umam95•5mo ago

Stumbled on a free tool that fixed my slow internet in hostels

I was stuck in a hostel in Medellin for 3 weeks where the wifi dropped every 30 minutes. I tried using a VPN thinking it was throttling, then switched DNS to Google's, but nothing changed the disconnects. Finally I ran a simple ping test for 10 minutes and noticed the router was rebooting every time someone plugged in a device. I found a free app called WiFi Inspector that mapped the network and showed me the router was overloaded with 40 clients. I asked the front desk to reset it at 5am when everyone was asleep and it ran smooth for days. Has anyone else found a solid alternative to relying on hostel wifi?

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3 Comments

harper_wright5mo ago

Honestly, I read somewhere that some hostels just have cheap routers that can't handle more than like 15 people at once. That WiFi Inspector trick sounds smart, might try it next time I'm stuck in a spotty place.

8

rosek445mo ago

Yeah the "cheap routers" thing is spot on. Most hostels buy whatever's cheapest at the electronics store, which is basically garbage for handling 30 people streaming Netflix at once. The WiFi Inspector thing helps a ton though, I actually used it to find the best spot in a room last month and got like triple the speed.

7

david7394mo ago

Most hostels don't think about WiFi until guests start complaining NONSTOP at the front desk. A decent business router would fix 90% of these problems but they'd rather save fifty bucks.

5