Airport WiFi

In Geneva earlier today and with time to spare in the lounge before flying back I decided to see what speed I could get from the free WiFi service.

With two tests I was seeing speeds in excess of 90 Mbps down and 55Mbps up ... https://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/14949578907... with bursting to 120Mbps down and 65Mbps up - not bad at all on a free shared connection that I know others were using at the same time.

Back in Heathrow, I used the arrivals lounge and was the only one there ... and I tried again. This one gave under 3Mbps on the single thread and 12Mbps on the x6 with upstream at just 2Mbps. https://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/14949679028...

Terminal 2 at Heathrow is the new part of te infrastructure - why did they not put in good high speed connectivity - typically British cutting corners to save a few pennies.

I have made good use of the Geneva airport wifi, mainly to checkup on my Easyjet flight. The only problem is that they only allow you 1 hour.

It is now up to 90 minutes and you can log off and then logon again.

Fortunately in the business lounges the limits are a lot better ... there are none!


The service quality and speeds were excellent. They must have a very high capacity link seeing te numbers using it.

I remember there was an article a while back highlighting how poor the WiFi connections are in some of the UK's major airports. I agree, some investment is needed.

Edited by deleted (Wed 17-May-17 19:19:29)

There is an article here highlighting how poor the WiFi connections are in some of the UK's major airports: https://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/7614-airport-wi-...

Edited by deleted (Wed 17-May-17 19:30:40)

That's it! Thanks!

Edited by deleted (Wed 17-May-17 19:55:31)

I know, and why they did not bother with decent infrastructure in LHR T2, I do not know. They also put ridiculous filters on stopping access to totally legal (not XXX rated) websites too.

In reply to a post by MHC:

It is now up to 90 minutes and you can log off and then logon again.

That is good news. I was going to say that I thought you had to use both a different mobile phone and a different laptop/etc to keep connectivity after your hour was up.

You now get a code from a scan of boarding pass or passport ... then logon/off as required. You can change device but teh total usage per code is 90 minutes, as I understand it.

That's UK for you..
https://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/7614-airport-wi-...

I'd be interested to see if anyone's tried Leeds Bradford Airport recently?
If anyone is passing, I can send a link to our airport version..

Have you tried actually browsing at some of them? The restrictions in place on web sites you can visit can be ridiculous. At Heathrow, I wanted to look for a Beretta Jacket - no, it is unsuitable to browse. One afternoon in T2, I managed to get a list of around 100 websites that were not accessible - all were legal, not containing violence, pornography, illegal material or any other reason to bar access.

In reply to a post by MHC:

Have you tried actually browsing at some of them? The restrictions in place on web sites you can visit can be ridiculous. At Heathrow, I wanted to look for a Beretta Jacket - no, it is unsuitable to browse. One afternoon in T2, I managed to get a list of around 100 websites that were not accessible - all were legal, not containing violence, pornography, illegal material or any other reason to bar access.

Nope.. I usually VPN..

Given what a Beretta is, and allowing for elementary filtering rather than sophisticated, that's not too surprising.

A colleague tried some VPNs - and bars were on some of those too.

And? what is wrong with Beretta? Illegal? No. Immoral? No. Obscene? No.

?
I did say "elementary filtering rather than sophisticated". A Beretta is a gun. You were at an airport.

Obviously you couldn't buy and receive one there before take-off, but a potential interest in guns could trigger a block.

The person constructing the filter could easily just have been searching for keywords.

Clearly an unnecessary block. All I was doing was suggesting what may have happened.

MI5 are on MHC's case now.

I know why ... but there is no reason.

What is illegal about having a gun at an airport? Provided it is licensed and the person has "good reason" there is no problem BA passengers take hundreds of guns a week through Heathrow.


They do not stop access to pornography though!