Not connecting to free wi-fi.

(05 Jul 2012 05:20 AM)J.S.Egan Wrote:  This is probably the wi-fi's fault, rather than the Kindle's.

I will try to explain!

When wi-fi was invented, the folks who invented it accounted for two scenarios - free, open networks; and closed, private networks.

They didn't account properly for the in-between case, where the hotel wants to allow you to use the network for free, but they also want to know who you are, so that if you do something illegal it can be traced back to you.

So, what happened is that subsequently, the people who made the wi-fi boxes had to hack-in methods of doing this. And sometimes, these methods are not very well tested, especially for hardware with quite limited capabilities like the Kindle.

So the problem you experienced is probably that the wi-fi box sent a non-standard message to your Kindle during the connection process (probably a request to bring up a browser window with a login for, where you enter your room number) and the Kindle didn't understand this, and assumed the connection was just dead.