[kennedy]

At a hotel, whenever I am connected on any of the wireless routers in the rooms or in the public areas, iChat will often give me the following error message (twice) when I type in a message:

"An AIM service error occurred. Error: Serv:RequestTimeout"

Worse, 80% of my outgoing emails do not send. A few will go out.

In contrast, when I am on the network in the internet cafe downstairs, I have no troubles whatsoever. I would have assumed it was just a difference in the routers used, EXCEPT...

A colleague with a white MacBook (as opposed to my newer MacBook Pro) has no problem in the room... sitting right next to me... accessing the internet with identical settings to me at the same time... our machines inches away from each other.. He has always gotten a little strong signal than me... better antennae in the MacBook than in the MacBook Pro, it seems... he's getting 3 bars where I get just 2. (In the internet cafe I get 4 bars.)

Soooo, I wonder if it could be that the signal weakness is resulting in just enough packet failures such that it doesn't get through without timing out most of the time. Whereas his slightly better reception results in him rarely having problems.

Thoughts? Suggestions?

[Cold Warrior]

Try connecting over ethernet from your room to see if it makes a difference.

This is really a networking problem (at the moment), so I've moved it there.

[ibook_steve]

In my travels, I have found a wide range of Internet positives and negatives at different hotels. I've had wireless that has varied from really great to really spotty to slower than dial-up. If a hotel I'm staying in has a wired connection, I'll always use that over the wireless. That way, I can also enable Internet sharing so I can use my MBP's wireless instead of the hotel's for my iPod Touch.

It boils down to the fact that you can't really rely on hotel wireless.

Steve

[Cold Warrior]

A great compromise is to travel with an airport express. I keep it in bridged mode and plug it into my room, that way I get wifi for my devices (iPhone, MBP) but over my own wpa2 link.

[ghporter]

Originally Posted by Cold Warrior 

A great compromise is to travel with an airport express. I keep it in bridged mode and plug it into my room, that way I get wifi for my devices (iPhone, MBP) but over my own wpa2 link.

And always keep a 10' or so Cat5 cable with you, just in case. I've stayed in some hotels that had WiFi with lousy coverage due to how it was set up, but no wired connections. And I've stayed in hotels that had both great WiFi and wired connections. Having a cable and not needing it beats needing one and not having it.

Lots of people used to pack a cheap Linksys router so they could do what CW describes, but not only are those routers much bulkier than an Airport Express, they may or may not support N, WPA2, etc; an Express is inexpensive enough to make it a great traveling companion that takes up minimum space.

[Cold Warrior]

oh yes, the cable is standard kit for the notebook bag. Some hotels keep them at the front desk for guests, others don't, so it's helpful to keep one in the bag.

[kennedy]

What about hotels, like this one, that have no wired connections... just wireless?

Any suggestions on why the MacBook is doing great while my MBP is doing horrible???

[kennedy]

I originally posted this in the Apps forum because it seems more like apps not handling slow connections properly (and timing out) rather than inherent network problems. I connect... I can ping... I get mail, but slowly... I can chat with people... I can access many web pages... etc.

iChat gives stupid timeout errors that I have to OK, but otherwise I am able to chat with people fine. Its just damned annoying.

Mail sometimes will send. It does better in periods where there's less traffic. If you watch the activity bar, you see it transferring the email, reaches 100%, but then gets stuck, but seemingly times out, fails to complete the SMTP protocol, and so the email doesn't go out.

Safari works pretty well with plain pages... but the more interactive and larger the pages are, the more problematic it becomes.

Given the performance of the MacBook, it seems the Apple applications have a point where they stop functioning properly... my guess is that their timeouts are too short and/or being handled improperly. Hence, I believe this is more of an app issue that I am raising than a networking one.

Any chance I can repost this question back in the Apps forum?

[Cold Warrior]

I'll move it for you since you feel strongly about it.