jmngonline
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TalkTalk VDSL 20MB Package
I heard yesterday or the day before there was cyber attacks on the WiFi as well in select stations![]()
Network Rail's Wi-Fi Suffers UK Outage at 19 Stations Due to Rogue Employee
The company that owns and manages most of the railway network in Great Britain, Network Rail, suffered a major service outage on their national Wi-Fi network thwww.ispreview.co.uk
Network Rail’s Wi-Fi Suffers UK Outage at 19 Stations After Staff Abuse.
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It still beats the WiFi on Stagecoach buses here Stewart.Gorebridge Station there is 2x Wifi 6 Cisco access points attached to the lamp posts on each side of the station shelter
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Same here, when it's not disabled!It still beats the WiFi on Stagecoach buses here Stewart.
(1 Meg supplied by Vodafone)
I think the best I've had was way over 100 megs in Glasgow Central Station.
Regarding McDonalds WiFi, it's also worth noting Wifi Extra too.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).
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.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.
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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.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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Yep was _Costa-Guest with the Cisco Meraki login page and APs. Used to be provided by O2 WiFi in this location.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.
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).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.
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?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.
Different APs with Exponential-E asset stickers attached.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?