Town of Amherst Wifi Problems

This forum thread is for sharing problems that you've had with the Town of Amherst wifi.

I think the Town's wifi system is broken and needs to be fixed. I've emailed the town a few times about it but never got a response from them so I created this thread for people to talk about it.

Security certificate problems

When you first connect to the Town of Amherst wifi system, it redirects you to the IP address 1.1.1.1 and shows a warning for an invalid security certificate. In Firefox 3, it's difficult for a non-tech savvy person to understand how to override the warning.

Here's an example of what an invalid security certificate looks like in Firefox 3 — notice how it gives the user the option to "get me out of here!" That doesn't make one very comfortable with accepting the invalid security certificate.

Accepting the invalid certificate in Firefox 3 requires several steps which may not be intuitive to users who aren't tech savvy. Also, it can't be accepted on some mobile devices such as my wifi-enabled mobile phone.

This makes the Town of Amherst wifi inaccessible on some Internet browsing devices.

Occasionally, the following screen will be shown which prevents accepting the certificate and connecting to the Town's wifi at all:

Kicked off problems

Another problem with the Town of Amherst's wifi is that it kicks people off the network every hour or so. The often happens during the sending of an email or some other critical task. When wifi goes down in the middle of certain tasks, that task can't be recovered — for example, editing an email or forum post that submits the content with something called AJAX.

I don't expect to use the Town of Amherst's wifi for mission critical tasks, but would like a basic level of functionality without worrying about getting kicked off the network every hour.

Your experiences?

What kinds of experiences have you had with the Town of Amherst's wifi? Is it working for you or are you encountering the same issues?

Here's a video if you would like to see it in action. First I try with Firefox and can't get online because of an invalid security certificate. Then I try with Internet Explorer and am warned not to continue.