When we were on a cruise a few weeks ago we took a HooToo TripMate Nano
HT-TM02 travel router so a single logon account on the ship's wifi network
could be shared by a couple of devices (my laptop, my phone, my wife's
phone) rather than one of us having to log out before another could log in.

The network is open security (no WPA password) and its SSID is not hidden.
You need to log on to a captive authorisation page in order to access the
internet. The principle is that you connect the router to the wifi network,
connect a phone/laptop to the router's own wifi (or Ethernet), logon to the
ship's captive page and then other computers connected to the HooToo's wifi
can also access the internet.

The passengers' wifi network was definitely visible to phones/laptops, but
it did not show up in HooToo's Network | Internet | Wireless Access | SSID
dropdown (using the router in Bridge mode). I found that a random selection
of other networks (crew-specific network, and a few shore-based ones while
in port) were visible, but the list varied wildly from one scan to another,
and the passenger network was never present in the scanned list. Scanning
for networks on a laptop, the ship's wifi strength was 3 out of 4 bars, so
it's wasn't a weak signal to blame.

Any suggestions what I might have mis-configured? Is it possible for the
ship to block access to travel routers, by excluding their MAC address
range? I would have thought that even with MAC-address filtering, the SSID
would have been visible, even if it rejected a connection?

I've used the device in the past (last time was in 2019) on the same ship. I
tried the device at home before I set off and I've tried it again since we
got back, and it can see all the networks that phones/laptops can see, and
it performs as expected in terms of rebroadcasting one wifi network as
another one.

NY <me@privacy.invalid> wrote:
> When we were on a cruise a few weeks ago we took a HooToo TripMate Nano
> HT-TM02 travel router so a single logon account on the ship's wifi network
> could be shared by a couple of devices (my laptop, my phone, my wife's
> phone) rather than one of us having to log out before another could log in.
>
> The network is open security (no WPA password) and its SSID is not hidden.
> You need to log on to a captive authorisation page in order to access the
> internet. The principle is that you connect the router to the wifi network,
> connect a phone/laptop to the router's own wifi (or Ethernet), logon to the
> ship's captive page and then other computers connected to the HooToo's wifi
> can also access the internet.
>
> The passengers' wifi network was definitely visible to phones/laptops, but
> it did not show up in HooToo's Network | Internet | Wireless Access | SSID
> dropdown (using the router in Bridge mode). I found that a random selection
> of other networks (crew-specific network, and a few shore-based ones while
> in port) were visible, but the list varied wildly from one scan to another,
> and the passenger network was never present in the scanned list. Scanning
> for networks on a laptop, the ship's wifi strength was 3 out of 4 bars, so
> it's wasn't a weak signal to blame.
>
> Any suggestions what I might have mis-configured? Is it possible for the
> ship to block access to travel routers, by excluding their MAC address
> range? I would have thought that even with MAC-address filtering, the SSID
> would have been visible, even if it rejected a connection?
>
> I've used the device in the past (last time was in 2019) on the same ship. I
> tried the device at home before I set off and I've tried it again since we
> got back, and it can see all the networks that phones/laptops can see, and
> it performs as expected in terms of rebroadcasting one wifi network as
> another one.
>
>

Your Tripmate set to USA configuration and ship using channel 13?

https://crnetpackets.com/2015/06/23/basics-facts-about-wlan-standards-in-north-america-and-europe/#:~:text=The%20allowed%20spectrum%20has%20a,channel%20width%20of%2020%20MHz.

"Tweed" <usenet.tweed@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:u4lr1q$32oku$1@dont-email.me...
> NY <me@privacy.invalid> wrote:
>> Any suggestions what I might have mis-configured? Is it possible for the
>> ship to block access to travel routers, by excluding their MAC address
>> range? I would have thought that even with MAC-address filtering, the
>> SSID
>> would have been visible, even if it rejected a connection?
>
> Your Tripmate set to USA configuration and ship using channel 13?
>
> https://crnetpackets.com/2015/06/23/basics-facts-about-wlan-standards-in-north-america-and-europe/#:~:text=The%20allowed%20spectrum%20has%20a,channel%20width%20of%2020%20MHz.

Hmm. Yes, I can see that could be an issue. I think I configured it for UK.
I'm also wondering whether the ship might be 5 GHz only and the HooToo can
only see 2.4 GHz networks. With hindsight I should have run a wifi channel
scanner app on my phone to see which channel the ship was using.

Something to check next time we go on a cruise.

Ah well. We managed by co-operating and talking to each other "OK if I have
the internet for a moment?" ;-)

NY <me@privacy.invalid> wrote:
> Hmm. Yes, I can see that could be an issue. I think I configured it for UK.
> I'm also wondering whether the ship might be 5 GHz only and the HooToo can
> only see 2.4 GHz networks. With hindsight I should have run a wifi channel
> scanner app on my phone to see which channel the ship was using.

It does appear to be 2.4 GHz only. I would strongly suspect the ship uses
5GHz as I'd imagine they need to provide a lot of bandwidth in a confined
space using numerous access points - 2.4G would share the same bandwidth
over a wider area and so suffer from more congestion.

Theo

On Wednesday, 24 May 2023 at 21:35:19 UTC+1, NY wrote:
> "Tweed" <usenet...@gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:u4lr1q$32oku$1...@dont-email.me...
> > NY <m...@privacy.invalid> wrote:
> >> Any suggestions what I might have mis-configured? Is it possible for the
> >> ship to block access to travel routers, by excluding their MAC address
> >> range? I would have thought that even with MAC-address filtering, the
> >> SSID
> >> would have been visible, even if it rejected a connection?
> >
> > Your Tripmate set to USA configuration and ship using channel 13?
> >
> > https://crnetpackets.com/2015/06/23/basics-facts-about-wlan-standards-in-north-america-and-europe/#:~:text=The%20allowed%20spectrum%20has%20a,channel%20width%20of%2020%20MHz.
> Hmm. Yes, I can see that could be an issue. I think I configured it for UK.
> I'm also wondering whether the ship might be 5 GHz only and the HooToo can
> only see 2.4 GHz networks. With hindsight I should have run a wifi channel
> scanner app on my phone to see which channel the ship was using.
>
> Something to check next time we go on a cruise.
>
> Ah well. We managed by co-operating and talking to each other "OK if I have
> the internet for a moment?" ;-)

Try explicitly entering the router id taken from your phone. The 2G4Hz Wi-Fi might also have a different name, so one that sticks while you sail around is probably on board, but might be an iPhone in the next cabin.

"Theo" <theom+news@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote in message
news:R+A*938gz@news.chiark.greenend.org.uk...
> NY <me@privacy.invalid> wrote:
>> Hmm. Yes, I can see that could be an issue. I think I configured it for
>> UK.
>> I'm also wondering whether the ship might be 5 GHz only and the HooToo
>> can
>> only see 2.4 GHz networks. With hindsight I should have run a wifi
>> channel
>> scanner app on my phone to see which channel the ship was using.
>
> It does appear to be 2.4 GHz only. I would strongly suspect the ship uses
> 5GHz as I'd imagine they need to provide a lot of bandwidth in a confined
> space using numerous access points - 2.4G would share the same bandwidth
> over a wider area and so suffer from more congestion.

A very good point. Given that the HooToo used to work, I wonder if the ship
had its wifi access points replaced with 5 GHz-only ones, during a minor
refit a year or so ago when they converted it from all-ages to adult-only
(by removing child-specific things like the creche and the toddlers'
swimming pool). They could have taken the opportunity of the ship being
"offline" to fit in a few unrelated changes like wifi. Shame they didn't
upgrade the TVs and signal connections to digital (DVB): the present TV
channels (both local-to-the-ship and broadcast by satellite) suffer from
*horrendous* ghosting and general blurriness: it's as if the distribution
amplifiers manage to blur the pictures in both directions - reduced
bandwidth will result in horizontal blurring but there's still the same
number of lines (575) so the vertical resolution should remain the same.

The different coverage of 2.4 and 5 is a right pain in the neck with our
mesh network at home, especially if all the nodes switch on simultaneously
after a power cut. The nodes communicate with the primary node (the one that
is connected by Ethernet to the router) by 5 GHz and so must be placed
within 5 GHz range of it or with each other. But we also need 2.4 GHz for
older devices such as our security cameras which don't speak 5 GHz, and you
can't enable 2.4 on specific nodes - it's all nodes or no nodes. This means
that the nodes have overlapping 2.4 GHz networks so the auto-channel
negotiation of the nodes has problems juggling the 2.4 GHz channel numbers
to minimise interference. The UK network only has three channels that are
non-overlapping: 1, 6 and 11 (or 2, 7, 12, or 3, 8, 13) and we have 5 nodes.
If the nodes are turned on sequentially (primary, then each of the ones
closest to it in turn, then the ones that are further away that daisy-chain
from other nodes (ie with no direct connection to the primary), then
everything is perfect: good transfer speed and good coverage throughout the
house and into the garden (for browsing while sitting in the garden!).

But turn everything on simultaneously and some nodes *never* manage to
connect: they seem to get stuck in an auto-negotiation-of-channels loop.
Sod's Law: there was a power cut while we were on holiday and the critical
node (which has our Hive central heating hub and Hue lights hub) remained
offline: we could tell this even while we were on the ship in the middle of
the Baltic, when my wife checked to see the house temperature graph. No
great problem in the summer, but in winter it can be nice to turn the
heating back up and get the house warm again, while we are still a few hours
from home.

Ideally I'd connect the nodes by Ethernet to the primary, rather than using
5 GHz as the backhaul. But that causes horrendous problems with how to run
Cat 6 cable: up the living room wall through the ceiling into the loft (it's
a bungalow), through from one part of the loft to another, which are
separated by a breezeblock fire-break wall, and back through the ceiling and
down the wall into the kitchen and bedrooms that have other nodes in - all
without disturbing the wallpaper :-( Flat Cat 6 cable will tuck along the
edge of carpets, but unfortunately there are rooms in between with hardwood
flooring and therefore no carpet to hide the cable down the edge of.

I may try moving the Hive and Hue hubs onto the primary node. The Hive one
is the critical one, because Hive needs the thermostats, the hub and the
central heating controllers all to be within range of the private (non-wifi)
wireless connection that Hive uses. I can try, and see if it still works. At
least that makes it immune to power cuts.

Either that or invest in one or more UPSes to keep the nodes/hubs alive
during power cuts - usually our cuts are only a couple of seconds: not long
enough to turn on your phone torch at night or hunt for the candles, but
plenty long enough to make everything computer-related reboot :-( And when
we get repeated power cuts every few minutes, it's not worth getting all the
nodes re-connected each time. Northern Powergen - get your act together and
sort out the high-voltage distribution to the village's substation (problems
attributed to overhanging trees or cows using electricity poles as
back-scratchers).

On 25/05/2023 13:18, NY wrote:
> "Theo" <theom+news@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote in message
> news:R+A*938gz@news.chiark.greenend.org.uk...
>> NY <me@privacy.invalid> wrote:
>>> Hmm. Yes, I can see that could be an issue. I think I configured it
>>> for UK.
>>> I'm also wondering whether the ship might be 5 GHz only and the
>>> HooToo can
>>> only see 2.4 GHz networks. With hindsight I should have run a wifi
>>> channel
>>> scanner app on my phone to see which channel the ship was using.
>>
>> It does appear to be 2.4 GHz only.  I would strongly suspect the ship
>> uses
>> 5GHz as I'd imagine they need to provide a lot of bandwidth in a confined
>> space using numerous access points - 2.4G would share the same bandwidth
>> over a wider area and so suffer from more congestion.
>
> A very good point. Given that the HooToo used to work, I wonder if the
> ship had its wifi access points replaced with 5 GHz-only ones, during a
> minor refit a year or so ago when they converted it from all-ages to
> adult-only (by removing child-specific things like the creche and the
> toddlers' swimming pool). They could have taken the opportunity of the
> ship being "offline" to fit in a few unrelated changes like wifi.
No idea what the rest of your post was about but one of the benefits of
the WiFi standards is backward compatibility. It is extremely unlikely
that any public network such as on your cruise ship would be installed
with only 5 GHz.

MikeS <MikeS@fred.com> wrote:
> On 25/05/2023 13:18, NY wrote:
>> "Theo" <theom+news@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote in message
>> news:R+A*938gz@news.chiark.greenend.org.uk...
>>> NY <me@privacy.invalid> wrote:
>>>> Hmm. Yes, I can see that could be an issue. I think I configured it
>>>> for UK.
>>>> I'm also wondering whether the ship might be 5 GHz only and the
>>>> HooToo can
>>>> only see 2.4 GHz networks. With hindsight I should have run a wifi
>>>> channel
>>>> scanner app on my phone to see which channel the ship was using.
>>>
>>> It does appear to be 2.4 GHz only.  I would strongly suspect the ship
>>> uses
>>> 5GHz as I'd imagine they need to provide a lot of bandwidth in a confined
>>> space using numerous access points - 2.4G would share the same bandwidth
>>> over a wider area and so suffer from more congestion.
>>
>> A very good point. Given that the HooToo used to work, I wonder if the
>> ship had its wifi access points replaced with 5 GHz-only ones, during a
>> minor refit a year or so ago when they converted it from all-ages to
>> adult-only (by removing child-specific things like the creche and the
>> toddlers' swimming pool). They could have taken the opportunity of the
>> ship being "offline" to fit in a few unrelated changes like wifi.
> No idea what the rest of your post was about but one of the benefits of
> the WiFi standards is backward compatibility. It is extremely unlikely
> that any public network such as on your cruise ship would be installed
> with only 5 GHz.
>

There are still a lot of older devices that aren’t able to use 5 GHz. Seems
to be asking for lots of complaints by omitting 2.4 GHz at the moment.