Hotel internet problems

So. I am using my semi-new Mac Book Pro that I bought in February 2009. I take great care of it so I am not the issue here.

I am at a Fairview Marriot hotel in Cleveland, TN. On vacation. I was able to connect to their internet wirelessly two times. I worked on some stuff, emailed some documents. Shut my Mac off.

Later I tried to get back on. I connected successfully, but no internet page would load. I tried FireFox, Minefield and Safari. IChat wouldn't connect either. I called the front desk, they said there were no problems. They gave me a Cat.6 and still, even though it said it was connected, it wouldn't load any internet pages.

My sister's HP connected and loaded everything fine. A few hours later, I went into my network prefs and deleted their network from my saved networks. Then I rediscovered it and connected and now it works great! I am actually connected via the Cat.6 right now. I am afraid to try to go wireless.

Unfortunately, my sister's HP got kicked off immediately after I connected. Hers is now experiencing the same issues as I was.

Are we just out of luck. Does the hotel just most likely have a crappy 802.11 b network, so our computers are just too fast for it? Any help would be great!

A lot of times hotel networks are pure crap and there is never anyone on sight that can help or answer questions. You will probably be stuck with sketchy service for the duration of your visit. Times like these (and I have had many) make me very thankful for my Verizon broadband connection.

Good luck, I hope you have better luck later on.

I figured that would be the deal. Thanks for your time. If i were rich I would just tether to my verizon cell phone, but I am not rich. Ha.

Most Hotels I have stayed at have an 800 number you can call for Internet problems. They ask you a lot of questions but they have always been able to fix my issues when they arise.

I suspect that if you had looked at the Network Pref Pane on your Mac when it said it had a connection but the internet wouldn't work it would have told you "Connected but self assigned IP". That's the hotel network having issues with your Mac for some reason and it's a common problem. Usually restarting the Mac with the Ethernet cable plugged in overcomes this, but not always,

i learned you have to open a browser first and authenticate with the hotels network. make sure you do that first and then open email or whatever you are using.