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San Francisco's Got Free Wi-Fi

Posted by timothy on from the leave-your-heart-and-brain dept.

Carpoolio writes "If you're living in San Francisco, chances are you can connect, for free, to the BARWN -- the Bay Area Research Wireless Network. BARWN broadcasts an 802.11 signal from the top of a big hill near San Francisco, and anyone with a clear sight line to the signal can connect. Another set of wireless nodes are being placed around town by SFLan, making Wi-Fi available to tens of thousands of people."

1 of 156 comments (clear)

  1. Does anyone benchmark these? by vudufixit · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Look, no one should complain about a "free" connection, but I'm curious to know how fast the typical user's connection really is. After all, the access point has to be connected to a terrestrial data line, which has limited bandwidth. Of course, the more people find out about this, the slower it gets for everybody, right? Does anyone know if those who provide "free" wireless access have an upgrade plan to handle the additional traffic?