How to Get Faster Wi-Fi Access in Your Hotel Room
You check into your hotel after a hard day of travel. All you have to do is kick off your shoes, set the temperature so hot or cold that you can’t get away with it at home, and say hello to your Netflix lineup before your well-deserved rest. And then you realize the awful truth: you have a terrible Wi-Fi connection, or worse, you don’t.
Ugh.
For the tired traveler – or even the well-rested – there are a few things more annoying than paying a fortune for a hotel room just to quickly realize that your wireless connection is terrible. Gone are the days of your dreams of getting work done on the road, streaming your favorite music to set the mood for a big day at the theme park, or uploading all of your daily vacation photos to your chosen social network (or cloud storage).
Here are a few tips you can use to tackle potential wireless problems before they become a problem.
Before booking: check out great wifi
When planning your next vacation, consider your wireless needs when deciding what to say. It can be as simple as opening a third-party review site like Yelp or TripAdvisor and see what guests have already said about the hotel’s Wi-Fi capabilities. If there are many complaints, you may want to consider booking elsewhere. That or know that you will have to go into vacation mode with a lot of wireless game plan.
While you are looking for the perfect hotel, consider its proximity to the nearest public hotspots – as a last resort, of course. This could be the nearest Starbucks or McDonald’s, a local library, or just any public hotspot you can find using an app like WeFi ( iOS , Android ) or WiFi Map ( iOS , Android ).
As noted by The Points Guy’s Katy Genter , there are also several sites that specifically profile hotels for their wireless capabilities. They’re not perfect , but sites like hotelwifitest or SpeedSpot should have at least basic listings wherever you go.
While you are packing: bring the right gear with you.
If your hotel has unstable Wi-Fi, or you just want to be completely safe (spoiler alert: I always take the “just in case” route), the easiest way to get a great in-room wireless connection is to bring your own router. There are many great travel routers you can buy; they are not expensive and you don’t need anything powerful. A simple N300 road router with WISP capabilities is enough – something like the TP-Link TL-WR802N , which should cost less than $ 40 and fit in the palm of your hand.
In theory, you should just plug it into the wall, plug the Ethernet cable in your room into your router, and connect to your own Wi-Fi network instead of the hotel’s network. Routers that support the aforementioned “WISP mode” can also act as a kind of wireless repeater, providing a more reliable connection to the hotel’s Wi-Fi signal without the hotel knowing that you are using this connection with multiple devices in your room. …
Either way, your hotel may have found a way to prevent you from using your own router in your room – to the point of completely shutting down your Ethernet connection . However, a typical travel router is very tiny and shouldn’t be difficult to hide in your luggage or carry-on luggage. I’d rather try one than not have it at all … and have a poor wireless connection.
You can also try choosing a more powerful external antenna for your router. An antenna you plug into a laptop’s USB port might give you a little more firepower than your laptop’s built-in capabilities, and it might give you a chance to improve your overall connection. However, this can get a little more expensive; I would recommend trying a travel router first if you don’t want the troubleshooting cost more than one night’s stay at your hotel.
(If you go this route, PC Gamer really loves the $ 80 Trendnet TEW-809UB , but that’s too much for travel. Instead, something smaller like D-Link’s DWA-192 is probably a better option. but still rather overkill and expensive, at $ 70.)
The third option is to pick up a dongle for your laptop – assuming it doesn’t have a built-in Ethernet port – just so you can use the (hopefully faster) Ethernet connection in your hotel. The same warnings apply: your hotel may have turned off the Ethernet in your room, your Ethernet connection may still not be very good for huge downloads or high quality Netflix streams, etc.
Before Arrival: Ask at the front desk
This almost goes without saying, but if your wireless needs are high, you can always try asking the front desk for a number closer to the hotel’s wireless hotspots. Most likely, they won’t understand what you are talking about, but it’s worth a try.
When you’re in your room: connect your laptop
If you don’t like the travel router option, you can also just share your laptop’s Ethernet or wireless connection. (For example, let’s say it receives a signal in one corner of your room, but you can’t connect to Wi-Fi using a tablet in another corner of the room.) Apps like Connectify work wonders for Windows systems, and setup is just as easy .
Note: You will only be able to use your laptop’s wired internet connection, not re-connect wirelessly. To do this, you will need a separate Wi-Fi adapter that will take us back to the “buy new equipment” territory.
You can link your smartphone to the Internet, but …
In the worst case, you can always just connect your laptop (or tablet, or whatever) to your smartphone and use it to transfer data . If it has five adorable 4G lanes versus the unbearable Wi-Fi signal at your hotel, you are set. This is, of course, provided that you do not burn your data plan; your telecom operator does not restrict your connection in any way; you are actually allowed to stick to whatever plan you are on; your smartphone won’t light up due to overuse – stuff like that.
Our advice? If you are considering this route, simply select a mobile hotspot .
Configure your system’s DNS settings
Just in case the hotel network is doing an awfully slow job of responding to DNS queries – because it’s overloaded with other guests using the network at the same time – you might want to try switching the default DNS server that your device uses. We recommend trying Google : free and fast.
Don’t forget about VPN
First, the Wi-Fi at your hotel is probably open and unsecured. You should be a little nervous using it. You will be much less nervous if you run the VPN while you are working, browsing, and watching videos. If you’re lucky, a VPN will also allow you to bypass any content restrictions your hotel has – like limiting the speed of your YouTube connection – if its network doesn’t know what traffic you’re sending back and forth.
Check the status of the awards / inquire about the error at the front desk
If your wireless connection is really terrible – you might be able to connect, but it takes forever to download a single video – be sure to check and see if any reward status you have at your hotel gives you access to faster wireless service. Perhaps even a hotel loyalty subscription will be enough to give you access to its faster Wi-Fi, or even regular Wi-Fi, without having to pay an annoying daily fee.
And you can always bother the front desk that your favorite website is taking too long to load, although you can phrase it differently. If you give off a polite stench, but still persistent, you can play in the hotel’s business center (if you don’t already have access to it), or perhaps even get a promo code that will allow you to access faster. wireless service. The hotel would probably prefer you to be a happy patron than skimp on Wi-Fi – hopefully.
Otherwise, you can always just hang out in a more densely populated area with a better Wi-Fi connection – like a hotel lobby or even another more equipped hotel nearby – a trick I’ve been known to use when traveling to Disneyland – if You just need to recharge your laptop for an hour or so before you go on vacation again.