Getting Online, On the Road

[Dr. Richard C. Cassin-2]

washingtonpost.com: Getting Online, On the Road washingtonpost.com
Getting Online, On the Road
WiFi Access Points Are Becoming More Abundant, But They Are Not Always
Openly Advertised

By Daniel Greenberg
Special to The Washington Post
Sunday, April 25, 2004; Page F08


"Where can I get WiFi in Cranberry, Pennsylvania?"

The call came from a musician friend on tour. She was traveling between gigs
and hoping to avoid a side trip into Pittsburgh just to check her e-mail and
update her Web site. But that's the tricky thing about WiFi Internet access
away from home: To search for ways to get online, you usually need to be
online.

There are numerous options out there, from coffeehouses to hotels to schools
to restaurants -- but many of these WiFi-blessed establishments don't
advertise this amenity, or note it only by slapping a tiny sticker on their
window.

So the best way to find WiFi access, free or otherwise, is to hit the Web --
repeatedly, since there is no such thing as a single, comprehensive,
up-to-date inventory of WiFi access. Instead, you'll have to bookmark a
group of Web sites, then remember to check them before you leave the house
with a laptop.

JiWire (www.jiwire.com) is the most approachable of the bunch; you can
search by address or category of hot spot.

Better yet, it offers a free, downloadable application that lets you look up
WiFi access when you're between hot spots. (Remember to refresh this
program's database when you do get back online, lest you conduct your
searches based on old data.)

A site called NodeDB.com (www.nodedb.com) offers a worldwide database of
WiFi access. In the Washington area, it lists 22 volunteer-run WiFi access
points in Virginia and Maryland, but none in the District.

Other sites can help fill in blanks like that. Wi-Fi Free Spot
(www.wififreespot.com) includes only no-charge locations.
Wi-FiHotSpotList.com (www.wi-fihotspotlist.com) includes both free and pay
access points.

Around the Washington area, the site of a user group called Capital Area
Wireless Network (www.cawnet.org) includes a list of public access points
("APs" in the vernacular), various Web logs, discussion forums and advice on
WiFi use in general.

But suppose you forgot to visit any of these sites before heading out the
door. Now what?

Listening to your caffeine addiction is usually a good way to start: Coffee
shops can usually be counted on to offer WiFi access. The ubiquitous
Starbucks sells WiFi access, provided by the wireless phone carrier
T-Mobile, for $6 an hour, $9.99 a day or $39.99 a month
(www.t-mobile.com/hotspot).

But many other coffee shops offer cheaper, or even free, wireless access. A
non-chain coffee shop down the street from a Starbucks will sometimes
provide no-charge WiFi, on the idea that free Internet will keep customers
around to slurp up more coffee, thereby padding the store's profits.

Restaurants have yet to dive into WiFi in the same way, but some have chosen
to make a point of offering wireless access. The Austin-based deli chain,
Schlotzsky's, gives away WiFi access at many of its locations, and
McDonald's is now serving up broadband with burgers for a fee in several
hundred locations nationwide.

Hotels and airports might seem like logical places to find WiFi, but the
selection can be erratic.

I've checked into hotels in wired cities like San Jose and checked out
moments later after discovering they offered no WiFi service. Among those
hotels and airports that do provide WiFi, watch out for those that charge
for a second day of use after the clock strikes midnight.

Marriott bundles WiFi as part of a $10 package of unlimited local and
long-distance calls. A growing number of hotels, however, are electing to
give away WiFi access -- even those that you wouldn't think of as tech
havens, such as Best Western.

Most airports, meanwhile, still charge for access -- it's not as if they
have to worry about losing customers to all the other airports in town. Many
WiFi spots in terminals are even more exclusive than that -- they're
positioned in the lounges that airlines maintain for elite-status frequent
fliers.

A quick check at a few online WiFi directories shows that in the Washington
area, Baltimore-Washington International Airport offers far more
wireless-access options in its public areas than either Dulles International
(one hot spot in its D Concourse) or National Airport (none at all).

What if you find yourself far from any of those sources of WiFi access, but
still want to get online? Hit the books -- many libraries offer free WiFi to
the public, as do many universities.

Borders bookstores and Kinko's locations offer the same T-Mobile service as
Starbucks.

If you find yourself at a mall sufficiently high-end to include an Apple
Store, you can count on getting free access via its WiFi network.

The cheap and the desperate can resort to cruising town with an open laptop,
hoping to stumble across a WiFi access point left open by the generous, the
uninformed or the lazy. The practice is known as "wardriving," and it often
works -- in any major city you don't have to go far to find these sources
and surf on someone else's nickel.

You don't even need to lug around a laptop; Kensington (www.kensington.com)
and SmartID (www.smartid.com.sg) make small, cheap devices that detect WiFi
signals.

WiFiMaps.com (www.wifimaps.com) attempts to catalogue these open access
points, as well as the paid and free ones listed on other sites. It allows
searching by several useful criteria and welcomes visitors to add their own
WiFi finds to its database.

A few warnings are in order about borrowing strangers' WiFi without asking.
This is dubious legally and ethically; assuming that a hot spot has been
left open deliberately is unwise, especially since so many WiFi access
points fail to prompt their users to secure them with a password.

Nor is there any easy way for a willing owner to confirm to visitors that he
or she intended to make that access point a public resource. WiFi
enthusiasts have come up with a set of "warchalking" symbols to draw on
walls or sidewalks to identify public hot spots, but I've seen them only
once -- along K Street downtown -- and not recently.

There are also major privacy risks in using a borrowed hot spot, since all
of your activity can easily be recorded by the hot spot owner. Then again,
if this owner were technically savvy, the access point probably wouldn't be
left open in the first place.

If even this last resort fails you, the best option is the low-tech route
employed by my musician friend: Call somebody with old-fashioned wired
Internet access and ask for help.



? 2004 The Washington Post Company



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