What’s your experience with finding a netwrok drop (i.e., connection or jack) in your hotel room?
I stay at a lot of Hampton Inn, Holiday Inn/Holiday Inn Express or Copmfort Inn/Comfort Inn & Suites hotels. Establsihing and/or sustaining a Wi-Fi connection too often proves challenging if not impossible. So, I travel with a CAT5 cable. Yet, I am finding more and more hotels are not supporting this!?! I mean, the jack is totally missing (like, it was never there in the first place)! And, these are older hotels which should have a network drop in each room!
I just need to know if other business travelers have experienced this? Or, have my business trips taken me into the Twilight Zone of network connectivity?
FYI: Most surprising was a Hampton Inn with a jack built into the desk lamp. However, the jack was sized for a DSL connection!!! When I asked at the front desk, they mindlessly hand me a CAT5 cable to borrow. I explained how the “extra jack” in the room it is not compatible, unless maintenace could show me where the CAT5 jack is hiding! They had no clue that the “extra jack” is for DSL. C’mon people! (This is how to treat business travelers?)
I’m not sure I understand what you mean by a jack sized for a DSL connection.
You connect your computer to a DSL modem using an ordinary CAT5 cable. You connect your DSL modem to an RJ-11 jack using an ordinary (land line) phone cord. If you are saying what you saw was an RJ-11 jack, that was probably for plugging in a phone or a dial-up modem. You would need a DSL modem to connect to a DSL line and I’ve never heard of a computer that has one built in.
Virgin Mobile and Walmart also have similar services. I used to use a Virgin Mobile hotspot, but service got so bad I gave up on it and replaced it with the Verizon Jetpack and have been happy with it.
Perhaps they got their 5 star rating by having one room with the RJ45… and having ethernet cable at the front desk ready … not your room … they are forgetting to label this clearly on the room categories…
Don’t they have wireless ?
I support a number of travelling salesmen.
They report that network jacks in hotel rooms are a thing of the past. WiFi is cheaper for the hotel. Its sub-contracted by the hotel and the hotel staff is generally useless with problems.
For the best WiFi; go to the business center of the hotel.
I travel for a living. And stay in business traveler hotels in many major US cities. In other words hotels 2 or maybe 3 notches above where **Jinx ** has been staying. The last time I saw a live RJ45 jack or in-room cable was 2012. The last time they were commonplace was 2010. WiFi is the only game where I stay.
I do know that when the connection is flaky, it’s usually not a problem between me and the WiFi base station; it’s usually between the hotel’s network and their internet connection. Which I suspect is simply way too many users trying to stream video over connections sized for email downloading.
My mobile has tethering which I can use in a pinch if the hotel’s network is inop / clogged. **Jinx **might want to consider that option or a dedicated box as **Alley Dweller **suggested above.
Foremost, thanks! I didn’t even realize the Mi-Fi plans were so flexible. I thought they were expensive and a luxury. Additionally, perhaps I have the wrong perception of dial-up. First, I thought dial-up and DSL are interchangeable terms. Second, back when I had a dial-up connection, the modem was within the PC (i.e., a card plugged into the motherboard as opposed to an accessory) which accepted a phone cord.
Yep, there’s a reason that we have a printed “how-to” label on the desk, with a handy toll-free number for tech support for hotel wifi. If I knew how to do tech support, I would have a job making more money than as a night auditor!
At one hotel I worked at a few years ago, we did indeed have a problem with streaming video, which was finally traced to a single room. Apparently, Mr. 75-year-old Guest was tech savvy enough to connect to wifi and surf for porn, but not enough to close any of the umpteen windows he had opened! :eek: (Thank Og I didn’t have to face him the following morning when he checked out! But I did have to answer his irate phone calls in the middle of the night, wondering why his wifi speed was throttled drastically.)
As for RJ45 jacks - when I worked for another company on the management team that opened new hotels, we pretty well quit installing those in new rooms around 2009. Often, we’d install one or two in the business center, but everything else was password-protected wifi. These hotels were mostly mid-range properties, like Four Points, Hilton Garden, occasionally Comfort Suites.
Hey Guys me Lomew.Well i think that if you stay in 3 star or 5 star hotel then there are very less chances about that type of problem.But unfortunately if such type of problem like internet problem will be occur then you should tell hotel management because its the responsibility of management.Thanks!!
