Hotels seem to have replaced ethernet internet with wireless, as it probably saves money on cabling costs, which is OK. The problems I have with this is that so far I have had slow, crippled, unencrypted and ask for passwords for no reason and they have all been provided by GoldenTree.
Login password?
Before you can do anything with your wireless connection you need to log in with a password that is the area code and your room number. This is stupid and useless. Residence Inn does not do this, it only asks you to agree to the terms of service, which does not bother with useless garbage.
Unencrypted? Are you fucking kidding me?
Wireless connections that have seen so far in hotels do not even use WEP or WPA encryption.I have seen this at Holiday Inn https://www.ihg.com/holidayinn/hotels/us/en/reservation (cached)(cache), Marriott Residence Inn (cached)(cache) and Marriot Fairfield Inn (cache).
Not only is Goldentree (cached)(cache) doing a bad implementation, but hotels don’t seen to give a shit about guests that are staying for business purposes. Some business users will have VPN access, but some corporate VPN access limits tremendously what is possible to do on that connection. The idea is that we HAVE to use the wireless connection without our personal VPN sometimes. When that happens and the connection is not encrypted, that pisses me off because anyone can sniff around and see what everybody in the hotel is doing on their wireless connection.
By the way, FuckingTech.com has been created entirely over a wireless GoldenTree connection in a hotel. This is scary because all operations have been done over unencrypted wireless for everyone to see, from the domain registration, unencrypted FTP transfers (because SSL FTP never works) and unencrypted back end administration of the article system. Anyone listening over the wireless connection could have hijacked FuckingTech.com before it was even started. This inaugural article could have been hijacked!
I don’t mind if anyone grabs the nude celeb pics that I download, but I start minding when I work and an encrypted connection for that type of work is not available.
Unencrypted hotel wireless is risky and it should stop.
Slow “High Speed” connections
Now on to the speed. Goldentree is horrendously slow on Friday and Saturday evenings. Yo dudes! We need more bandwidth over here!!!! I am talking to you, Marriott, Holiday Inn and GoldenTree! When this shit goes on every god damned week-end from November to March, YOU HAVE A FUCKING PROBLEM with your unencrypted, crippled and slow ass connection.
Slow “High speed” connections are terrible and it has to stop.
Crippling
GoldenTree also limits the POST sizes that are over 25k. Fantastic. That is just retarded when you are trying to upload files to any HTTP content system such as FuckingTech.com
GoldenTree, you provide slow, crippling and unencrypted wireless connections to hotel customers. You have some work to do.
What burns me is that it seems all hotels use GoldenTree over here in Oklahoma City, which limits your options to attain some sort of satisfaction from your wireless connection provided to you.