Peter

I was trying to use the Ipad2 on a train today.

It barely worked.

What it looks like is this:

The Ipad uses wifi in preference to GPRS/3G. That is reasonable.

The problem is that nowadays the majority of wifi access points are
commercial ones (especially at railway stations through which the
train passes, even if it does not stop) and these are unusable BUT
they are not encrypted so the Ipad tries to connect to them.

A smart thing to do would be to test connectivity to a known site
(e.g. apple.com) but it evidently doesn't do that...

But every time the Ipad comes across an apparently good wifi signal it
tries to connect to it, which buggers up the GPRS/3G operation.

A second part of the problem is that the strategy for dumping a wifi
signal and reverting back to GPRS/3G is very slow. It seems to take
almost minutes, so encountering a bit of commercial wifi fairly often
means you get NO connectivity at all.

The solution is to disable wifi if on a train, but that's pretty
stupid.

Also the Ipad2 displays GPRS as 3G which is wrong.

Deux

On Thu, 08 Sep 2011 22:38:46 +0100, Peter wrote:

> The problem is that nowadays the majority of wifi access points are
> commercial ones (especially at railway stations through which the train
> passes, even if it does not stop) and these are unusable BUT they are
> not encrypted so the Ipad tries to connect to them.

Settings > Wi-Fi > Ask to Join Networks

Change the above setting to on.

nospam

In article <v4di67ttc9j1a3cf72890sg69mhrs9uj53@4ax.com>, Peter
<nospam@nospam9876.com> wrote:

> But every time the Ipad comes across an apparently good wifi signal it
> tries to connect to it, which buggers up the GPRS/3G operation.

turn off automatically join wifi networks.

> A second part of the problem is that the strategy for dumping a wifi
> signal and reverting back to GPRS/3G is very slow. It seems to take
> almost minutes, so encountering a bit of commercial wifi fairly often
> means you get NO connectivity at all.

it's definitely not minutes. it's a couple of seconds.

> The solution is to disable wifi if on a train, but that's pretty
> stupid.

no, that's not the solution.

> Also the Ipad2 displays GPRS as 3G which is wrong.

nope. a small 'o' indicates gprs.

Whiskers

["Followup-To:" header set to uk.telecom.mobile.]
On 2011-09-08, Peter <nospam@nospam9876.com> wrote:
> I was trying to use the Ipad2 on a train today.
>
> It barely worked.
>
> What it looks like is this:
>
> The Ipad uses wifi in preference to GPRS/3G. That is reasonable.

It is if you know there are accessible wifi access points within range.

> The problem is that nowadays the majority of wifi access points are
> commercial ones (especially at railway stations through which the
> train passes, even if it does not stop) and these are unusable BUT
> they are not encrypted so the Ipad tries to connect to them.

I find BTFON and BTOpenzone access points distract my Android, too; I'm
sure there's an app out there somewhere that would enable all such access
points to be ignored, but I haven't found it yet.

> A smart thing to do would be to test connectivity to a known site
> (e.g. apple.com) but it evidently doesn't do that...

To do that it would have to have successfully nogotiated an IP number with
the access point first; it's the attempts to do that which which are
wasting energy and time on smartphones.

I think the real problem is (as you mention) that smartphones seem to
assume that absence of WEP or WAP encryption in the details broadcast by an
access point, means that it is 'open' for all to use. That isn't a safe
assumption.

> But every time the Ipad comes across an apparently good wifi signal it
> tries to connect to it, which buggers up the GPRS/3G operation.
>
> A second part of the problem is that the strategy for dumping a wifi
> signal and reverting back to GPRS/3G is very slow. It seems to take
> almost minutes, so encountering a bit of commercial wifi fairly often
> means you get NO connectivity at all.
>
> The solution is to disable wifi if on a train, but that's pretty
> stupid.

Is it? Makes sense to me; if the train hasn't got a wifi access point of
its own for you to use, why waste your smartphone's resources by having it
constantly looking for a wifi connection? Even truly open access points
near the trackside will only be within range for seconds if the train is
moving, so not worth trying to connect to.

I don't know about the iPad, but there are Android apps or widgets that
make it very easy to enable or disable wifi (and internet data, and GPS,
etc) without having to navigate through the 'settings' menu.

> Also the Ipad2 displays GPRS as 3G which is wrong.

I'll leave that one for iPad users to comment on!

--
-- ^^^^^^^^^^
-- Whiskers
-- ~~~~~~~~~~

Dave Wade

"Peter" <nospam@nospam9876.com> wrote in message
news:v4di67ttc9j1a3cf72890sg69mhrs9uj53@4ax.com...
> I was trying to use the Ipad2 on a train today.
>
> It barely worked.
>
> What it looks like is this:
>
> The Ipad uses wifi in preference to GPRS/3G. That is reasonable.
>
> The problem is that nowadays the majority of wifi access points are
> commercial ones (especially at railway stations through which the
> train passes, even if it does not stop) and these are unusable BUT
> they are not encrypted so the Ipad tries to connect to them.
>

So do most things, my XP Netbook & Android

> A smart thing to do would be to test connectivity to a known site
> (e.g. apple.com) but it evidently doesn't do that...
>

It would succeed on port 80 as the transparent proxy intercepts all
connection and produces the logon page...

> But every time the Ipad comes across an apparently good wifi signal it
> tries to connect to it, which buggers up the GPRS/3G operation.
>
> A second part of the problem is that the strategy for dumping a wifi
> signal and reverting back to GPRS/3G is very slow. It seems to take
> almost minutes, so encountering a bit of commercial wifi fairly often
> means you get NO connectivity at all.
>
> The solution is to disable wifi if on a train, but that's pretty
> stupid.
>

I don't see why its stupid. The stupid thing is to have an open network
that's not open. Even a simple password scheme, say where the wep key was
the same as the ssid, or the ssid was say pw=123456 would solve this.

> Also the Ipad2 displays GPRS as 3G which is wrong.

Others have answered this

Michelle Steiner

In article <v4di67ttc9j1a3cf72890sg69mhrs9uj53@4ax.com>,
Peter <nospam@nospam9876.com> wrote:

> The problem is that nowadays the majority of wifi access points are
> commercial ones (especially at railway stations through which the train
> passes, even if it does not stop) and these are unusable BUT they are
> not encrypted so the Ipad tries to connect to them.

Curious that for the rest of us, the iPad puts up a dialog and asks whether
we want to connect to the WiFi networks when it encounters one that it has
never connected with before.

I wonder why yours works differently, pEter.

--
Tea Party Patriots is to Patriotism as
People's Democratic Republic is to Democracy.

Peter

Deux <deux@none.none> wrote

>On Thu, 08 Sep 2011 22:38:46 +0100, Peter wrote:
>
>> The problem is that nowadays the majority of wifi access points are
>> commercial ones (especially at railway stations through which the train
>> passes, even if it does not stop) and these are unusable BUT they are
>> not encrypted so the Ipad tries to connect to them.
>
>Settings > Wi-Fi > Ask to Join Networks
>
>Change the above setting to on.

OK; that's a reasonable compromise.

Peter

Whiskers <catwheezel@operamail.com> wrote

>> The Ipad uses wifi in preference to GPRS/3G. That is reasonable.
>
>It is if you know there are accessible wifi access points within range.
>
>> The problem is that nowadays the majority of wifi access points are
>> commercial ones (especially at railway stations through which the
>> train passes, even if it does not stop) and these are unusable BUT
>> they are not encrypted so the Ipad tries to connect to them.
>
>I find BTFON and BTOpenzone access points distract my Android, too; I'm
>sure there's an app out there somewhere that would enable all such access
>points to be ignored, but I haven't found it yet.
>
>> A smart thing to do would be to test connectivity to a known site
>> (e.g. apple.com) but it evidently doesn't do that...
>
>To do that it would have to have successfully nogotiated an IP number with
>the access point first; it's the attempts to do that which which are
>wasting energy and time on smartphones.
>
>I think the real problem is (as you mention) that smartphones seem to
>assume that absence of WEP or WAP encryption in the details broadcast by an
>access point, means that it is 'open' for all to use. That isn't a safe
>assumption.

There are some "wardriving" programs (of the "Netstumbler" variety)
which can be configured to report only networks which actually deliver
connectivity all the way to some specified site.

This enables all the commercial APs (which nowadays dominate the scene
outside one's home, here in Europe anyway) to be ignored.

But Apple have banned wifi scanners from the Apple shop - after a
brief period of allowing a few in. I am seriously considering
jailbreaking my Ipad for this reason alone (is there a downside? - I
don't think so).

Roland Perry

In message <j4bjo5$7os$1@news.albasani.net>, at 00:40:04 on Fri, 9 Sep
2011, Dave Wade <dave.g4ugm@gmail.com> remarked:
>> A smart thing to do would be to test connectivity to a known site
>> (e.g. apple.com) but it evidently doesn't do that...
>
>It would succeed on port 80 as the transparent proxy intercepts all
>connection and produces the logon page...

They often don't intercept whatever port Tweetdeck is using. I had one
of those in the USA the other week (and have seen it in other parts of
the world) viz: a subscription wifi service at an airport/hotel which
give "free" access to Twitter.
--
Roland Perry

Peter

Roland Perry <roland@perry.co.uk> wrote

>In message <slrnj6igkt.eo5.catwheezel@ID-107770.user.individual.net>, at
>23:33:01 on Thu, 8 Sep 2011, Whiskers <catwheezel@operamail.com>
>remarked:
>>> A smart thing to do would be to test connectivity to a known site
>>> (e.g. apple.com) but it evidently doesn't do that...
>>
>>To do that it would have to have successfully nogotiated an IP number with
>>the access point first; it's the attempts to do that which which are
>>wasting energy and time on smartphones.
>
>There are simpler ways to test for connectivity than looking for a
>website. Trying a DNS server for example. On my laptop the first
>application (by far) to notice that a connection has been made is my
>VoIP, which is presumably looking for a particular SIP server.

However, doesn't DNS get through a lot of the commercial sites?

Hence we have e.g.
http://thomer.com/howtos/nstx.html



Maybe UDP would be even better but a) only a VPN work work over that
and b) surely the commercial wifi APs block UDP... it would be such an
obvious workaround. No DHCP required, etc.

Also, don't the "pay by the hour" commercial sites use the client MAC
# to control access by?