Slow McDonalds WIFI

It isn't bytes, it's bits. 8 times slower, or 7n Bytes/second.

Reply to
Pen
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I went to a McDonalds and connected to their WIFI on my laptop. I was using IE8 in XP Pro. The connection button said I was connected at

52 Mbs (which I believe is 52 megabytes per second). [IS THAT CORRECT?]

While that seems very fast, (At home I have a 56K dialup modem), I found that this connection was incredibly slow. I went to download Firefox 4. It's 11.? megs. It took about 8 minutes to download. I went to youtube and tried to watch a few videos. A 8meg video was constantly stopping and starting (just like on dialup). 10 minutes later I had only seen half that video when I abandoned it because my battery was getting low.

While this is slightly faster than dialup, it was not significantly faster. Why would it be so slow?

I should mention that this is a new (used) computer. It works fine, it's a 1.86ghz P4 with 512m RAM. XP Pro SP3. I must say I have never used IE8. In fact I normally dont use IE at all. I use Firefox. That's why I downloaded FF. The last time I used IE, it was IE6 in Windows 2000. Could this slowness have anything to do with IE, or is it just the connection? I guess what I'm asking is this. While I was connected at 52 Mbs, could the system still be slow? If so, how can that be? I can see where youtube might be busy (on a Saturday night around 9pm), but I cant see where Mozilla.com would be all that busy.

Thanks for all tips and suggestions.

Reply to
jw

The connection speed showing is the wireless connection , how fast was the actual adsl connection ? buggered if I know and possibly a very small one hence your perception of slow Why not go tell them about your concerns and post the results

Reply to
atec77

54 Mbits/sec is the common "good" 802.11 g conection between you and the access point. You don't get to see the conection from the access point to points further up the link toward the internet.

The last McDonald's I was at was about 1.5Mbits/sec.

Doesn't a download in Firefox show you the current download speed? That would be a decent measurement of speed. It might be limited at the sending end, but in this case, it would probably have shown the McDonalds speed.

Reply to
dold

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Thanks for all tips and suggestions. YW

Reply to
Shadow

speedtest.net seemed to have problems at the last McDonalds where I tested it. The site came up, but the test wouldn't run. I wonder if some clever hotspot operators might block the common speedtests, since they do present a burden to the network.

Just prior to moving over to the McDonalds in Alameda, CA, USA, I had given up on trying to use the WiFi at Starbucks nearby. I figured I was in trouble when I saw the number of laptops deployed when I walked in. Both my Win7 laptop and Blackberry had difficulty connecting to the WiFi, which would occasionally disappear from the Available Networks scan, and were virtually unusable when they were connected.

The Win7 might have various issues, but the Blackberry should connect to an AT&T hotspot without even having a profile built for it.

While I was connected, I couldn't even get speedtest.net to open at Starbucks, I think for performance reasons, not an outright block.

Reply to
dold

Speedtest needs a ping, javascript and flash. Maybe McDonalds blocks pings ? Seems unlikely they block the IP of all the test sites. You can manually choose one. Speedtest usually replies to tech queries pretty fast. Ask them. []'s

Reply to
Shadow

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