Cognitive Resonance

GNER Wifi Update

Well, I said I’d do an update testing the service so here I am – this is written somewhere just north of the Border. This time I’ve paid £4.95 for one hour’s worth of connection… which isn’t such great value.

Firstly, some technical details. The first thing I noticed is that there are actually three seperate WLANs detected: gnerwifi (unsecured and with an excellent connection), and two others, named “EC53FG” and “EC53EF”. Both of these were roughly at half strength, and were “security enabled”. As I’m sitting in the middle of Coach F, I guess there’s one access point at the end of each coach. The naming appears to be as follows: “EC##” being the train set identification number, and the last 2 letters referring to which coaches the access points cover.

You fire up your browser, which is redirected to a payment page. After having handed over your card details, you can click “start” within the browser to start your time allowance. My network details are (currently) as follows:

DNS Suffic: gnerwifi.train
IP Address: 10.101.1.217
Subnet: 255.255.240.0
Gateway, DHCP and DNS Servers: 10.101.0.1

Anyhow, to return to my earlier commments about the speed of the service. On closer examination, I can see “gnerwifi” that it uses 802.11b – so the theoretical maximum data transfer from laptop to access point will be 11Mbps. I think this is rather short-sighted of GNER, as a single coach can hold something like 70 people… if even one quarter decided to all use the net at once, it would slow to a crawl. This will be particularly important in the future, with more and more IP-enabled devices.

However, the actual data transfer rate is far from the theoretical even of 802.11b. Downloading a file of ~ 8MB varied between 1KB/sec and 10KB/sec, depending on whether we were in a remote area surrounded by hills, or in a more open area. Unsurprisingly, at 1KB/s the net is practically unusable. It’s better at 10KB/s, but still not ideal – that is only just over double regular 56K dialup…

Carrying out the speed test at ADSLGuide as we were passing near Dunbar revealed an approximate speed of 35.5Kbps and upstream of 14.9Kbps – Hmhh….

My conclusions are very much the same as before – if you need internet access on the go, it works and works reasonably well. In patches – noticeably rural and hilly areas – the service slows down considerably, but it still suffices for basic web browsing and other similar tasks, Don’t even think of doing any truly high-bandwidth tasks – it’s not worth it. Also, it is still best value for long journeys, or when included with an advance booking First Class ticket.

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So, I came home for Reading Week on Friday 3rd November with GNER. I almost always take their direct Aberdeen-London HST service from Leuchars to Peterborough, as it’s both fast and doesn’t involve a change and wait in Edinburgh (9.20, 11.20, and 4.16ish daily from Leuchars). Originally, when Wifi started being fitted to their electric fleet as part of the “Mallard” refurbishment, GNER did not mention anything about fitting it into the diesels… however, this summer, they announced that they were both ahead of schedule and would be fitting it to the HSTs.

I’ve blogged about GNER’s Wifi service previously, before I had ever had the chance to use it. That chance came last week, and I signed up for 24 hours usage at £9.95 (much better value than £7.95 for up to 2 hours). My thoughts? Well… it was certainly a novel experience browsing the web at 120mph!

First impressions – well, it wasn’t very fast. I wouldn’t even consider trying to download Service Pack 2 through it! I didn’t conduct any speed tests (perhaps next time), but I imagine at best that it wasn’t more than 3 or 4 times dial-up speeds (~150Kbit/sec, perhaps). I am not sure whether the speed has been capped per client, or whether it was simply a large number of people using the service on my train – there were certainly lots of laptops open. At times, it was rather slow – certainly comparable to dial-up. This somewhat limits its usefulness, as Web 2.0 apps demand rather more bandwidth than simple HTML. However, it was still possible to use Gmail and GCal reasonably effectively. and MSN/GAIM worked quite happily. There were occasional dropouts, as well, and not in the places – like tunnels – one might expect! In the ~4 hours I was using it, I experienced 2 or 3 dropped connections.

Overall, I am fairly impressed – I’d rate the service 8/10 for effectiveness and 6.5/10 for value for money. I think that at the moment, it’s only really worth paying for the Wifi connection on long journeys (mine lasts 5 hours) – shorter periods of time are simply too expensive. However, I am sure the technology will mature further – I also intend to conduct some more tests to find out how fast and reliable the connection actually is. The service does work as advertised, though – and that’s pretty impressive and very useful.

Hint – the best thing to do is travel First Class by booking well in advance online and buying the “GNER First Advance” tickets. The cheapest Standard ticket usually available for my journey is about £22 Single. If you book far enough ahead, you can pick up the cheapest First Advance ticket for £32 Single – £10 more expensive. Now… for 5 hours worth of Wifi, you’d be paying £10 anyhow – and in First class, there are other perks: large, comfortable seats and tables, free snacks and drinks, and a complimentary newspaper. In fact, even without Wifi, you’d make most of your £10 back just from the food and paper! Because First Class also offers free Wifi, it really is an excellent deal – and to that end I’ve booked myself onto those £32 First Advance tickets for coming back at Christmas and returning in the New Year – a total cost of £65, when a regular Saver return with Young Person’s railcard discount is almost £60. Bargain!

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So, I’ve not been updating this anywhere near as much as I should have been or intended to. Oops. I’ll do my best to update it more frequently…

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