6 February 2007

TransACT wireless hotspots?

| johnboy
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Last night when setting up to record the Rugby Podcast in All Bar Nun I was a little surprised when my laptop asked me if I wanted to join the AllBarNun network. Always on the lookout for places I can scrounge a bit of bandwidth off in comfort (and even better with a pint) I joined the network without difficulty.

When I tried to access a website I was asked for a userid and password and offered the chance to join for free. Dutifully I filled in my details and was promised an email had been sent to activate the account. To let me access the email I was given a 20 minute window out onto the net which seemed to work fine.

Now the email doesn’t seem to have actually arrived and I was shortly too busy to sort it out (it’s possible the error lay on my side). But I can’t see any detail on this service on the TransACT website or a mention of it amongst their media releases.

Anyone know anything else about it?

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Nerdvana were the folk setting up the free wifi hotspots around the place. Started out at Valentinos, and moved to Pancake Palour because of interference. They’ve got one at Deli Marco in Dickson as well.

And in doing so commits quite a major crime.

“It’s a victimless crime, like punching someone in the dark”

shiny flu is gonna BURN!

And in doing so commits quite a major crime.

Just a point in passing: If you’re on a Mac, look for a torrent of KisMAC… cracks most Wi-Fi hotspots with ease for free internet 🙂

Thanks for the tips shauno!

Cafe Gaudi in Westfield Woden Plaza has free wireless. You just need the SSID which is ‘cafegaudi’.

When I first came to canberra, I liked to go to that cafe in dickson withthe free wireless, and dranks a couple of coffees in my hour. It was during quiet periods, if it started to get busy I’d feel guilty and clear off 🙂

I saw an article about a year ago of cafes in the US removing wireless access as it encouraging sitting in silence and not buying much coffee (just a bunch of people sitting one per table with a laptop for an hour).

url

Just a little off topic but still about wireless. When I was staying in City Plaza apartments in Jan there were numerous wireless networks most of them secure. I was amazed to see the CPS credit union wireless network. Not only were they still broadcasting ssid so we could know they had a wireless network but on top of that they were only secured by WEP not the latest AES or AES2 encryption which I found pretty amazing considering it was a bank. I was going to go down and tell them but didn’t get around to it.
I always use AES2 with a 256bit randomly generated key. Pus I disable broadcast SSID and only allow the MAC address of the PC I want connected to the network. In my travels I must have downloaded GB’s of data from numerous unsecured wireless networks lol. No longer do this in Singapore though because its now been made ilegal

McDonalds wifi requires you to have a Telstra account with the wifi option, or you buy a prepaid card to access. Found that out the hard way.

Who was the Canberra mob that tries to get wifi into all the bars and restaurants? They did Gus Cafe didn’t they? There was an article on it here ages ago.

Many places (The Front, Cafe Deli Marco off the top of my head) figure the coffee you drink more than makes up for the bandwidth you use, and give it to you free, with no hassles.

agreed on the authentication (not sure exactly what I was getting for my free registration though).

but it looked like it was part of a network which I thought was interesting and I’d like to know more.

I notice some McDonalds around town are offering wireless hotspots. I thought it was standard procedure that you have to pay to use these.

VYBerlinaV8_now with_added_grunt10:58 am 06 Feb 07

To clarify, they may just have their own wireless router connected to a DSL or other internet connection.

VYBerlinaV8_now with_added_grunt10:56 am 06 Feb 07

Standard approach used in the US to authenticate users of wireless networks, except they normally expect you to pay (which of course you can do by credit card when you authenticate on their web page).

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