VTEC - Free Wifi from 16th May

[infobleep]

Interesting, this has never happened to me

I find it happening on the Reading to Gatwick Airport line and that is the line their map says isn't covered by WiFi last time I checked. When I first came across the WiFi though in that line, I found it did work in every train. Then I was finding the problem I listed on every train I used.

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Works OK at the south end. A bit slow, but that's the problem for being the first generation I suppose.

My experience of GWR was appalling on one return trip to S Wales.

Could they upgrade it to improve it, to make it current generation or would they consider that not worth the costs as they can easily market first generation even if it's no good.

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[jon0844]

I think if you can get a train that has 5GHz Wi-Fi you might stand a better chance as one issue can be congestion on 2.4GHz.

Why? Because on any given train, there's a good chance that a network scan will show a number of portable hotspots (phone or standalone) that people have brought and it seems the access points often don't like working with others. I suspect it's all the other phones with tethering on that don't play nicely.

Mind you, my Nexus 6P lets me create a 5GHz hotspot so eventually that's going to get congested too.

 

[najaB]

Why? Because on any given train, there's a good chance that a network scan will show a number of portable hotspots (phone or standalone) that people have brought and it seems the access points often don't like working with others. I suspect it's all the other phones with tethering on that don't play nicely.

That would affect your local link speed, but in my experience the problem doesn't lie there but in a lack of upstream bandwidth.

 

[jon0844]

That would affect your local link speed, but in my experience the problem doesn't lie there but in a lack of upstream bandwidth.

I'd say both. I have found my phones and laptops losing the Wi-Fi connection, which can cause timeout errors*. If you can keep that then you can usually ride out a loss of connection, or poor speed (depends on your device and what you're doing I guess).

You may also find that some of the problems with the local connection is causing excessively high latency and other problems.

* I've tried, and now pretty much given up, working on something like WordPress or Google Docs, where timeouts can mean a redirect error that loses what I've been working on. Again, some apps can recover better than others, but I wouldn't rely on train Wi-Fi for anything like that.

 

[SteveP29]

* I've tried, and now pretty much given up, working on something like WordPress or Google Docs, where timeouts can mean a redirect error that loses what I've been working on. Again, some apps can recover better than others, but I wouldn't rely on train Wi-Fi for anything like that.

Simple solution to that would be to work offline, then only go online when you needed to upload or download something

 

[fandroid]

When it was East Coast I used the website to buy all my tickets, and then used points to buy codes for the WiFi when I travelled on their trains. That was fine. When VTEC closed the points setup down, bought a load of codes and have only just used them up. So this is good news for me. The only thing is, how do I get a code without paying (much)?

 

[jon0844]

Simple solution to that would be to work offline, then only go online when you needed to upload or download something

The offline editors for WordPress are pretty poor, but yes, that's the best way to do it.

There are ways for networks to be set up that can prevent the horrid redirect errors. O2 Wi-Fi for example seems to let you go to a site, have the login page jump in and then take you to the page you requested. Given you can get logged out after a set time, that's good.

Others will log you out and redirect, with no way to go back (or you're at the mercy of your browser). So while I could find ways to solve many issues, the Wi-Fi provider can also help reduce or prevent the problems.