I travel for work a lot, and I’ve noticed that the various hotel chains’ WiFi systems seem to work differently. Recently I was in a Ma&^tt branded hotel and found that my phone, while connected to their WiFi, would not download podcasts. Same for attempting a Skype call. Whereas these functions worked fine at a H&^on properties.
I’m starting to notice a pattern of this sort of thing. What gives?
They can block any content they want on their network. It’s not WiFi related.
ETA: Not necessarily WiFi related.
What TriPolar said. Since you are travelling for work, you had better connect to everything through an encrypted VPN anyway. Then they won’t be able to selectively block or listen to your phone calls, etc.
I’m not really worried about this from the standpoint of privacy. I don’t think they’re trying to selectively block content.
Could they be trying to prevent activities that involve large downloads? If so, it’s only working on my mobile devices (I’ve noticed email gets wonky at some of these hotel chains too). But on my laptop there’s no apparent difference compared to when I’m on my home network.
It seems odd that only a few apps would be apparently affected. Why podcasts? Seems equally likely that there’s no intent behind this and it’s just a quirk of their network. But even if that’s true, again, why podcasts, Skype and sometimes email?
Commercial WiFi provision can be very sophisticated. It isn’t really a function of Wifi although that provides even more possibilities. They can and will block access to some sites. That is trivial. But routers will look at the MAC address (which identifies the Wifi unit) and can track you with it. Free wifi points perform all manner of data grabbing. They can also block some protocols. So in principle block VoIP calls or the like. A VPN is pretty much mandatory when travelling anywhere where you don’t trust the locals 100%. Which can mean anywhere depending on your business.
Yes, they can block certain apps or even traffic patterns. It’s not a function of Wifi specifically, but of computer networking in general. Skype is very easily blocked because it uses defined protocols and port numbers. Podcasts can be blocked by a traffic pattern, url, port number (if it’s using a specialized app) or even by a data rate limit (download at full speed for too long and the network locks you out for a few minutes).
As for the reason, video chat is going to be rather bandwidth intensive (and it’s a sustained usage) and in a hotel with dozens or hundreds of guests, that can be enough to clog up even business-class broadband, podcasts shouldn’t be anymore burdensome than youtube videos, or updating/downloading new apps, unless they’ve had people updating/downloading entire collections of hi-def podcasts at once. My best guess would be that there’s a special room add-on you can get to access those services through the hotels wifi, and they’re trying to push people towards that, even for traffic that’s not overly burdensome.