nytimes.com— Don't pay for wi-fi in a hotel again! Portable wi-fi hot spots that you can plug in anywhere and browse the web, courtesy of your favorite cellular provider.
Feb 23, 2006View in Crawl 4
Mousky: same here, pretty much all hotels use free wifi now, and have a free hard line as well. Just this past weekend I was at a Best Western in PA and we hooked up a router and played Live on an Xbox. Good stuff.
Cheaper hotels have free wifi... I stayed at a La Quinta and had a nice free WiFi connection... Then I stayed at doubletree (which is part of hilton hotels) and paid $9.95, then a couple of nights later I stayed at a hilton and paid $12.95 a day for internet and it was the same system as doubletree (hhonors). So you see, the $75 room at the La Quinta had a free connection and the $225 suite at the hilton was $12.95... Of course, assuming your wifi card has the capability, if you can get the MAC address of another computer using the network you can set a locally administered MAC address on your system and possibly gain access that way, I think if they are using it at the time that you try it then either they will lose connectivity or you will because I assume the IP address is linked to the MAC address.
so umm...why pay for a router when you can stick the card into your laptop with a direct connection, and then create a passworded adhoc to share it only with those you trust/want to? Works out virtually the same but saves you money and gives you a direct connection...
yanks2435Feb 23, 2006
Mousky: same here, pretty much all hotels use free wifi now, and have a free hard line as well. Just this past weekend I was at a Best Western in PA and we hooked up a router and played Live on an Xbox. Good stuff.
Closed AccountFeb 23, 2006
You can make one of these
jrsmithFeb 23, 2006
Cheaper hotels have free wifi... I stayed at a La Quinta and had a nice free WiFi connection... Then I stayed at doubletree (which is part of hilton hotels) and paid $9.95, then a couple of nights later I stayed at a hilton and paid $12.95 a day for internet and it was the same system as doubletree (hhonors). So you see, the $75 room at the La Quinta had a free connection and the $225 suite at the hilton was $12.95... Of course, assuming your wifi card has the capability, if you can get the MAC address of another computer using the network you can set a locally administered MAC address on your system and possibly gain access that way, I think if they are using it at the time that you try it then either they will lose connectivity or you will because I assume the IP address is linked to the MAC address.
tidejweFeb 28, 2006
so umm...why pay for a router when you can stick the card into your laptop with a direct connection, and then create a passworded adhoc to share it only with those you trust/want to? Works out virtually the same but saves you money and gives you a direct connection...