Oh dear!  Oh Dear!

As some of you who read our blogs may know, we’ve been installing WiFi at 9 holiday parks over the last 3 weeks.  On our epic wifi tour, we checked into a hotel in Cardiff (A BIG hotel chain) and purchased access for their wifi network.

Note:  We have screen shots to include in this post, but can’t upload them yet due to the poor wifi installation at the hotel – we’ll upload them in the next day or so.

Our first criticism was the cost, its very annoying having to pay for wifi when we’ve been installing free wifi access for our clients.

However, our biggest concern, is this:

Upon connecting to the wifi network, we could access every other user laptop and device on the network.  There was NO port isolation, and no Client Isolation.  A Fischer price toy Wifi HotSpot would of been more secure.   Within 5 minutes of finding this out, I had managed to connect to a colleagues laptop (with his permission) and uploaded a file onto his laptop.  Extremely poor security form a company that states this on their website:

Rock-Solid Security

This system is not secure.  Its very dangerous. The provider has no idea what they are talking about, yet provide many of the UK’s hotels.

How can this be addressed?  Client isolation needs to be set on the access points, and managed L2 switches need to be installed with Port isolation to stop access points communicating with each other.  Heck, Give us a call and we’ll tell you how to do it.

Secondly. was the speed.  Normal internet latency is around 50ms, yet the hotel wifi solution was only able to offer 620ms , with a download rate of 0.4mb. Very, very poor, yet their website states this:

***** are specialists in the provision of business wireless networks.

To continue on the network infrastructure, which is key in an install like this  , we read this on their website:

****** (name changed to protect the incompetent) offer advice on what type of network switch will best meet your requirements.

Ok, so why didn’t you install port isolating switches to secure the network?  Lastly, was the subnet mask used – this was a large hotel, and yet the provider used a /24 subnet mask allowing just 253 clients onto the network, which is too low for a 200 room hotel when you consider many users will have a phone, laptop and maybe a tablet device. A /23 should be a minimum which allows twice as many.  Note: every device that connects to a wifi network uses an address, regardless of whether they actually connect to the internet.

So come on, don’t pick a WiFi provider or WiFi installer based on their past installation history alone (which is how companies such as this get work) , rather, pick one that actually understands the security implications, customer issues and network technologies.  There’s a reason why we don’t offer other services – we’re the wifi experts.

Do it right.  Give Candengo a call on 01953 880 433.