Luke, a wifi network cannot be confined by walls and spills a few meters, sometimes dozens of meters, outside the premises where the network is installed. All you have to do is stand/park in that area and you're connected. There are softwares that you can run on the computer that will beep whenever you cross one of these networks. Usually these networks are setup so that you can't access the network owners computers or servers but the Internet connections is left open and unprotected. The process of roaming around looking for these networks is called “War Driving”. Search the net for more info on this, there are even sites which lists such hot spots.

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A.B.

OasisPhoto.com – Images from the Magical Sahara.
ShortWheelbase.com – Jeep preparations.
Coordinates Converter – Lat/Long <-> UTM Conversion Tool.

Having slogged a WiFi compatible pc around West Africa without knowing about this "war driving" phenomenom I wonder if someone could put up info on hotspots in the towns on the major overland routes.
Michael, did you keep GPS coords of where you found a signal? Perhaps you could pop them up on your super site. (one day I'll buy myself a GPS for city navigation)
Cheers
Luke

Hi Luke, sorry to hear about the tenant problems. We've been very lucky in that regard - the same tenants in for 22 months so far...

WifFi hotspots: We only got our wireless kit when we got to the States, so no info regarding the opportunities in Africa or South/Central America. At first we tried checking for hotspot locations on the internet, but this turned out to be a waste of time. You have to find an Internet Cafe, find a reasonably up-to-date HotSpot page, make notes of a few likelies, then navigated to a Promised Spot, and goof around trying to find a signal, only to discover the guy has turned it off, or decided to encrypt the signal. In fact, we had a zero percent success record for finding free access by that method.

We also noticed that the ones we found ourselves were mostly here today, gone next week. It was still pretty quick to find alternatives, though. But as a result we didn't bother recording any specific locations.

Internet Cafes: Like you, we tended to just ask if it's possible to connect our laptop. If the Cafe has implemented simple Internet Connection Sharing, it's generally a simple matter (though sometimes they don't know it's possible, and don't want you to try), If they have a more sophisticated system, it generally isn't worth getting into reconfiguring your laptop. In theory, we could attach our Wireless AP to their network, and get wireless access from the vehicle, but in practice that's understandably too scary for most of them.

In Guest houses(or friend's houses!) with a single Internet-connected PC, it's possible to get permission to hang the USB NIC on that computer, and bridge to the Internet through the two wireless NICs. Better still, connect the Wireless AP to their internet connection, and run both computer off the NICs. (Btw, we don't have a global ISP number, we have to use the host's connection).

Pics etc. in emails: For using the satellite phone, we configured IE not to download pictures when browsing pages. If you want to see a specific pic on a page, right click on the place-holder, and select "Show Picture". We configured Outlook to download headers only - now we can selectively delete anything that looks like spam, pick up urgent stuff, and leave stuff with attachments on the server for a better opportunity.

Roman, the repeater type wireless AP is a WAP that can also act as a repeater. You cannot extend the range of a wireless network by using several WAPs, unless you daisy-chain the WAPs together with Ethernet cable. Unless the WAPs are capable of working in repeater mode, in which case they receive and regenerate the wireless signals, thus increasing the range.

We'd attach the high-gain antenna to the WAP, and use it inside the vehicle in repeater mode. Any signal it receives is repeated (amplified) and can be used by both the "desktop" computer, and the laptop (which has a very poor antenna).

Hope some of this makes sense!

Regards,
Michael...
www.expeditionoverland.cm


[This message has been edited by SandyM (edited 22 January 2005).]

I shouldn't tell you this as I want to buy one soon but toughbooks regularly go on ebay for under 150 squids

watch out though as there is one muppet on there who charges the earth for postage and doesn't seem very nice. he is easy to spot, most of his adds contain the word 'rare'

His feedback rating is only about 96% and I think he goes under the name of the Toughbook Shop

andy

landy 101 camper
daihatsu fourtrack
landy 110
www.plymouth-dakar.com