QP/JL Wireless Access problems [Fixed Oct 2011]

[serfty]

As I have stated on more than one occasion, the wi-fi (especially in the international J and F Lounges) should be fast enough to download movies/ books to your mobile device of choice, anything less is substandard IMHO.

I think it should be at least able to handle emails and the like.

Movies? No - if you want to download a movie, IMHO, do it at home, that is NPC.

 

[Princess Fiona]

I think it should be at least able to handle emails and the like.

Movies? No - if you want to download a movie, IMHO, do it at home, that is NPC.

I respectfully disagree, BA provides wi-fi in LHR capable of downloading movies.
I don't believe it is unrealistic to tweak your upcoming inflight entertainment as a OWE awaiting your flight in the QF FLounge.

 

[connieguy]

Re: Qantas domestic Lounges pathetic wifi

I respectfully disagree, BA provides wi-fi in LHR capable of downloading movies.
I don't believe it is unrealistic to tweak your upcoming inflight entertainment as a OWE awaiting your flight in the QF FLounge.

I do that at home and currently have ~350 movies. Combined with the Bose QC15s, I doubt any IFE could match what is on my laptop. That way I place a very limited expectation on lounge / hotel internet speeds. As long as I can get my emails and net access, I'm happy.

 

[Batesy]

Re: Qantas domestic Lounges pathetic wifi

T3 F lounge wifi was provided by Virgin when I was there in July! View attachment 3736

T3 galleries at Heathrow? It was Just called BA galleries when I was there in August.

 

[jamesatfish]

Re: Qantas domestic Lounges pathetic wifi

Just sent off another email to QF Customer Service about this very issue - went through CBR and MEL domestic J lounges, MEL International First and the atrocious LAX TBIT First lounge this week and had hopeless internet connectivity at all 4.

I noticed that at TBIT they're now handing out a username & password to access the internet connection but this didn't do anything to actually improve the speed or reliability - was still hopeless even just trying to download emails. The lounge staff must have rebooted the router at some point in the evening as they announced that the connection would be unavailable for 20 minutes or so, but this had no effect. 3G connection through AT&T on my iPhone and iPad was infinitely better - it's just a shame I don't have the tethering plans on my AT&T accounts.

Conversely the internet in the AA lounge at LAX T4 with the 24-hour scratch-off access cards was working perfectly, as was the free (entire terminal) public WiFi at LAS.

 

[Princess Fiona]

I do that at home and currently have ~350 movies. Combined with the Bose QC15s, I doubt any IFE could match what is on my laptop. That way I place a very limited expectation on lounge / hotel internet speeds. As long as I can get my emails and net access, I'm happy.

I do that at home as well. My point is that the QF FLounges are worldclass in every respect except the Wi-Fi. If I were transiting SYD on a AONE4, I would expect part of the service to be decent Wi-Fi. It's a shocker and the Telstra NextG reception in the private suites is equally awful.

 

[connieguy]

Re: Qantas domestic Lounges pathetic wifi

I do that at home as well. My point is that the QF FLounges are world class in every respect except the Wi-Fi. If I were transiting SYD on a AONE4, I would expect part of the service to be decent Wi-Fi. It's a shocker and the Telstra NextG reception in the private suites is equally awful.

Others have said that QF is "working on the problem". Those in the business know it is not that hard or expensive to fix. So we just sit back, wait and wonder why, like the non existent domestic PB that QF have said they are also working on, QF does not seem to place any priority on fixing these and other issues?

In the meantime, VA has wasted no time in comping as many QF FFers as they can with the status match while delivering a broader and deeper VA FFer offering than QF does which includes decent lounge WiFi, domestic PB, Fly Ahead, family points, SC pooling, etc.

When VA builds their F Lounges at Syd and Mel, which I'm sure are in their plans, QF will have very little advantage over VA.

 

[TonyHancock]

Re: Qantas domestic Lounges pathetic wifi

T3 galleries at Heathrow? It was Just called BA galleries when I was there in August.

If you check your IP address when you are logged on to the BA wifi and then do a "who is" it comes up as Virgin Broadband!! (I'm not suggesting that Virgin Atlantic is providing the wifi!)

 

[serfty]

I respectfully disagree, ...
I don't believe it is unrealistic to tweak your upcoming inflight entertainment as a OWE awaiting your flight in the QF FLounge.

We'll have to respectfully agree to disagree about downloading movies in the lounges, even for a OWE in a First Class lounge.

A basic 2 hour SD movie can be ~4½Gb, if you're using Ipod types file that can be 1½ Gb; that's a very large chunk of bandwidth to chew up while denying others the simple facility of reasonably fast access to emails.

Sorry, but that's a bugbear of mine ... :-|

 

[simongr]

Re: Qantas domestic Lounges pathetic wifi

A movie can easily be 700MB in quality decent enough to watch on a small screen. I often grab TV shows in lounges when I have been travelling and missed them.

 

[nlagalle]

Re: Qantas domestic Lounges pathetic wifi

Others have said that QF is "working on the problem". Those in the business know it is not that hard or expensive to fix. So we just sit back, wait and wonder why, like the non existent domestic PB that QF have said they are also working on, QF does not seem to place any priority on fixing these and other issues?

In the meantime, VA has wasted no time in comping as many QF FFers as they can with the status match while delivering a broader and deeper VA FFer offering than QF does which includes decent lounge WiFi, domestic PB, Fly Ahead, family points, SC pooling, etc.

When VA builds their F Lounges at Syd and Mel, which I'm sure are in their plans, QF will have very little advantage over VA.

Actually it isn't as cheap and easy as you think. I know as I am dealing with the very same issue at the MCG and their solution won't be in place until next year. There was a note earlier that the QP's would be upgraded from November onwards. if there is nothing done or announced by then, i'd start getting annoyed (me personally I will continue to use my 3g and soon 4G card as i prefer the security on it).

Also I have not seen any VA lounge anywhere near as crowded as the QP's and that will certainly make a difference.

 

[Heleigh]

Re: Qantas domestic Lounges pathetic wifi

In Aust. (I may jinx myself) but in four year of using my laptop in J Dom and three years for F lounges (with the exception of twice) I haven't had any real issues with Wifi.

Having said that the last time in Melb J (2nd Sept) my wifi was perfect but lady opp. had no luck and asked if I was on wifi.

 

[serfty]

Wireless at 54 mbps is, in fact, the "radio" rate, not the user data rate. You will see at best, 22-24mbps user data rates on a 54mbps radio link. That's, at best, a 3mBytes/sec download or transfer rate. That's it - nothing faster than that....

So that's about 6 minutes for 1Gb counting a bit of overhead (3Mbytes/sec is about 1000/3 = 333 seconds).

That 6 minutes assumes that your wireless has no interference, yours is the only device tapping into it and there are no other issues.

Imagine 10 people trying to do this at once - if bandwidth is shared equally, that now become an hour.

How many does one often see in a lounge?

 

[TonyHancock]

Re: Qantas domestic Lounges pathetic wifi

That 6 minutes assumes the seeders can fill your download rate, that your wireless has no interference, your's is the only device tapping into it and no other issues.

Seeders? Surely you are not suggesting that members here might be using bittorent software to download movies?

I'd love to be able to use high speed internet, in the lounge, to pick up TV shows, but unfortunately it does rather mess things up for others. :-|

 

[serfty]

Seeders? Surely you are not suggesting that members here might be using bittorent software to download movies? View attachment 3751 ...

Not at all, in fact I removed that bit as it's not directly relevant to Lounge bandwidth usage (other than if they can't keep up then usage will be less and downloads slower but that's another story).

In any case; I have had some success using the link posted here by Mal:

.
http://www.australianfrequentflyer....ogram/lounge-wi-fi-gone-27207.html#post388912

(Of course book-marking this is a good idea as it's a bit difficult to look up if you can't connect.)
​

.
Also, here's a post from the end of February that explains things somewhat:

...

It turns out, their WiFi is being intermittantly overloaded as it was desgined capacity-wise essentially for computers (only) to connect, which was small-volume, but with so many people with smartphones, as well as continually using the wifi and auto-connecting (meaing large numbers connected, even if not actually downloading), and that they are always on, meaning always connected, the wifi in many of the lounges is being re-assessed to try and make it more reliable, but obviously would be an investment that would have to pass all the usual internal hurdles I imagine. I guess feedback from those experiencing issues might help to push the case.
... .

 

[Oneworldplus2]

Re: Qantas domestic Lounges pathetic wifi

A movie can easily be 700MB in quality decent enough to watch on a small screen. I often grab TV shows in lounges when I have been travelling and missed them.

Serious?

If people are watching YouTube and d/l 700mb torrents, of course it's going to be slow for everyone.....

Some mine-sites have free internet, albeit restricted. This makes getting e-mail a reality because you don't get people hogging the bandwidth downloading Days of our Lives.....

 

[iqis60]

Re: Qantas domestic Lounges pathetic wifi

Sorry if this isn't completely on topic, but I thought I'd jump in and explain a bit on bit torrenting and the effect on connection quality on a network.

Bit torrenting causes a secondary issue that most people don't know about. It is possible for only few computers running bit torrent software on a network to slow it down to crawl, even if they are only asking for 20% of the available bandwidth.

How? Bit torrenting works on the principle of downloading the one file from hundreds of sources at the same time. This means you can get your data fast, but you are also making many times more individual packet requests of your equipment than normal downloading. This isn't a problem if you have high quality switching infrastructure, but as it's a reasonably new phenomenon, most consumer router/switch/modem combos just don't have the computing power to manage bit torrent loads well. So what ends up happening with a basic router is it's processor memory fills up completely with packet requests from the bit torrent client and slowly works its way through them. You're packet request to see the Australian Frequent Flyer site also makes the list, but it has to wait it's turn.

An analogy might be one person turning up to Coles with a truck and asking for 5000kg's of product versus 4000 people only wanting a total of 1000kg of product. It takes 20 times as long to look after all those individual shoppers, as they all need to be served and that is time overhead, even though they only want 20% of the amount of product.

If you have a home router and do bit torrenting, you may have experienced this already. You have a bit torrent going and try to surf the web, but connection speed is rubish. You might blame your connection and reset the router, which results in a few minutes of improved connection speed. You are only seeing relief because the bit torrent client hasn't filled up the router with packet requests yet. Ten minutes later the speed slows down again as the packet requests rack up again.

What does this all mean? Either Qantas and other carriers lounges need to get some more expensive switching equipment, or we all need to be mindful of our fellow lounge users and save the bit torrenting for home. If you are going to use bit torrent software in the lounge, perhaps go into your bit torrent client configuration and configure it to only make a small amount of requests at any one time.


Why do I know this? I may have been a frustrated gamer in a share house in a former life .

 

[Balwyn3103]

Re: Qantas domestic Lounges pathetic wifi

The $5 per hour charge in the QF J lounge at Melb strikes me as mean spirited too. Similar experience in hotels. At the Hilton inn Seoul last month for over $20 a day it took 30 mins most times to load my emails.

 

[Oneworldplus2]

Re: Qantas domestic Lounges pathetic wifi

The $5 per hour charge in the QF J lounge at Melb strikes me as mean spirited too. Similar experience in hotels. At the Hilton inn Seoul last month for over $20 a day it took 30 mins most times to load my emails.

I agree.

Enter lounge
Get a seat somewhere
Grab a drink/snack/meal
Attempt to log onto the WiFi Network
...Finally log on
Nothing happens, wait more...nothing happens
Then a $5 Broadband ad pops up on your screen.
Not happy

 

[ozmille]

The $5 per hour charge in the QF J lounge at Melb strikes me as mean spirited too.

I have never paid for internet in the lounge (SN lounge in BRU except)... When did they start charging for lounge wifi?