How do wi fi hotspots work?

ALTEA

I'm thinking of buying a wifi pda and am wondering how these wifi hot spots work that you see available in some public places and hotels etc. I was mainly wondering how you get connected to a hot spot and how you pay to connect and any equipment that i might need and what can you do through a wifi hotspot connnection?

DrBenway

i've only used ones in hotels (travelodge) and airports but basically you give the owner £X pound and you get X minutes/hours access. You log onto a website and use the login and password provided and you get access.

IIRC travelodge is £10 for 24 hours but does come in lesser time periods.

And BT Openzone used to be a real rip off although you could use it in more than one "zone" if you happened to come across another.

Technically you have to setup your wireless to be DHCP and connect to wireless network.

Be warned that you will be on a public local network and nothing stopping someone trying to comprimise your machine.

slowen

ALTEA wrote:

I'm thinking of buying a wifi pda and am wondering how these wifi hot spots work that you see available in some public places and hotels etc. I was mainly wondering how you get connected to a hot spot and how you pay to connect and any equipment that i might need and what can you do through a wifi hotspot connnection?

Dont know loads on the subject but as long as you have wifi built into the PDA it should pick up the wifi signals within the area and you can try and connect to them. Some wifi signals are locked down so you require the password to use them and some require payment for the use of the companies service like in McDonalds and Starbucks etc....

If you do a google search for wifi hotspots you should get some hits back and find out what wifi hotspots are in your area

Here is an article from the Gadget show which is on Channel on a Monday and they had a stop on wi-fi last week which the article is about and hould give you some information
http://gadgetshow.five.tv/jsp/5gsmain.jsp?lnk=401&section=Features&show=s5e9&featureid=250&description=Free%20WiFi

TheFlyingGerbil

If you use BT Broadband at home some of their packages include free use of the public BT Openzones.

Joe

donn_2

If you're going to use WIFI, be carefull what access rights you leave on your own personal files. Everyone who is on the same WIFI network will be able to access everything you share accross it

Darksun

donn wrote:

If you're going to use WIFI, be carefull what access rights you leave on your own personal files. Everyone who is on the same WIFI network will be able to access everything you share accross it

More importantly, all information is being broadcast unencrypted, so don't log into any sites unless they're SSL secured.

chuckles1066

DrBenway wrote:

Be warned that you will be on a public local network and nothing stopping someone trying to comprimise your machine.

Excellent advice; if you've got shared folders on your laptop that you safely and merrily share on your home network, you'll find anyone using the same hotspot will be able to see them.

One guy staying in the same hotel as me in Cornwall a few weeks ago was loudly telling someone on his mobile at breakfast how he'd just checked his online banking courtesy of the free hotspot the hotel had provided.

I wonder if his account has been compromised yet.............

ALTEA

Thanks for your help. I was really wondering how you pay to use wifi? Is there just one company that owns all the hot spots and you pay them with a credit card for access or are there loads of companies that you have an account with. how is it all paid for?

DrBenway

It is just down to who owns/runs the hotspot.

You'll see little BT Openzone/T-Mobile logos etc... in the places who run them.

Some cities are now trying to have full coverage by one supplier so you can move round the city using the same provider.

Just google "wifi hotspots" in the uk and you'll get loads of links.

Some are pay in the hotel/cafe/pub and the bigger companies do online
payment packages.

-TangleFoot-

This just in at Personal Computer World - UK gets first unified Wifi service:

Divine Wireless has done a deal with leading Wifi hotspot suppliers including BT Openzone, The Cloud, Surf and Sip to offer consumers a one-stop shop for wireless access to the internet. The service covers most of the UK and encompasses more than 15,000 hotspots.

ioscorpio

Is it any better to use GPRS like T-mobile's web n walk

http://www.t-mobile.co.uk/Dispatcher?menuid=ctl_change_state&nextpageid=plans_webnwalk&customerCategory=personal&WT.mc_id=QM_Buy.at&PURL=valuemobiles.at/OSD&P36=4Q4WLN&CID=0&CTY=8

or Three's X series

http://www.three.co.uk/xseries/index.omp?id=1184