[Chester LUG] WiFi Terror

[Bryn Salisbury]

My experience with BTOpenzone and FON services is not overly positive. Any time I've tried to connect to such services, they dropped out or were so painfully slow that they were unusable.  When it comes to FON, it largely relies on deployment of home broadband systems in order to create something resembling a municipal wifi system, except that most of these routers are placed inside homes and have such poor ranges that they're just slightly to the left of useless. 

Additionally, BT routers are being shipped now with FON enabled by default (you get the 'option' to disable it when you take out the contract, but I doubt most normal people even know or understand the significance of the option). Having seen and used several of these devices, I can't say I've even noticed anyone actually connecting via FON, or Openzone to routers under my control.

Saying that people who go with ISP provided routers get what they deserve is a bit harsh, a lot of people don't know why such devices aren't up to the job, and end up going for these options because they're far easier to set up. It's up to folks like us to design these devices (hardware and software) in such a way that it's a trivial matter to set them up, a single screen or a few button presses.  

On a related note, I'm probably going to switch to AAISP in the next few months, as their routers are hand made, and seem to be rock solid.

B


On 13 Jul 2011, at 22:12, Sebastian Arcus wrote:

> 
> 
> On 13/07/11 20:37, Les Pritchard wrote:
>> Oh don't get me wrong, I will always move people (normally willingly
>> once I've explained the dangers!) to WPA2. I had one person tell me
>> someone had complained that their Windows 98 system wouldn't connect.
>> Think we know the answer to that one!
>> 
>> As for BT....yes what can we say! I've not done any testing of a BT
>> connection, would someone using BT Fon take bandwidth from the owner of
>> the connection? Or do they reserve a permanent percentage for them at
>> all times? In that case you're not getting the full potential from your
>> connection.
> 
> Yes - I agree. Either temporarely, or permanently - it is using what should be my bandwidth and my connection. It's not like BT are giving some sort of discount on their connections because they are borrowing said bandwidth/connection share from their customers. Quite the opposite, really, if you are to compare their prices with the competition. And the free wifi comes under BTOpenZone, BTFon and one more branding which is not coming to me right now.
> 
> I take deep satisfaction in replacing the BT branded routers with off the shelf ones (when they break or there is any other compelling reason) and always imagine there is a little guy deep down in the BT corporate belly jumping up and down furiously and frantically shaking fists in the air because they lost one more of their routers. Well, at least it's the sort of stuff that makes me feel better :D
> 
> Sebastian
> 
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--
Bryn Salisbury
http://about.me/bryns/bio