

Brazen Attempts by Hotels to Block Wi-Fi - mahyarm
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/04/opinion/sunday/brazen-attempts-by-hotels-to-block-wi-fi.html?rref=opinion&module=Ribbon&version=context&region=Header&action=click&contentCollection=Opinion&pgtype=article

======
skuhn
There is a technical basis for concern, although ultimately the problem is of
the hotel's own making.

You simply cannot have 500 mifi-type devices transmitting data (along with the
hotel's actual WAPs) in the same room without major problems. There are only
three non-overlapping channels for 2.4Ghz 802.11b/g/n, and mifi devices that
I'm familiar with pick a "good" channel on startup -- they don't limit
themselves just to the three non-overlapping ones.

5GHz is better, and the decreased ability to pass through walls is likely
desirable here. However, your mifi is still broadcasting in 2.4GHz, and wifi
clients will fall back to that if they don't like the quality of the 5GHz
signal. OS X, for instance, is very finicky about using 5GHz on an SSID that
broadcasts for both 2.4/5\. Right now I'm approximately 6 feet away from my
AP, and my laptop has switched to 2.4GHz.

Ultimately though, this whole mess is the fault of the hotel's poor
implementation. If their wifi was free or low cost, and worked well, then why
wouldn't everyone use it? That people are using their mifi devices says they
are being ill served by the existing solution, not that they were just dying
to pay AT&T more money and carry around yet another black plastic brick. By
providing crappy service, these hotels have created the problem they're
complaining about. Either don't do it at all (and save money / hassle to
boot), or do it right.

~~~
kak9
Think this is pretty absurd move by the hotels as well.

fwiw though, I believe a bunch of the higher end hotels can't implement free
wifi, because they set up Wifi a while back and got locked in to contracts
with the companies that set it up for them--which haven't expired yet.

~~~
skuhn
I don't have any knowledge of contracts that hotels might have for wifi, but
it strikes me as strange that this is the way the hotels are going about
dealing with that situation.

Hotels first started deploying wifi in what, 2002-4? How long were these
contracts exactly?

If they contracted with a firm to provide bed linens, and haven't seen the
performance of these linens in service, would they sign 20 year iron-clad
deals? If their customers complain that the per-night cost of the linens are
equal to buying them, or hate them to the point of bringing their own sheets,
would they still stick to their guns?

Would they appeal to the Federal Sheet Commission for help blocking third
party sheets?

Or would they say "this isn't worth it"? They're in the business of
accommodating guests, not antagonizing them. So then find a way out of this
contract or just eat the termination fee. After all, if the deals are so bad,
the minimum + a reasonable modern deal may break even or come out ahead. Every
contract has a way out, particularly when performance goals are not met, and
I'm just skeptical that an entire industry of multi-billion dollar companies
got so thoroughly taken for a ride by upstart wifi installers in 2003.

~~~
Klinky
The hotel industry is pretty fragmented. Most hotel chains are franchises run
mainly by independent franchisees. The quality of hotels varies wildly
depending on location, even within the same brand/chain. There isn't as much
oversight or centralized management as one might think. The hotel industry is
also big on low wages, high employee turnover and pushing people in and out of
the door as quickly as possible. Proper implementation of wifi is an
afterthought. The experience is usually better in 4-star or higher hotels, but
those come at a premium.

~~~
skuhn
I can't really speak to their quality, but I do find it interesting how
different tiers of hotels price their in-room wifi.

High end charges, low end is free or non-existent, and then there's a mid-
range where it's specifically called out as a free amenity and quality is
pretty decent (Kimpton, Joie de Vivre, etc.). The theory that I've seen passed
around is that high end hotels know that you're good for it, and their clients
are accustomed to various upcharges already.

It also seems to be extremely uniform for different hotels in a chain; e.g. I
have never seen a non-conformist Hyatt that doesn't charge.

------
mikestew
_" Marriott and the hotel association say that if the commission rules against
them, some hotels might prohibit guests from checking in with Wi-Fi devices or
restrict such equipment from some parts of their properties, a move that would
only alienate their customers."_

IOW, it has nothing to do with "protecting customers from roque networks" as
mentioned elsewhere in the article. No, they simply don't want you using
equipment that bypasses their usury for WiFi use.

~~~
notthemessiah
_" In October, the F.C.C. fined Marriott $600,000 for preventing customers
from using their own Wi-Fi devices at the Gaylord Opryland Hotel and
Convention Center in Nashville. The commission said the hotel was charging
people attending and exhibiting at a conference $250 to $1,000 per device to
connect to the hotel-operated Wi-Fi service. Previously, the F.C.C. prohibited
Boston’s Logan International Airport from blocking Wi-Fi networks set up by
airline clubs."_

It's pretty heavily implied by the article that this it intended to prevent
circumvention of exorbitant rates.

~~~
eli
And also that it's intended for conference exhibitors, where exorbitant rates
for every little additional thing in a booth is part of the deal. A $100
wastepaper basket, for example.

Now, if it were up to me they would just price the booths at a fair price per
square foot rather than try to make a profit on "extras."

~~~
vinceguidry
You tend to find this kind of pricing structure in industries where consumers
don't want to pay fair up-front prices. Transportation, Keurigs, video games,
phone apps, to some extent wireless cell service. You're forced to provide
basic access to your service at rates that don't allow you to make a real
profit. So you try to make it up in extras.

Customers mumble and grouse, try to get by on the minimum level of service,
but it's really their fault. You don't have to pay the exorbitant extras, when
I fly, I find the lowest fare I can find and limit myself to a small bag with
the bare essentials. I do my homework. I don't mind it at all because I'm
getting a service I want at a lower price, that I might not have been able to
afford otherwise.

Capitalism is wonderful.

------
tw04
I find it humorous their solution is to block other people's wifi. How about
you just provide wifi that doesn't suck? Stayed at a Hilton in Memphis that I
think had 10gbit uplink. It was fast enough that I wouldn't have even
considered tethering instead. In most hotels, you're lucky to see 1mbit worth
of speed at less than 500ms latency. With a connection like that, it's
literally highway robbery if they're allowed to block access points.

If I'm traveling for work and need to download an ISO overnight, and I'm
unable to because they're blocking it, it should be criminal.

~~~
aggie
Forgive my lack of a source, but I read a while back that hotel wifi is often
so bad because they signed short-sighted contracts in the past that locked
them in to these terrible data rates for many years. And now they pass that
terrible deal on to their guests.

Edit: well I found the 'source' \- turns out it was a Hacker News comment, so
take it for what it's worth.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8082519](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8082519)

~~~
DanBC
The other reason it's so bad is that they run hotels, they're not network
engineers. Few people know how to set up wifi so it doesn't suck.

Most hotels don't ever have the IETF to stay.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3771876](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3771876)

[https://www.networkworld.com/news/2012/032812-ietf-
makeover-...](https://www.networkworld.com/news/2012/032812-ietf-
makeover-257762.html)

~~~
jessriedel
Hotel managers aren't plumbers either, yet they seem to handle running water
in their rooms without much of a issue. The problem isn't that they are hotel
managers per se, the problem is that hotel managers tend to be older and so
unable/ unwilling/unaware to adapt to new technology. I'd bet dollars to
donuts that the quality of wifi has a strong correlation to hotel manager age
for hotels that aren't part of chains.

Chain hotels, on the other hand, can fix this problem through the normal
franchise methods: Determine best practices for the entire chain, and then
provide standard instructions and help for each franchise.

~~~
Spooky23
Don't oversell their plumbing ability. I stayed at a pretty expensive hotel
(unfortunately built in the 1970's when the world became stupid with respect
to construction) where the toilet exploded. I heard this gurgling noise, went
to check it out... and there was old faithful!

The maintenance guy told me when the place was full, if people flushed
simultaneously, "bad" things would happen.

Wifi is a similar thing. Best practice for Wifi is "it depends". You need to
hire somebody with a clue and do surveys. Hotels have been traditionally build
around sound and fireproofing, and the methods used to achieve both make Wifi
difficult in some places.

At cookie cutter, modularly built hotels (ie. Hampton Inns, etc) Wifi is very
uniform in quality.

------
mgkimsal
I was investigating conference locations a few years back, and many people had
suggested a local big chain hotel. It was a techish conference, so I inquired
about the wifi capabilities. Their 'list rate' (which I was told I could try
to negotiate with the regional office) was $25 _per person_ _per day_. This
was outside of whatever charge for "wifi in my hotel room" my guests would pay
too.

I said "so.. for 150 people, for 2 days, you want me charge me $7500 _just for
wifi access_ whether people use it or not?"

"Yes sir, that's correct".

Yeah, I know, I know, bundle it in to the ticket price, etc, but.... just...
there's a line you gotta draw somewhere, and that was it for me. They were off
the list at that point.

------
ryan-c
"But the best way for hotels to deal with rogue networks is to inform law
enforcement agencies and help them apprehend criminals who are trying to steal
information."

That's an absurd point to make. One does not even need to run a rouge access
point - much traffic is in the clear, and many MitM attacks can be pulled off
just using injection. Even if someone were running a rouge access point, it's
pretty difficult to track down an exact location (not very hard to figure out
what room it's in though) in a crowd without direction finding gear and
special equipment.

They would get much more sympathy as far as security goes if they were only
asking for the right to block rouge access points that have the same ESSID as
their official ones.

~~~
juliangregorian
Okay, given that the security angle is a subterfuge, but let's say you run a
hotel with a network named "RyansExorbitantWifi" and I set up a WAP named
"RyanWifi-Free". I think we both know it's gonna generate some interest. Then
I can serve them fake versions of Facebook, Google, and their bank's login
pages, which is a lot wider of an attack vector than trying to sidejack via
packet sniffing.

~~~
ryan-c
Enumerating some possibilities, here are things the hotel can do:

* Deauth jam nothing

* Deauth jam "evil twin" access points only

* Deauth jam above plus access points "similar" to the official wifi (have fun trying to prevent homoglyph attacks)

* Deauth jam all unofficial unencrypted access points (preventing an attack from monitoring probe requests and spinning up matching fake APs on the fly) perhaps with a whitelist of "known" nearby wireless networks to leave alone

* Deauth jam all unofficial WiFi (what they want to do)

There's not really much difference from a security standpoint between those
last two, though I suppose someone could set up an encrypted rouge network
like "FreeWifi - password is swordfish" and/or make flyers for their evil
network.

Basically, I could empathize with them arguing to jam any _open_ wireless
networks, but jamming encrypted wireless networks in the name of security is a
major stretch.

------
_delirium
Another discussion of this topic, though on a different article:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8794476](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8794476)

------
spankalee
How exactly do they block WiFi while simultaneously providing WiFi?

~~~
jrockway
By telling their access points to send deauth requests to all devices that
aren't on their networks.

And yup, 802.11 tells devices to deauth even when receiving unencrypted deauth
requests from access points the device expects to be encrypted.

~~~
AakashPatel
I do IT for a few hotels and I've never found this feature useful. While I
agree it's useful to be able to control RF noise (by annoying someone enough
with the deauth packets that they turn off their tethering), it's difficult to
differentiate between nearby businesses and homes vs. someone tethering on-
site.

~~~
jrockway
There are two approaches for hotel Wifi.

One is to make a network that's so good people will pay to use it.

The other is to make a network that's average, but intentionally make other
networks worse, so that people will pay to use yours.

Since you're reading HN, I imagine your strategy is the first. Hence, you
don't see the need to interfere with other users of the spectrum.

------
calgoo
So if they are interrupting my communications, i should be allowed to do the
same back, right? Example: Im in a hotel on business and use my mifi-type
device for my colleges as my company requests me to do to lower costs. Now, if
they block that signal they are interfering with my business needs. So in my
book, i should be allowed to block their traffic that is interfering with
mine. Or would that be illegal as its on their premises and all that BS...

~~~
Klinky
Not really. You're renting a space from them, and they can dictate what you're
allowed to do in that space. I would say the hotel has the right to ask guests
to not use these devices in their rooms, but they should not be actively
jamming public frequencies or sending malicious packets to these devices.

------
zw123456
Aside from the obviously stupid on the part of the hotels, can't someone just
use USB tethering instead of WiFi to connect to their cellular device?

~~~
clarkm
Yep. On top of that, I'm pretty sure iPhones use bluetooth tethering by
default anyways.

------
doxcf434
Hotel wifi is often flakey and slow, so blocking a potentially better
connection is all the more insidious of them.

------
memracom
Just travel to Canada instead and stay at one of the many hotels that offer
free WiFi to all hotel guests. This is the way of the future. Especially for
those families with multiple devices. Mom and Dad's laptops, tablets and
phone, plus the kids tablets...

------
Peaker
Sounds like material good enough to start a boycott movement?

~~~
danuker
Indeed. I don't see why laws should be passed when we could simply boycott
them.

~~~
michaelhoffman
Laws against willfully or maliciously interfering with authorized wireless
communication already exist.

Marriott wants a new law passed with a loophole for their specific brand of
willful or malicious interference.

------
blazespin
Hotels should be able to charge whatever they want. If you don't want to pay
for wifi, chose another hotel for your conference.

~~~
bbcbasic
Then by the same token they should block cellphones and charge $10 a minute
for calls.

Also how about bringing the water you purchased outside back to the room?
Should be confiscated.

~~~
baddox
If there weren't protectionist regulations that create massive barriers to
entry in the hotel industry, neither of those things would be an issue,
because any hotel that implemented them would get eaten alive by competitors.

~~~
vidarh
Are you implying the hotel market isn't competitive?

I don't know about the US, but I remember a European hotel investor claim that
he usually only invested in hotels after they'd been through 3-4 bankruptcies,
because it was first then that the price and debt load had dropped enough for
the hotel to have a decent shot at becoming profitable.

~~~
baddox
I'm implying that the more competitive the hotel market is, the less of a
problem customers will have with blatantly ridiculous policies like those
mentioned.

