Saved by a 3G card

When I was on holiday in Italy last year I booked my hotel room safe in the knowledge that the hotel offered WiFi (albeit, as a paid option). They even gave me the room right above the wireless router so I'd get the best connection possible.

To begin with everything was OK, internet browsing and email downloading accomplished without a problem. However, it soon became clear that sending email wasn't working and I just couldn't work out why. Initially I thought it might be a connection problem, perhaps it was dropping out during an extended handshake with the SMTP server. Then I thought it might be the SMTP server itself so I downloaded a number of free versions to run directly on my laptop. Nothing worked. Eventually, after a lot of testing, it became clear that the problem was probably a firewall configuration setting somewhere (either at the hotel or their ISP), probably intended as an anti-spam measure. Chances of getting it fixed by the hotel receptionist in a reasonable time period? Pretty slim.

Fortunately one of my travelling companions had a Vodafone Mobile Connect 3G data card with them. After installing the software and logging on to their account I could send mail to my heart's content. In the end it was a valuable lesson, WiFi is popular and usually works well but you never know if the provider is set up properly or securely for your needs. When I got back I bought a 3G card of my own and have been enjoying peace of mind and freedom of movement ever since.