Re: [89attendees] When does the IETF network officially come up?

[Jim Spring <[e-mail]>]

On Mar 2, 2014, at 12:02 PM, Jim Martin <[e-mail]> wrote:

> 	Finally, there's the public space and guest room areas. It's not practical for us to build out a network that reaches everywhere in the building, so we work with the hotel to either take over or ride their infrastructure. In the case of the wired networks to the guest rooms, we continue to use their cabling and switches, but take the hand off into the IETF infrastructure at layer 2. We provide all IP services, which means we can provide real public IPv4 and native IPv6. In the case of wireless, we've worked with the normal wireless provider (BT Wireless) to add an additional SSID that they're handing off to us at layer 2 as well, so we can provide the IP services there.  If there are IP layer issues, please do let us know at [e-mail], or by coming by the help desk in the terminal room. 
> 
> 	The one thing we really can't control is whether the ethernet running to your room is working, or if you can get the BT wireless signal (the ietf-hotel SSID) wherever you're situated. That's where we ask folks to contact the normal BT tech support. If they're unable to help, please let us know, as we can advocate for you a bit deeper inside the organization. 

Jim, 

I understand the efforts, but the fact is that thet BT installation of APs covering guest rooms is woefully inadequate and I suspect would have the same behavior if the IETF was ongoing or not -- multiple people have pointed out "good" coverage outside the room, "adequate" near the door, and "inadequate" within the room itself.  I suspect this pattern would be maintained whether the conference was here or not -- I've seen this at 3-4 properties while traveling in the last several months.  Specifically for me, there is some interference (metal door, machinery in the hallway, who knows) that is causing interference.

Also, since 2001, most devices are wireless instead of wired.  I was here in 2001 and, yes, things were different then.  BT should have either beefed up AP coverage (included into the rooms) or there should have been some sort of distribution APs that could plug into the rooms wired connection to provide wireless coverage.  Unlike 2001, more devices are wireless than not.

-jim