[93attendees] Hilton Guest Room Internet Update

[Jim Martin <[e-mail]>]

Gentlepeople,
	First of all, I apologize for the delay in getting everyone an update on this. We know the guestroom Internet here in the Hilton has been problematic at best, and we have been working to try to improve it for the last week. As you probably know, the IETF network provides the IP layer and above for the guestrooms and public space, but the physical layer, both for the wired and wireless uses the existing hotel infrastructure. In the case here in Prague, we’ve been working closely with the hotel’s vendor, Mikenopa to deliver this service. They’ve been very willing and happy to work with us on this.

	For the wireless, we’ve lit up the “ietf-hotel” ssid on the existing APs, both in the public space and guestrooms. These are the same APs that provide the “hhonors” SSID. While the APs seem to have been originally deployed reasonably, there has been hotel building changes (mostly regarding new sprinkler systems) which has had them moved around in the hallways to very suboptimal locations. This has led to many areas having low to no signal. Additionally, their 2.4G channel assignment and power levels weren’t optimal. Mikenopa has been trying to move APs and reconfigure the channels.

	Additionally, due to our desire to use public IPv4 space, we’ve seen very high broadcast loads. This is based in the fact that we’ve got a large block that is sparsely used, and thus when we get scanned (as happens constantly from the greater Internet) we get a large amount of ARP traffic which can overload the wireless system. We’ve been working on various techniques to reduce this load.

	On the wired front, we’ve had reasonably good luck (other than about 45 minutes of downtime last night with a self inflicted wound while trying to reduce the ARP load). Please do use the wired connection in each guestroom if at all possible. If you need a cable, it’s usually in a cloth bag with a “@“ symbol on it in the desk. If you don’t have one, please feel free to come to the NOC.

	Overall, we’ve seen the ietf-hotel work reasonably well in the restaurant, lobby and hallways, but poorly (but slowly improving) in the guestrooms. We continue to work on this, but using the wired connection in your room is probably your best bet.

	- Jim