Tips for Accessing the Internet Away From Home & Wireless Hotspots

Posted by on 10/13 at 02:51 PM

Whether traveling for business or pleasure, having Internet connectivity and email while on the road is becoming a vital way of life for many people. Hotels, airports, libraries, train stations and of course, the ubiquitous coffee houses all offer wireless service. Some are free and some charge a fee. But how do you connect and minimize broadband frustration when out of the house?

Read Full Article Here:
http://www.geeks.com/techtips/2006/wireless-hotspots-tips.htm

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    Posted by Rob Dunn  on  10/14  at  08:34 AM

  1. Another alternative is using something like a BlackBerry (or other cell phone) that supports connecting to their data network.  This could get you away from having to purchase a PCMCIA card (which essentially is billed to you like another cellular account).  The downside to this is that data rates differ depending on what signal type you get (and what your phone will support), and you cannot take voice calls while you are connected.

    The nice thing is that some phones offer a Bluetooth connection so you don’t have to be tethered to connect to the Internet.

    Also, if you want to connect to your home office, consider something like Hamachi (http://www.hamachi.cc) that offers a free encrypted VPN solution which is very easy to set up, even if the networks are sitting behind NAT or advanced firewall configurations.

    Yet again another nice article.  Great work guys!

    Rob
    ‘Confessions of a freeware junkie...’ - http://maximillianx.blogspot.com

    2. Posted by Larry  on  10/15  at  03:27 PM

  2. Truck stops also offer internet access - usually free with a fill up they will give you a password for 24 hours use - some you have to subscribe to monthy, and some you pay for it daily - also, the places called travel plazas also offer wifi service for a daily fee- or you can go in and make a purchase and it’s free.

    3. Posted by Jorge  on  10/15  at  04:46 PM

  3. Great helpfull information, really simple to understand.

    4. Posted by dave m  on  10/15  at  08:00 PM

  4. RE: Geeks Humor Top 10 Signs Your Cat Has Learned Your Internet Password

    OnLy a tRuE “MacGeek” would know about CyberDog wink kuddos on number FIVE.. Clarus, good dogcow, good girl!....

    5. Posted by Lestin  on  10/16  at  02:05 AM

  5. Very good, keep it comming…

    6. Posted by ww  on  10/16  at  08:43 AM

  6. Chris,

    I liked your article, but I think you gave too little attention to the question of security on WiFi service, in a public place or not.

    WiFi signals are radio, use well-defined and therefore non-secret protocols for establishing and maintaining connections, and are always eavesdroppable by anyone in range of the signals. low power signals to be sure, but radio propagation is notoriously unpredictable in practice and so counting on being ‘too far away to be overheard’ isn’t very sensible.

    If your signals are available to all (the only reasonable assumption) than the only way out is to make them meaningless. Because the ‘meta information’ must be available to anyone, that part of every WiFi interaction can’t be so protected. But the content travelling on a WiFi link can be. That’s the point of the various security protocols for WiFi (WEP, WPA, WPA2, 802.11i).

    WEP is cryptographically defective in the sense that breaking its confidentiality is almost (though not quite) trivial. One of hte reasons is insufficient key length.

    WPA is a partial implementation of 802.11i (prior to its adoption and for marketing reasons) and should be interoperable across vendor implementations (note the ‘should’).

    WPA2 is claimed to be the same as 802.11i, and so far seems to be so. The name was chosen for marketing reasons. 802.11i is a well thought out standard. Unfortunately, it has several variants, some of which are less practically usedul (or insecure as typically used) than others. It allows use of pre-selected keys or negotiated keys. Pre-selected keys are problematic since users will often set them and forget them—always bad crypto policy since keys should be changed frequently lest their deiscovery (theft, ...) render security (future, and past if anyone’s been recording traffic) null. And, there is always the problem of safely exchanging keys—in this case between the software running a WiFi Access Point and that in a WiFi client. Especially if one is on the road and using a WiFi hotspot in some cafe or bookstore, and a different one the next day.

    Automatically negotiating keys is better, save that one is relying on the software on both ends to be uncorrupted. So, if the software in an Access Point has been modified to write a copy of each agreed upon key to some file for later inspection and use by an attacker.  Not a good result. About all one can do is to encrypt one’s traffic before it’s even passed to the WiFi software/hardware in your machine. Even if the WiFi security (eg, full-bore 802.11i) is broken the result will still be gibberish and so, ideally, confidentiality.

    This implies, however, that the ultimate receipient (say a Web site) must be prepared to cooperate. Since your browser may be interacting with a dozen Web servers to present a single page on your machine, this will be commonly be multiple (independent) negotiations. That’s a lot of overhead. Most of the Web sites one wants to communicate with aren’t likely to be prepared to do so. In practice, the best partial solution is some sort of encrypting proxy service, such a commercially, Hush. But that doesn’t work well for email (unless your email is all through Yahoo or some such—unlikely to be acceptable for company confidential information) or FTP or ... Maybe SSH is the best approach for those sorts of problems.

    In short, I think that there is currently no good solution—in practice—for the WiFi securiyt problem.

    7. Posted by upirons  on  10/18  at  09:37 AM

  7. I also go to http://www.wireless-hotspots.com to check for hotspots, mainly for upcoming vacations so I can use my PDA to keep up on email. The site you mention in the blog is not as thorough but it does do a better job of listing the hotspots it does find. I say, the more sites you use, the more options you will have. Happy hot spot hunting!

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