Comments on: What are all those WiFi hotspots, anyway?

By: Mike Cane

Mike Cane — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 18:24:16 +0000

If it says linksys or Netgear, I don't bother. Can never connect with the 770.

By: JeffGr

JeffGr — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 17:37:30 +0000

You actually choose to watch a movie about an airline hijacking during a flight??? :)

By: Code E

Code E — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 15:35:40 +0000

Where I work we have 3 secure connections using a cisco aray, but we also have 7 honey pots. If you set your wifi card to scan you see over 30 hotspots

By: jk

jk — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 14:01:20 +0000

I suspect that all of your answers are correct for some of the hotspots. They always seem to have one NETGEAR and one LINKSYS router, too. :)

By: Mike Cane

Mike Cane — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 12:01:03 +0000

I get that all the time with the 770. My favorite is hpsetup -- WTF?! Is that for like a WiFi printer or print server? Never gets me anywhere, anyway.

By: Mike W

Mike W — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 11:23:52 +0000

Just like to make a note on Steve’s (isbeller) comment above. If you are planning a wireless network Always use encryption as well.

It’s only the work of about 5 minutes in Linux to use a sniffer (which in Linux can be set to grab packets not addressed to your MAC addr.) to find a valid one, then spoof it.

So now random guy has access to your network with no real traceable footprint, and ANYONE can see all the info traffic.

Mike W

By: Philip Ferris

Philip Ferris — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 10:17:34 +0000

My guess, from similar (though far fewer) at bristol airport is that they are purely networking local computers between offices in the airport - much easier than having to lay cable.

By: tyler

tyler — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 10:04:28 +0000

The other option (depending on your WiFi setup) is you are seeing other users' PCs that have their WiFi turned on. Obviously, these would not be gateways to the "series of tubes" either.

By: Scotty

Scotty — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 10:03:03 +0000

I haven’t been to GB Airport yet but at Seattle Tacoma I get 1.2Mbps via my Samsung ZX20 and Cingular’s HSDPA network.

WiFi hot spots are rapidly becoming irrelevant to me, so long as Cingular can keep their network servers running that is…

By: lsbeller

lsbeller — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 09:28:49 +0000

These networks may also be using a MAC access control list that allows them to not have to deal with encryption keys but only allows specific MAC addresses to access the network.

Steve

By: Jan Peter

Jan Peter — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 07:56:34 +0000

Hi JK, It might be that those networks have a proxy server installed. Since you, as uninvited guest, don't know what machine acts as a proxy you can't instruct your browser which proxy to use. Therefore all your http request are shot into the local network instead of to the internet.

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