Free Wifi: Why even bother?

Discussion in 'General Science & Technology' started by Thoreau, Feb 12, 2012.

  1. Literphor I is for ignorance Registered Member

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    Free wifi is a fairly new commodity that'll take time to advance. If companies lose customers to competitors due to slow internet service, it'll improve.

    While I agree with Read_Only and Dave about your naivity... I don't care to support them. Any sort of trouble for these corporations is good in my book. Keep on complaining.
     
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  3. MacGyver1968 Fixin' Shit that Ain't Broke Valued Senior Member

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    Except internet service is not their primary business...it's selling hamburgers and donuts. If you really need high speed internet on the road for business purposes, you should do what everyone else does...get broadband wireless.
     
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  5. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    21,635
    If your business depends on you having internet access, then get a 3G card. That way your work does not suffer if local businesses do not give you free stuff.

    Also keep in mind that many links are asymmetrical. They may have very high download rates while still having slow upload rates.
     
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  7. cosmictotem Registered Senior Member

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    This is not a complaint desk. This is a science forum! My God man, get a hold of yourself! Look what you've become! You're turning into one of the uneducated masses!

    This is horrible! Horrible, I tell you! Somebody help him! :bawl:
     
  8. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    21,635
    Get it.

    Get a job.
     
  9. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    Because people like me find it useful, and I have a slight preference for places with wifi access. It means I don't have to dig out my 3G modem.

    Because they don't want people sitting there for hours uploading videos. They would rather discourage people like that.

    Nope. They do in fact have internet access. Thus it is a true statement.

    If they advertise "free wifi! Guaranteed 1mbps upload speeds!" and they maxed out at 56kbps then it would indeed be false advertising.
     
  10. Stryder Keeper of "good" ideas. Valued Senior Member

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    I would gather low internet speeds is for light surfing while waiting for a meal with a netbook, pda or mobile phone, not so you can do all your office work using their connection or run a torrent program to download a pirated film.

    As people have mentioned the "capping" of speeds for free-wifi is clearly to limit the amount of abuse that could otherwise occur as well as distributes the bandwidth available over a set number of potential synchronous customers. (Namely if the places has 30 seats inside and 20 outside, you could suggest 50 customers sitting down, so a 2mb connection might have a 1/50 contention ratio. This is to make sure that all customers have a fair share of bandwidth and it's likely not balanced based upon current usage, after all it would mean an unfair share at non-peak times etc.)
     
  11. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    18,935
    Beggars should not be choosers. And they are not responsible for your needs.

    They offer something that they don't have to offer, and they offer it for free.
     
  12. Believe Happy medium Valued Senior Member

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    1,194
    Cuz it's free? :shrug::bugeye:

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  13. auser Registered Senior Member

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    100% free, so who should pay for it? What free electricity is going to power the routers, switches and internet hubs? datacenters? who is going to maintain these? who will fix cut fibers underground and maintain under sea cables? I'd rather just stay home on my couch for free than go fix a broken fiber optic cables a 100 miles away for free so you can have free internet.
     
  14. Kittamaru Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Adieu, Sciforums. Valued Senior Member

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    How many places like McDonalds have a decent, on-staff technician to keep things running smoothly?

    Answer - none.

    They only even get a tech called in when there's a problem, and that's IF someone complains...
     
  15. Syzygys As a mother, I am telling you Valued Senior Member

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    The OP should put himself in the place of a fastfood chain. They basicly have to have free wi-fi to compete, but they don't have to have a good connection. Why? because if word gets out that the internet is fast, there will be a bunch of hipsters taking up place from other costumers.
    Fast food is called like that because it is fast. Get in, let's eat, get out. Having people sitting there for hours is counterproductive.

    So stop complaining, eat your burger, drink your coffee and pay for your internet.
     
  16. steampunk Registered Senior Member

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    278
    You have a valid complaint. Those here seem to just have low standards. We obviously know that we deserve high speed with our burger. We are entitlment cutlure. Only the best or us.

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    These places you mentioned are notorious for slow speeds. They usually have to capability for high speeds, but they bottle neck it on purpose. Coroporate places are better to avoid. But, you must use corporate, try Kinkos. I think they have high speeds but it may cost by the hour.

    Have you tried some locally owned hipster coffee shops? They are usually your best bet. You are only held back by the number of people that are at the shop. Sometimes, even a Diner can have decent high-speed Internet access. Check libraries out, but you may run into some censorship problems based on the intelligence level of the community. In libraries, you may find some ethernet connections that are high speed to use. So check the walls for Ethernet. War drive commercial areas if you have a car. Sometimes if you close enough to a computer store they'll have a free wifi signal. If they have a password, you can usually go in and act like you want to buy something and say you need to access your email with your laptop and they'll give you the password. Get creative. People give passwords out all the time if you just saying something convincing. Go down town and sit in public areas and test for wifi signals. If you have a smart phone you can do this by war walking until you find the signals that are open. Eventually you find some high speed signals that you can use. Then again, work a day or two extra per month and you can get your own personal signal all to yourself or share it remember. You know how it's like.
     
  17. MacGyver1968 Fixin' Shit that Ain't Broke Valued Senior Member

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    The locally owned Irish pub in my neighborhood offers free unrestricted wi-fi. The other day, I saw a guy in a car, parked right in front of the door using his laptop at 10:00am, before they even opened!

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    As you can see, there are parking places just a few feet away from the front...well in the range of the wireless router. It's the reason most places throttle their free wi-fi....to deter abuse from freeloaders. I am good friends with the owner, and I called him to let him know about the leacher. There's a tv mounted on the wall right behind the Heineken sign in the window. That's where they have the cable connection and modem. The owner is going to move the wireless router further away from the window, so you can't pick it up in the parking lot. Their internet package has a 100Gb monthly bandwidth limit....so if the leaches use up his monthly bandwidth...he get's stuck paying extra for the overage.
     
    Last edited: May 11, 2012
  18. MacGyver1968 Fixin' Shit that Ain't Broke Valued Senior Member

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    7,028
    While I'm still on top of my soapbox......Why is it that most internet packages now days have some sort of monthly bandwidth limit? You can thank the handful of abusers that fucked it up for the rest of us. Back when internet services was truly "unlimited" and there were no bandwidth limits....some assholes would run multiple torrent downloads 24 hours a day, 7 days a week...using the absolute maximum amount of bandwidth their connection would give on a continuous, non-stop basis...making everyone else's connection slower. The ISP's had to do something...so they came up with bandwidth restrictions to stop this practice. A very small number of dickheads fucked it up for the millions of others that use the internet.
     
  19. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    I think this is tilting at windmills. A population given a resource, will - sooner or later - max out that resource. No one's being a dickhead, it's just the nature of things.

    Analogously, if a new city highway is built to ease traffic congestion, commuters will increasingly make use of it until it too is filled to capacity. (If it weren't at capacity, why would drivers eschew its use, in favour of more congested roads?)
     
  20. Syzygys As a mother, I am telling you Valued Senior Member

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    As long as the monthly limit is big enough for an average user, what is the problem? 100GB is good for 3-4 movies a day at 700Mb-1Gb size, that should be plenty for average Joe....
     
  21. diverightindia Registered Member

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    yeah i have the cheapest internet plan and it sucks
     
  22. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    This sounds like a generalized vendetta. That doesn't do anyone any good.
     
  23. origin Heading towards oblivion Valued Senior Member

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    Yes you twit a payday loan will certainly help my internet speed. I loath spammers.....
     

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