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Public Wi-Fi Tests / Discussion

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Recently visited High Lodge Thetford forest hoping for mobile signal on EE as I know they have very good coverage generally. Sadly it was only 1 bar 4G or no service, if you're very lucky you'd get a couple of hundred KBPS and a iMessage would send, but even that was rare (no throughput was more common). I switched over to my vodafone IE eSIM roaming on vf UK but no better (1 bar, no throughput). Speaking to people there it seems this is very common.

Just in case any of you find yourself there you should know that the café can in fact be your answer for a decent speed connection to the internet. They have a QR code for quick WiFi login and a network running off Unifi AP's, giving out IP's which are interestingly in the 192.169.0.0/24 range (yes I did tripple-check this and its not .168. I wonder if somebody made a typo somewhere and this IP block is actually owned by somebody else).

Here is a speedtest from that network:

Ping: 7 MS

Download: 48.75 MBPS

Upload: 45.54 MBPS

ISP: Daisy Communications



Side note: The Go Ape reception cabin just next door also had a similar network with Unifi AP's but the download speed seemed to be throttled/hard limited to exactly 0.64 MBPS but Ping was decent so it must have been fixed line, and they were advertising it on a big board as Guest WiFi even though you could barely browse the web on it. It just shows how much WiFi networks can vary, even ones very close to each other.
 

Network Rail’s Wi-Fi Suffers UK Outage at 19 Stations After Staff Abuse.​

:(
I heard yesterday or the day before there was cyber attacks on the WiFi as well in select stations
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Edit: these are the same story, but reported from a different angle
 
Gorebridge Station there is 2x Wifi 6 Cisco access points attached to the lamp posts on each side of the station shelter

View attachment 19869
It still beats the WiFi on Stagecoach buses here Stewart. :giggle:
(1 Meg supplied by Vodafone) :rolleyes:

I think the best I've had was way over 100 megs in Glasgow Central Station.
 
I thought you might be interested in the following speed test from Nationwide in Harrogate. The interesting thing is they use their own ASN for their free WiFi unlike most other highstreet banks which use BT (so the ISP shows as Nationwide Building Society):

Ping: 19 MS

Download: 53.89 MBPS

Upload: 56.13 MBPS



Also, I have travelled through enough motorway service stations now that I think I have a general picture of the performance of WiFi across the three major services chains (Welcome Break, Roadchef and Moto).

If any of you would find it interesting I have attached a document summarising my findings and the differences, and maybe a Moto services will be nearer to the top of the list for fast WiFi availability than you might expect.

I'm not sure if there is enough interest here but personally I think a spreadsheet comparing various details about public WiFi at UK-wide chains (including shops, restaurants etc) including average speed/any speed limits, Typical latency, login process, SSID etc would be a great resource (I'd certainly find it helpful to know where to go for fast WiFi in the average UK town). I know the picture is not uniform across the UK but you'd at least know which shops and cafes have artificial speed restrictions (like Oliver Bonas which is ≈ 2 MBPS and Starbucks about 11-12 MBPS) and which may let you go up to the actual max of the connection (for example Boots).
 

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I thought you might be interested in the following speed test from Nationwide in Harrogate. The interesting thing is they use their own ASN for their free WiFi unlike most other highstreet banks which use BT (so the ISP shows as Nationwide Building Society):

Ping: 19 MS

Download: 53.89 MBPS

Uploa: 56.13 MBPS



Also, I have travelled through enough motorway service stations now that I think I have a general picture of the performance of WiFi across the three major services chains (Welcome Break, Roadchef and Moto).

If any of you would find it interesting I have attached a document summarising my findings and the differences, and maybe a Moto services will be nearer to the top of the list for fast WiFi availability than you might expect.

I'm not sure if there is enough interest here but personally I think a spreadsheet comparing various details about public WiFi at UK-wide chains (including shops, restaurants etc) including average speed/any speed limits, Typical latency, login process, SSID etc would be a great resource (I'd certainly find it helpful to know where to go for fast WiFi in the average UK town). I know the picture is not uniform across the UK but you'd at least know which shops and cafes have artificial speed restrictions (like Oliver Bonas which is ≈ 2 MBPS and Starbucks about 11-12 MBPS) and which may let you go up to the actual max of the connection (for example Boots).
Regarding McDonalds WiFi, it's also worth noting Wifi Extra too.

I don't think O2 makes the SSID public from what I've gathered, but if you set up a hidden SSID called "Wifi Extra" using WPA2 Enterprise SIM authentication. I only tested once but Wifi Extra got 15/1mbps for me.

I'm not sure if this at all O2 WiFi locations but it only seems to be advertised for the underground.

Wifi Extra, using WPA/WPA2/WPA3-Enterprise authentication on SIM O2 - UK
 
Ended up in Costa recently and it seems they've changed from a hard limit of around 2-4Mbps up and down, to a QOS prioritisation system. Means that you'll briefly see near 100Mbps up and down before throttling right down. Good enough result, probably a better experience for most purposes than the previous hard limits.
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Regarding McDonalds WiFi, it's also worth noting Wifi Extra too.

I don't think O2 makes the SSID public from what I've gathered, but if you set up a hidden SSID called "Wifi Extra" using WPA2 Enterprise SIM authentication. I only tested once but Wifi Extra got 15/1mbps for me.

I'm not sure if this at all O2 WiFi locations but it only seems to be advertised for the underground.

View attachment 20069
I've seen the SSID sometimes being visible, but not recently so maybe they do sometimes hide it. The official information from O2 about this says that you only connect if the WiFi is stronger than your mobile connection, but I don't know how they work that out. Maybe they just hide the network in locations where there's good O2 Mobile coverage.
Sadly I've never been able to try it though as I don't have an O2 SIM (but I have tried EE's equivalent EE WiFi-Auto which does work at some other places besides the Underground such as the odd residential BT WiFi hotspot in areas with weak EE signal).
One other interesting McDonald's WiFi trick that i discovered by accident is the open hidden network McD_Tablets. You might ask how I discovered it and its because once they forgot to hide it so I connected that time (although I think other people had tried to too and it had ran out out IP's), but then when I next went to a McDonald's I tried manually connecting and it worked, giving me a much faster speed than the Free WiFi (30 MBPS) without any login at all. But the subnet they use is interestingly like a /27 or something so not many people can be on it at any one time. So next time you go to a McDonald's you can give it a go. I'm sure it'll be patched sooner or later but for now its been great.
 
Ended up in Costa recently and it seems they've changed from a hard limit of around 2-4Mbps up and down, to a QOS prioritisation system. Means that you'll briefly see near 100Mbps up and down before throttling right down. Good enough result, probably a better experience for most purposes than the previous hard limits.
View attachment 20070
That's interesting, was that under the SSID _Costa-Guest? I noticed that many Costa's have that SSID with a Cisco Meraki login page, but others have different set ups if you look hard enough. There's one near me using _Costa Free WiFi with GCI Network Solutions as the ISP that is sometimes at 0.2 MBPS with a Ping of about 400 MS (either extreme throttling or a slow DSL connection), and I've seen a couple with the name Costa Free WiFi that are actually provided by The Cloud but under a custom network name.
 
That's interesting, was that under the SSID _Costa-Guest? I noticed that many Costa's have that SSID with a Cisco Meraki login page, but others have different set ups if you look hard enough. There's one near me using _Costa Free WiFi with GCI Network Solutions as the ISP that is sometimes at 0.2 MBPS with a Ping of about 400 MS (either extreme throttling or a slow DSL connection), and I've seen a couple with the name Costa Free WiFi that are actually provided by The Cloud but under a custom network name.
Yep was _Costa-Guest with the Cisco Meraki login page and APs. Used to be provided by O2 WiFi in this location.

Think some are franchised which could explain the variances?

But could also be similar to Wetherspoon where some have WiFi provided by Digital Space Group using SSID 'Wetherspoon Wi-Fi' rather than the typical offering from The Cloud.
 
I've seen the SSID sometimes being visible, but not recently so maybe they do sometimes hide it. The official information from O2 about this says that you only connect if the WiFi is stronger than your mobile connection, but I don't know how they work that out. Maybe they just hide the network in locations where there's good O2 Mobile coverage.
Sadly I've never been able to try it though as I don't have an O2 SIM (but I have tried EE's equivalent EE WiFi-Auto which does work at some other places besides the Underground such as the odd residential BT WiFi hotspot in areas with weak EE signal).
One other interesting McDonald's WiFi trick that i discovered by accident is the open hidden network McD_Tablets. You might ask how I discovered it and its because once they forgot to hide it so I connected that time (although I think other people had tried to too and it had ran out out IP's), but then when I next went to a McDonald's I tried manually connecting and it worked, giving me a much faster speed than the Free WiFi (30 MBPS) without any login at all. But the subnet they use is interestingly like a /27 or something so not many people can be on it at any one time. So next time you go to a McDonald's you can give it a go. I'm sure it'll be patched sooner or later but for now its been great.
I had to input it manually but I know some people have it automatically, I haven't really been around a lot of O2 WiFi areas unfortunately. At least it saves handing all my data over to O2 (again).

That would make sense if they hide it in areas with good O2 mobile coverage, the McDonalds store I was testing has O2 B20 on like -85dBm (and probably B40 on full strength still, think EE B3 from the Street Hub was like -83dBm) and I think it's similar for another one too. Maybe we should test that theory?

I don't know where we're going to have a bad signal here though.
 
Yep was _Costa-Guest with the Cisco Meraki login page and APs. Used to be provided by O2 WiFi in this location.

Think some are franchised which could explain the variances?

But could also be similar to Wetherspoon where some have WiFi provided by Digital Space Group using SSID 'Wetherspoon Wi-Fi' rather than the typical offering from The Cloud.
Yes possibly that could be it. Out of interest do you know if the same AP's were used when it was provided by O2?

Starbucks is also interesting, with nearly all UK Starbucks locations using the #StarbucksWifi SSJD with a Splash Access portal. The download speed seems to never go above 12/13 at any Starbucks, so it looks like they throttle it like Costa do. The ISP always seems to be GCI Network Solutions. I've also seen very similar speed tests at Starbucks in many other European countries, so I do increasingly wonder if the throttling is an international policy. I do wonder if this throttling is partly on purpose so that people don't use the WiFi for extended periods of time, not just to leave enough bandwidth for other users.

One extreme example of this is the EXKi sandwich chain in Belgium, who throttle to about 0.25 MBPS (looks suspiciously like 256 KBPS) across all tested locations. Its good for emails but not much else. I wonder if either someone didn't know what they were doing when setting it up, or whether its a measure to try and limit people working for their locations even though they can still say they have free WiFi.

And Itsu and Wasabi also have very slow and throttled WiFi, in Itsu its often 0.49 MBPS Max.

Personally I find all this very interesting, as WiFi can tell you a lot more about a place than what's in plain sight. Like in Extra service stations some of the retail units (like Greggs and Costa) are leased to Moto and operated by them which isn't obvious at first glance, but there are lots of Moto WiFi networks which makes this clear from a quick scan of the network list.
 
Yes possibly that could be it. Out of interest do you know if the same AP's were used when it was provided by O2?
Different APs with Exponential-E asset stickers attached.

Previous ones were standard Cisco enterprise APs.
 
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