--On Friday, 25 July, 2014 09:40 -0400 joel jaeggli <joelja@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: >... > so, > > We've taken the hotel's captive portal / nat platform > /internet service out of the path for the residential network > for the week. We do this where possible, and in cases where we > cannot this is typically noted. > > While wifi coverage, lre/dsl and internal topology are out of > our control, the hotel network is being served by the the IETF > network and has no restrictions respecting authentication, > ports available, middleboxes and so forth. There is nothing > especially interesting to report there. Joel, To be clear, I haven't complained about IETF hotel network performance in years. That has required some downward adjustment of expectations but, when I get the sort of performance I would expect in a well-served industrial facility or university I'm just pleasantly surprised. Things have gotten considerably better since you folks started the practice of replacing the hotel's external connections with IETF ones, but, as you note, you have no control over hotel infrastructure and that has occasionally been pretty bad. Again, I'm not sure that is worth complaining about. On the other hand, it might be worth running some tests on the capabilities in Steve's note, probably less to figure out where to go (an equation that I suspect is too complex already) than to give people early warning about things they may not be able to do from their rooms and to know when it is extra-important that terminal rooms and other meeting facilities don't depend on hotel infrastructure (which I gather you almost always do anyway). I think the world would be a better place (and not just for IETF meetings) if hotels disclosed what they actually were providing when they advertise "Internet service". But, having seen about zero attention paid to our efforts in that direction almost ten years ago (trying to specify what the words should mean) go exactly nowhere and having a major ISP respond to complaints that a service advertised as "up to 5 Mbps" was delivering under 800 kpbs with "speeds not guaranteed", I'm pretty pessimistic about near-term progress in that area. If the IETF could do something about it, I don't know what it would be. I suppose we could publish post-meeting performance and capability information on the hotels we use (including before and during the switch to our external connections), but that might make some otherwise reasonable hotel choices decide they don't really want us. On the other hand, some of us could, as individuals, approach some popular travel rating sites and encourage them to create a much more sophisticated category/ report for Internet connectivity than "yes" or "no" and start reporting what we find when we travel. best, john