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Public Wi-Fi Tests / Discussion

Different APs with Exponential-E asset stickers attached.

Previous ones were standard Cisco enterprise APs.
That's interesting that the AP's have Exponential-e stickers on them, I wonder if Exponential-e manage the entire WiFi network at Costa rather than just being the ISP.
Also as a follow-on question to this: How much do you catch glimpses of AP's in public places and have you seen any interesting ones. As I'm blind I sadly haven't had much experience with spotting these and the best I can do is a WiFi scanner on my iPhone so I can check their BSSID's and try and work out what type they are from that.
More and more I see Ubiquiti kit being used, even in places where I'd normally expect more enterpris-level AP's to be deployed. But saying that networks like this still often seem to perform quite well so maybe Ubiquiti are successfully moving into the more larger buisness sector.
And on the other end of the spectrum I saw a restaurant with a network of Extreme Networks AP's with what looked like the sort of set up a large enterprise would have (WPA2-enterprise corporate network etc), but customers weren't even allowed to connect.
 
Also John Lewis seem to be moving away from BT WiFi as their Customer WiFi provider (John Lewis Cambridge now has Vodafone as the ISP and John-Lewis-Customer-WiFi as the SSID rather than John-Lewis-WiFi-by-BTOpenzone).
It seems to be a similar speed to the old system but with lower latency.
Ping: 9 MS
Download: 26.49 MBPS
Upload: 19.48 MBPS

Attached is the design of the new log in page, which is very simple and similar to BT WiFi but provided by a different company. I'd be interested to know if any of you have been to a John Lewis recently and can report on the WiFi status.

One general trend I have observed over the last few years is many businesses opting out from large WiFi hotspot providers like The Cloud (so far Pret, Zizzi, wagamama and a lot more which I have forgotten have opted out, apparently as quoted by an employee of one of these businesses as they actively sold customer data, I have no idea if they actually do or not), O2 Wifi (Costa, Cafe Rouge, etc) and BT WiFi (Starbucks and now John Lewis).
 

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That's interesting that the AP's have Exponential-e stickers on them, I wonder if Exponential-e manage the entire WiFi network at Costa rather than just being the ISP.
Also as a follow-on question to this: How much do you catch glimpses of AP's in public places and have you seen any interesting ones. As I'm blind I sadly haven't had much experience with spotting these and the best I can do is a WiFi scanner on my iPhone so I can check their BSSID's and try and work out what type they are from that.
More and more I see Ubiquiti kit being used, even in places where I'd normally expect more enterpris-level AP's to be deployed. But saying that networks like this still often seem to perform quite well so maybe Ubiquiti are successfully moving into the more larger buisness sector.
And on the other end of the spectrum I saw a restaurant with a network of Extreme Networks AP's with what looked like the sort of set up a large enterprise would have (WPA2-enterprise corporate network etc), but customers weren't even allowed to connect.
Usually common to spot them on the ceiling, they rarely take the extra effort to hide them. Often a little white square with an LED light, nothing exciting really. Some of the old Aerohive models are a bit more interesting as they have LEDs that cycle through various colours to indicate the status, not common to see those anymore.

The most interesting ones I've come across are tube-shaped rather than the typical squares, or in the case of Cisco Meraki a rectangle. Not sure on the manufacturer, Ubiquiti have some that are similar but it’s not one of theirs.
 
Usually common to spot them on the ceiling, they rarely take the extra effort to hide them. Often a little white square with an LED light, nothing exciting really. Some of the old Aerohive models are a bit more interesting as they have LEDs that cycle through various colours to indicate the status, not common to see those anymore.

The most interesting ones I've come across are tube-shaped rather than the typical squares, or in the case of Cisco Meraki a rectangle. Not sure on the manufacturer, Ubiquiti have some that are similar but it’s not one of theirs.

That's interesting to know about where you have seen AP's, and would explain how I felt very few. I did find one once right behind the head end of the bed in a hotel room about 10 cm from my head (it was a Meraki one mounted to the wall hidden by the bed). There was a visible ethernet cable and interestingly when the AP was disconnected for a short time the performance of WiFi actually increased a lot (from 60 MBPS to about 150), so clearly the AP was either not very good spec or was overloaded.
The other interesting thing I have found with Meraki AP's specifically is their visible status page, which you can see even on isolated guest networks (like at Greater Anglia train stations) which shows various details about the AP, and even allows you to run a speed test to check your throughput between the AP and your device. It can be found at:
http://ap.meraki.com
Talking of Greater Anglia its a shame that the WiFi at some of their stations went from 70 MBPS to about 7 or 8 MBPS when they rolled out their new WiFi network (replacing Abellio GA WiFi with Greater Anglia WiFi). I think their new one VPN's all connections back through a central point as for a while all stations had exactly the same IP.
 
Might be Daisy Communications insertfloppydiskhere.
They ran the ISP for Scottish Hydro when I was with them a few years ago, and a few others too I think. :)
I know of them, they used to be data centre neighbours at a previous job. Not a small company, they do all sorts.

I've only just seen these comments for some reason.

I hate a lot of companies, and daisy is very much one of them
 
Speed test at Princess of Wales Hospital A&E. I was in and out in under an hour, which was impressive. It seems it’s not just the internet that’s fast! :)

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Glasgow - Buchanan Bus Station Free WiFi (y)
This worked well, not the fastest, but quite a good ping (Scotnet).:)
 
Does anyone have experience using EE WiFi (the rebranded BT WiFi service) provided by customers home routers? Is the hotspot connection pretty reliable?

We have EE broadband and I’m thinking whether it’s worth setting my phone to auto connect to the open hotspots!
 
Does anyone have experience using EE WiFi (the rebranded BT WiFi service) provided by customers home routers? Is the hotspot connection pretty reliable?

We have EE broadband and I’m thinking whether it’s worth setting my phone to auto connect to the open hotspots!
I've seen it show up here, but doesn't seem that reliable. Can go from full signal bars, to two signal bars, one signal bar and gone.

Definitely shows up more than BT WiFi did.

Had a free trial with BT WiFi back in 2021-22 but by the time I got it, I couldn't use it at all because no BT WiFi at all at any point anywhere I was that wasn't problematic.
 
Had an interesting experience with Public WiFi recently at the Brunswick outdoor shopping centre in London. The general shopping centre Free WiFi, the Guest WiFi at a restaurant and Holland & Barrett Guest WiFi were all on the same public IP. I connect to a lot of networks, and this is a very rare sight. I guess some CGNAT must have been at play here as all the networks appeared to be on different private IP ranges. I wonder if the whole shopping centre is connected with some sort of gigabit ethernet or fibre from one particular provider, which is the fastest/only internet shops can get.



Shopping centre WiFi:

SSID: Brunswick Free WiFi

Ping: 1 MS

Download: 140.4 MBPS

Upload: 88.96 MBPS

Used Ruckus AP's with a Ruckus-branded login page.



Restaurant:

SSID: RHC Guest

Ping: 1 MS

Download: 96.28 MBPS

Upload: 96.37 MBPS

This was running off Ubiquiti AP's. I wonder if the limit of 100 was because of the type out ethernet cable used, QoS or the package the restaurant had signed up for (the AP's seemed more than capable).



Holland & Barrett:

SSID: Holland & Barrett Guest

Ping: 3 MS

Download: 3.13 MBPS

Upload: 2.65 MBPS

the slowest by far. This was being broadcast from a Cisco Meraki AP, and because of the very low speeds it looks like it was being throttled somewhere before it reached this common infrastructure.



ISP for all of them was Curve Information Technology, who I have not heard of before.



However the Gail's there was on Community Fibre and throttled to 10 down and 1 up (I've seen this limit in other Gail's coffee shops before). So it looks like other options were available, at least in some parts of the shopping centre.
 
The Ladygrove (Didcot) - Marston's Telecoms
Download: 43.5, Upload: 43.3, Ping: 8MS

Capped to 43/43?
 
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