Great Western Coffee Shop

I notice from the FGW press release https://www.firstgreatwestern.co.uk/About-Us/Media-Centre/2015/march/time-spent-working-on-train-contributes-millions-to-uk-businesses (https://www.firstgreatwestern.co.uk/About-Us/Media-Centre/2015/march/time-spent-working-on-train-contributes-millions-to-uk-businesses) that they have installed wifi on HST's and Sleepers and of course it is already on 180's.

But this morning I noticed that wifi is also being rolled out to those of us who travel on lower speed services  ;) as there was wifi available on the 165 I was travelling on.
This is the first time I have noticed this and I must say it seemed very fast (at least compared to the phone signal in the same location). Does anyone know if it is now being rolled out across all the fgw 165/166 fleet as I haven't seen it announced in any fgw press releases?

Yes, its being installed on all Turbos.  It was mentioned as part of the refresh work being carried out on the Turbo fleet

I believe. There was one of the refurbished 165 units on the newbury to reading service the other morning...looked impressive

While I am grateful for this expansion, I have been an occasional use of the Adelante WiFi for a few years now and make the observation that 25% of the time it fails to connect completely (probably just needs rebooting ) and 50% of the time there is very limited download speed even when sitting at oxford station.....and it gets worse when the train departs into the wilds of West oxfordshire.

It works on network availability of 3G & 4G - no network, no wifi.

Totally agree ChrisB. If you use (for example) a 3g/4g mobile on a train it gives a variable experience but imagine sharing your 3g/4g connection with loads of other people on the service which is what happens with on-board wifi.

I must admit even if there is on-board wifi I tend to use my own mobile data connection - slightly more reliable (IMHO)

Yes, I've got a Three/Hawai 4G/3G 'dongle'.....best ^50 I've spent. ^10/GB of data, used regularly, haven't used 1GB in just under a month.

The onboard wifi is not restricted to one network provider.  The equipment is fitted with SIM cards from all the major phone providers automatically selecting the strongest signal. 

Thanks a-driver - do you know if each coach has their own access point and set of SIM cards (or are the SIM cards - and therefore the mobile comms) shared between all the coaches in a DMU set?

They're shared across the set. Most routers only have 254 DNS addresses however, so not everyone will obtain connection - especially if they're greedy & some log on with phone, laptop & tablet.

Which works out at roughly one connection per seated passenger on a 3-car Turbo, which, given that by no means every passenger will want to use it to balance out those that are connecting with multiple devices, should be enough for all but the busiest trains I would have thought?  The connections per passenger ratio is of course increased further on a 2-car set.

As with other public connections at such places like hotels, buses, pubs, shops etc., I'm sure some will have problems accessing it at times, but bearing in mind it is free I don't see how you can justify complaining too much!

Yup, totally agreed. I hope someone can tell me I'm wrong, but there's only one on an HST too.

DNS addresses? I don't think that's quite correct. Most routers will however be using a single network with arround 254 IP Addresses in the 192.168.x.x 'private address space' range. The DN in DNS stands for 'Domain Name' and most hosts on a WiFi network will I believe not have a domain name, only an IP address.

I suspect this may have been a typo but you are right and I think this has been discussed earlier in this thread. In practise on this type of class C address (I'm simplifying the trout) there will be 253 available addresses as the router itself needs one. Anything that attaches to the router (through wifi in this case) will try and acquire an IP address using DHCP which will set the default gateway and DNS of the client device to the routers IP address.

Yup, I meant IP addresses. But each device does need its own

Sideshoot question ... how long are the IP address leases?   If someone gets off at Slough, will the same IP address be available to someone who gets on there, or will they have to wait until Maidenhead for it to be released?

You made the same point in the "Why I travel by train" post and have had a pretty detailed response from thetrout here:

http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=15479.msg172478#msg172478

Very good point Graham -  and I dont know the answer to this. I know I had to understand the DHCP protocol for an exam I did many years ago and seem to remember there is a "renewal" exchange that takes place half way through the DHCP lease period so my guess would be that if the client has gone off line before this happens that address would be available to another device.

I've just checked my DHCP on my home network (using a SKY hub) and the lease times - which I know won't be the same as for on-board wife are as follows

Lease Obtained. . . . . . . . . . : 11 March 2015 14:36:05
Lease Expires . . . . . . . . . . : 15 March 2015 01:42:44

Which seems an odd period to me but works out at 3 days, 11 hours, 6 minutes and 39 seconds. So I am guessing the DHCP renewal takes places late in the second day. I would hope that the lease times for on-board wifi are wound right down. I would suggest that for an HST service the max they should be is 2 hours with renewal after 1 hour (IMHO)

 ;D ;D ;D

I have found that on-board wife reduces the need for an internet connection. Wife leases tend not to expire (I had one expire once and it got very messy!)

Lol :) I will leave that typo uncorrected. I had a version 1 wife which believe supported standards n,a and g (or NAG as its otherwise known). Upgrade to version 2 was messy and expensive and wouldn't want go through the upgrade process again.

I have an on-board wife, which is good. I can't stand ironing.