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[Brian Coat]

I regularly use BT Wifi with Fon service when away from home.

I use my BT login and have obtained good upload and download speeds from 'non-Public*' BT hotspots, usually 10+ MBPS up & down, occasionally capped at 0.5, which I assumed was when the BT customer needed the bandwidth. No problem, I just hopped across to another (non-public) Hotspot.

But lately I've noticed that all the non-public hotspots are clamped at 0.5 MBPS, all the time.

I know you can only expect 0.5 but there's a big difference between "0.5 when others need their bandwidth" and "0.5 all the time".

*By non-public I mean homehub hotspot, not a business.

QUESTION: does anyone know if there has been a policy change?

[Brian Coat]

I found the reason.

It is not a slow service from BT.

It is wifi crosstalk between multiple home hubs.

They can't see each other but I can get traffic on same wifi channel from more than 1 hub.

A partial fix is to ensure the wifi inside the house in very different freq from the HH being accessed but there are still multiple HHs using same channel, within range of my USB wifi router.

If I connect to a weaker but not-cross-talky HH signal then I get 10MBPS, if home user not using b/width (their priority).

I have troble getting the router to select the right MAC address even when I tell it to.

I have a project to fix this using a Raspberry Pi as a custom router.

[Brian Coat]

Just a follow up on my Rasperry Pi precision hotspot selection project.

It works.

I have had the Raspberry Pi system working for a while now.
I have OpenWRT router software on the Pi
I use it to connect to the hotspot I want by specifying the precise MAC address in the .conf files
You can't do this on most (any?) normal routers.
(The Alfa R36 lets you specify it then ignores it 1/2 the time!)
The 9 dBi usb wifi aerial is connected to the Pi via a powered USB hub to keep things cool.
I then repeat the internet connection across to the Pi's ethernet port using RELAYD software
I then plug the existing Wifi router into the Pi and make sure my house's wifi is not on the same channel as the hotspot.
You only have to log into BT Wifi once every 24h and we get good broadband speeds considering the hotspot is 100s metres away - ca. 10 MBPS.

If you have a project like this to do, I can supply details.

[RobertABT]

Hi, I'm working on a project with a wi-fi bridge and would quite like to know more about how you are connecting with the BT wi-fi hotspots. Do the Mac's have to be specified? i want to set up so that it will connect to a hotspot without needing to connect a screen etc to it externally. If i can I'd like to continue using wpa_supplicant to manage the connections, but at the moment it won't connect me to a bt wi-fi hotspot at all.

[Brian Coat]

I know it is pretty useless me replying to this a year later but someone else may need the answer.

Your just log onto BT wifi from your iPhone or whatever at htttp://btopenzone.com:8443

The pi has OPENWRT installed - don't try without. It works but is very slow (well was for me).

The Pi is connected to the BT hotspot as a wifi client (DHCP) on wlan0 but without login.

The OPENWRT RELAYD package bridges wlan0 and eth0 (don't try a wlan-to-wlan bridge, its a nightmare).

How to set this up is on Youtube : Use this method
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Vi91fTqsEU

The wifi router attached to the Pi as it's eth0 client via ethernet cable and fixed IP.

[I use a Fon router]

Your phone/tablet is the wifi client of the router (DHCP).

You have to make sure that the house router and the BT wifi hotspot are on very different channels.

You do not have to specify the MAC but you can easily do so via OPENWRT's Luci webinterface. It automatically updates wpa_supplicant and the other config files. You can also edit them manually via Putty or whatever as per normal Raspberry Pi work.

The reason you may want to specify the MAC is because with a good aerial, you might be able to access 20+ networks called BTWiifi-with-Fon and the best one won'tr necssarfily be the one with the strongest signal

(Imagine 3 networks, all strong and on channel 6; one slightly weaker but fine on channel 11; those 3 may be too weak / far-apart to interfere with each other but could really confuse your mega-aerial!!).

Hope this helps someone out there.

I am working away a lot in digs (with no wifi) at the moment and am using a similar set up. 20MBPS, no problem. BT login only falls over every 24h or so. Don't believe all this talk of speed caps on BT Wifi - if there is its pretty high unless you are an online gamer etc.

Hope this is useful to someone.