From: "Ed Durrant" <os2-wireless_users@2rosenthals.com>
Message-ID: <4534A0F0.9080608@bigpond.net.au>
Date: Tue, 17 Oct 2006 19:22:56 +1000
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To: OS/2 Wireless Users Mailing List <os2-wireless_users@2rosenthals.com>
Subject: Re: [OS2Wireless]Another weird motel situation
References: <list-436929@2rosenthals.com>
In-Reply-To: <list-436929@2rosenthals.com>
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Julian Thomas wrote:
> After a great Warpstock X in Windsor (many thanks to Lewis and all the
> rest of the folks who made it such a great event) we hit the road towards
> Niagara-on-the-Lake where we had planned a birthday dinner for MJ.  We
> made good time (somewhere between what googlemaps thought was the
> acceptable time and what Edgar suggested as his best time :-).  Ended up
> at a Hilton Garden Inn there.
> 
> First of all, the wireless wouldn't connect.  XWLAN said that it was
> trying to establish the connection (don't remember exactly what) but it
> had a good signal and the hilton SSID.
> 
> So I switched to wired (they had both in the rooms) and it got through
> with no problems - until we tried to send email.  It didn't go - I tried a
> telnet to my SMPT servers on port 25 and neither of them connected.  Tried
> port 2525 (suggested as an alternate by my hosting service to access their
> relay server) and it seemed to go through.  Unfortunately my mailer -
> MR2ICE doesn't allow setting an alternate SMTP port.
> 
> Looks like these guys are blocking any access out of their little world to
> port 25.
> 
> HGI is part of the Hilton empire, and we've never had these problems from
> the Hampton Inns (our usual choice in that empire).
> 
> If I get a round tuit in the days to come, I will send them a blast email;
> the desk clerk seemed quite clueless about this situation.....
> 
>  
You'll probably find some local supplier has installed it for the hotel 
and they won't know how it works. Blocking e-mail traffic is not unusual 
on hotspots I have found, so it's useful if you have a webmail interface 
on your e-mail server (or your service providers if you're not running 
your own mail server).

It's also possible that the WiFi access point was using WPA, but this 
would be strange, but that would explain why you could see the SSID but 
not connect.

Cheers/2

Ed.