
WLAN guy but I work with some really bright people who are. There is a lot of
depth to this problem that we should not expect to be solved anytime soon by
AI.

If you're interested in some of the theory about applying AI to RF
determination check out the work of Tim Brown
<http://ecee.colorado.edu/~timxb/>

------
sp332
Here's a PDF with diagrams that shows the changes:
[http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/83/slides/slides-83-iesg-11-...](http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/83/slides/slides-83-iesg-11-ietf-
operations-and-administration-plenary.pdf)

------
zebra
This is common behavior for hackers: Few years ago I was on a vacation in a
nice villa with "internet in the house". It turned out that this means DSL in
the administrator's room. One hour trip to the near town later there was Wifi
coverage in the estate. Nothing of the their work's magnitude, of course.
Drinks were on the house that night.

~~~
udp
Only trouble is, they knew how to maintain that DSL in the administrator's
room. You won't be there when something goes wrong with the wifi.

~~~
fr0sty
Maintenance of a basic WiFi access point has exactly one step:

1\. Reset Router.

Hardly rocket science...

~~~
quink
> Reset Router.

The shitty crap $20 routers I've seen where plugging it out and in again makes
them work again for about 40 seconds make me wish there was a button on them
that'd give everyone in the company that pretends to have made them an
electric shock.

Dear everyone - you know not to buy anything that's sold through spam emails
by now. How about not buying a router that, when you plug it in, makes a faint
fizzing sound, costs less than what you think it should and isn't a good
brand? No, Belkin is a level of shit yet to be reached by the crap factories
of Turdtown. If I had a dollar for every F5D7230 that I wanted to fold in
half... just don't trust the reviews. Don't get that Netgear, their firmware
is utter crap. Oh, you want bridging mode? You'll need to buy the v8, we've
enabled it in the firmware for that. The v7 won't cut it, oh no. WGR614 was
the name for that abortion of a craptardation. Just don't buy that crap. If,
for a fucking router, they need to do ten revisions of the hardware WGR614v1
to WGR614v10, to get their supplies they need and their shit together, don't
buy. Cisco, Linksys, Billion, TP-LINK, Fritz. That's not a whitelist though.
Even they have produced utterly worthless things that manage to give LEDs
their 5 Volts and whatnot milli-Ampere and give you a nice UI to manage a Wi-
Fi connection that just doesn't work.

You want a router for grown-ups? Get the WRT54GL. Ten year and then some track
record. Put your own damn firmware on it. How do you know it's for adults? The
Amazon page says WARNING CHOKING HAZARD -- Small parts. Not for children under
3 yrs. That warning ain't on D-Link.

The time I have wasted on these pieces of crap you wouldn't believe. Thank you
Hacker News, for giving me a place to vent.

~~~
yuhong
Don't forget Apple.

~~~
quink
> Don't forget Apple.

You want a simple page you can open in your browser? Noooooo way, that's way
too industry standard. Rather have something where you need to keep your
configuration software up to date too! It even doesn't work on Linux! What a
feature!

------
rdl
I'm kind of confused by where conferences (particularly large/government/etc.
focused conferences) choose to be. Paris isn't really my first choice for a
cost-effective place for a tech conference.

It's not as bad as the ICANN meetings, which were deliberately held in
obscure/expensive places around the world just to keep people from attending,
in the guise of "being globally representative". The funny/sad thing is that
this isn't one of the worst decisions ICANN has made.

~~~
jvdh
There is a world outside of the US. Most participants of IETF conferences are
not from the US or from North America at all. In fact, the IETF came close to
deciding not to hold conferences in the US anymore due to increasing visa US
from many foreign visitors[0].

[0]:<http://isoc.org/wp/ietfjournal/?p=190>

------
silentscope
I hope that hotel put out free cookies or something for them.

~~~
kijeda
Actually, the other thread of discussion throughout the week is that IETF
attendees at the Concorde Lafayette hotel have been regularly having their
rooms burgled. The hotel has not been proactive responding to it, and arguably
has been turning a blind eye.

So, more like lumps of coal.

~~~
silentscope
no good deed goes unpunished?

------
dfc
I don't understand the data rate changes. Anyone?

~~~
madz
" Increasing the minimum data and multicast rate from 1Mbps to 2Mbps "

In wifi networks, you can significantly reduce on-air collisions with other
packets if you can send at a higher rate. A packet being sent at 2Mbps spends
1/2 the time on the wireless channel as compared to a one that is sent at
1Mbps. Therefore halving the probability that this packet will collide with
some other transmission.

------
diziet
This article read like a Michael Crichton short story.

