Austin Becoming Wi-Fi Hot Spot

Omega1045 writes "The Austin Chronicle is running an interesting article on how Austin is fast becoming the Wi-Fi Capital of the Free (as in beer) Wireless World. With the industry standardization board Wi-Fi Alliance moving to Austin earlier this year, and groups like Austin Free-Net helping local businesses, the article quotes Austin has having more hotspots 'than anywhere else on the planet'. While this article does quite a bit of bragging about Austin, it also does a great job of highlighting how businesses and local non-profits can work together to promote and profit from free Wi-Fi Internet access. This provides an excellent model for other cities to follow using tools like Less Network."

Comments

Dear Slashdot

[Letter]

Dear Slashdot,

So you can get free wi-fi...
.
.
.
but you have to live in Texas.

-Letter

Re:Dear Slashdot

[_RiZ_]

Very nicely stated. Austin is so far from the rest of Texas in its culture and people... its amazing that some folks would just lump sum the city into the state's persona... kind of like saying that everyone in San Francisco is gay. Thats very ignorant.

Saturation

[RucasRiot]

The abundant Wi-Fi saturation in the area is actually causing interference between access points. The over-propagation in the area is incredible.

Re:Saturation

[LostCluster]

The abundant Wi-Fi saturation in the area is actually causing interference between access points. The over-propagation in the area is incredible.

WiFi's collision domain is with anything else that's transmitting on the same frequencies within the 2.4gHz/5.8gHz bands. It's not just your subnet anymore, it's everybody transmitting there.

Just like how these new "Turbo WiFi" devices are suggesting using the entire 2.4gHz range instead of just 1/3 of it like the proper channel-based protcol suggests, it's a tragedy of the commons waiting to happen. When too many people are using WiFi, it'll become unusable for everybody.

Oversaturation is a big issue. WiFi shouldn't be painting a whole city in places where it wasn't asked for.

Re:Saturation

[jwcorder]

I think the key to oversaturation isn't to stop people to making these cities 100% covered. If I am reading you correctly, I infer that you are saying that you don't want to be sitting if you house and having the free connection overlapping your DSL or Cable Modem.

Well if you set your WAP up with WEP encryption, you won't have this problem. Well if you use Windows anyway. I just choose the connection I want to connect to and tell it to ignore the others. It works great especially with my key.

As far as the other devices, THIS will be a big problem. I see a future where every time the phone rings my internet gets disconnected.

Re:Saturation

[randyest]

You do realize that WEP can't magically remove interfering signals, right? It will prevent you from connecting to them, but it can't remove the impact of the interference (collisions, reduced bandwidth, and in extreme circumstances, no bandwidth.)

Oh, and I think other OSes support WEP as well. Not just windows :)

Re:Saturation

[Jeff DeMaagd]

I city can reasonably be covered if people can work out an alternating "honeycomb". With three channels, it is possible. Given that it seems to be a cooperative project, I'd say that it shouldn't be too hard.

I do wish the world goverments would grant more standard bands for stuff like this, I mean, .1 GHz at 2.4GHz isn't enough, and the 5GHz often doesn't have half the range.

Also, many of the "turbo G" and such devices aren't using a second band but rather using some odd frame bursting rather than wasting money on a second radio in both the AP and the client. They claim more than 54mbps, but that is in relation to 54mbps network performance where you are lucky to see 20mbps with one computer using one access point. There are a few that do use a second band and that's stupid. The "plus" and "turbo", etc, really only bet 30mbps actual performance.

Re:Saturation

[femto]

> When too many people are using WiFi, it'll become unusable for everybody.

No, everyone will just have to start using some form of spatial coding.

Re:Saturation

[randyest]

You still don't get it. OP said:

Oversaturation is a big issue. WiFi shouldn't be painting a whole city in places where it wasn't asked for.

Then you said:

I think the key to oversaturation isn't to stop people to making these cities 100% covered. If I am reading you correctly, I infer that you are saying that you don't want to be sitting if you house and having the free connection overlapping your DSL or Cable Modem. Well if you set your WAP up with WEP encryption, you won't have this problem.

And that's where you were wrong. I'm sure the OP knows how to select the SSID -- that's not the problem. The problem is the nagative perfomance impact of collisions from loads of wifi signals overlapping, especially high-bandwidth "g" networks, and new implementations that reduce the number of channels available to improve bandwidth on one link at the expense of everyone in the area.

Your post flat-out said WEP would eliminate the problem. It doesn't. Hence the (well-deserved) +4 Informative.

Re:Saturation

[GlassUser]

The problem is that propogation isn't perfectly geometrical. It isn't magically confined to the honeycomb shape. You have something at the top of a hill in a window, and people a good ways away will be able to see it, for example.

Re:Saturation

[jwcorder]

Can't see the forest for the trees here. Even your quote of my post says overlapping connections. It's does say shit about interference. My solution, suggestion, whatever, had nothing to do with the collision issues he was bitching about. It was simply a way to verify that he was not automatically detecting the strongest signal as I have stated over and over. Overlapping and interfering with are two separate entities all together. Most routers are set to jump channels to find the transmission with least interference. If I was him, I wouldn't worry so much about other Wi-Fi networks as I would his microwave, cordless phone, or pager/cellphone. But what do I know? I thought enabling WEP would fix it!!!!

Obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm moving to Austin. Err, once I move out of my parent's basement.

It's like my momma always said...

[Anonymous Coward]

The world is ready for a new way of doing business and living life. It's not about more money and more stuff. It's about knowing the difference between a life well-lived and a life that's purchased. It's about how much you can do with what you have.

(i.e., free Wi-Fi == good)

They'll need to do some catchup :-)

[dirkx]

http://www.wirelessleiden.nl/english/ is well in the lead with over 50 nodes (not just hotspots) on churches, schools, offices and other tall buildings :-) And all open source to boot (fetch yours at http://wleiden.webweaving.org:8080/svn/node-config ) or persue the configuration http://www.wleiden.net/cgi-bin/g_list.pl and actual status: http://uuu.wirelessleiden.nl/nodemap.jpg.

Dw.

Give me a better reason to move to Austin!

[Anonymous Coward]

This won't mean much soon. I live in Portland, and wireless is everywhere. It seems the west coast in general is pretty wired at this point.

In about a year or so, this will be a moot point anyway. Everyplace will have wireless broadband soon enough....

Re:Give me a better reason to move to Austin!

[Sponge Bath]

1. Crushing traffic gridlock
2. Rebulican redistricting that disenfranchises Austin voters.
3. Expensive housing (maybe not as bad as Portland)
4. Large pool of technical talent chasing fewer jobs

I live here, and I actually like it. But in the last 10 years or so this city has a developed desperate, almost pathological need to pimp itself with dubious claims of superiority. "Live Music Capital of the World"! "Wi-Fi Hotspot!" It gets a little old, and should be taken with a grain of salt.

Re:Give me a better reason to move to Austin!

[Omega1045]

You do live here! Seriously, I know I might get modded off-topic, but you should vote rail in November as we really need it. At the CapMetro Rail meeting the other night I suggested that they provide wi-fi on their trains, if the voters will approve it this time. Check out their site All Systems Go! and let them know they should put wi-fi on the trains. I also suggested bike storage, and coffee shops at the stations.

Re:Give me a better reason to move to Austin!

[Performaman]

Well, I live in Dallas, crime capitol of the country.
We're number one! We're number one!

Re:Give me a better reason to move to Austin!

[raider_red]

Just out of curiosity, but has Cap Metro figured out how to pay for the light-rail service yet? Part of the reason it failed four years ago is because there was no way to pay for it without levying excessive taxes which most Austinites weren't willing to pay. Also, have they come up with a route plan yet that covers more than just South Austin to downtown, which was also a problem the last time around? Basically, have they found a way to get past the costs too much, does too little argument?

Re:Give me a better reason to move to Austin!

[equiraptor]

They need a better route than they had last time. Being at ground level running up Guadalupe by campus is stupid. It splits "West Campus" (where many students live) from the main Campus, splits the stores on the drag from campus, and just, in general, makes life harder. That was my biggest problem with it the first time around - poor planned routes. I actually went to many of the small meetings and told them what I thought, as well. :)

Re:Give me a better reason to move to Austin!

[Anonymous Coward]

Light rail would be a $1 billion waste. The majority of the people live in the many widespread suburbs and happen to work well away from the proposed train stations.

Not many people are going to walk the 15 or 20 minutes from the train station to work in 100 degree heat in the summer. The idea of light rail is nice, but our cities are just not laid out for it. Plus, Americans in most cities are too lazy to walk any amount of distance at all (i.e. people get mad if they have to park on the far side of the Wal-Mart parking lot).

Re:Give me a better reason to move to Austin!

[DigiShaman]

Rail? Give me a break. I live off Parmer Ln and it wont do me jack. Also, you still have to drive to the rail system. And when you get to your destination, you will have to take a taxi, bus, or if your luck, walk not to far from the office.

On the other hand, I wish Austin would keep with "green" traditions and support bio-fuel. E85 would be a good start.

Re:Give me a better reason to move to Austin!

[Anonymous Coward]

Give you a better reason to move to Austin? Well, apparently Austinites have forgotten about the little agreement that we all had, but the original plan back ten years ago was to not let out the secret that Austin is a great place to live, thus not encouraging hoardes of people to move here and spoil the paradise.

But noooo, MTV did a special on cool places and pointed out that Austin was definitely one of them, and, well, the whole thing really went downhill once John Travolta -- yes JOHN TRAVOLTA -- paid a visit to local restaurant Threadgill's. It signalled the beginning of the possible end to Austin's cool nature when Hollywood nerds like Travolta came here apparently (one would have to assume) only because they'd heard Austin was cool.

I'll give the people who aren't with me so far a little more clue what I'm talking about: the source of Austin's coolness isn't and never was anything to do with Hollywood. Nor Starbucks, nor The Gap, though those kinds of places are all up and down The Drag now, which is itself a definite drag.

Oh well, at least we still have some cool stuff going on, and the dot-com post-boom bust drove some of the yuppies away, which I guess can't be an entirely bad thing.

Anyway, to get back to the point: it's a little too late, but Austinites, the deal is that you're NOT supposed to tell your friends how cool Austin is and that they should move here. The whole place is already too gentrified without a zillion people moving here and driving up real estate prices further.

Ah, I guess I'm just going to have to give up and move south of the river like everyone else who "gets" Austin.

Re:Give me a better reason to move to Austin!

[Omega1045]

has Cap Metro figured out how to pay for the light-rail service yet? ... have they come up with a route plan yet that covers more than just South Austin to downtown

The new service is called commuter rail which runs on traditional rail; the first portion of this will run on rail line that CapMetro already owns from Leander to downtown (more sections to come). This current line is used by limited freight and the Austin Steam Train. So, this line will service a large portion of the city's growth up 183.

CapMetro will need NO NEW TAXES, because building on this existing CapMetro owned rail will cost about 1/5 what other city's are paying to put in brand new rail. And this solves a major problem of getting people downtown from the north. I-35 and Mopac are already choked.

FYI, CapMetro is also considering a number of other solutions to compliment the train service, all of which (from the road show I went to) are various types of smart or clean bus technology.

Re:Give me a better reason to move to Austin!

[Omega1045]

These are some of the concerns I expressed as well. First, to be very clear, light-rail is not being proposed. I think the first thing that will make it on the ballet will be a commuter rail (tradditional rail) from Leander to downtown with 5 - 8 stations. Please see more of my comments here on this line. In short this line would take traffic off of 183, Mopac and 35.

One station would be the terminous in Leander. Cedar Park already has a train station built for the steam train - perhaps this could work for the commuter rail as well. When I spoke with them the also planned on having stations all the way to downtown with bus service running out of those stations.

One thing CapMetro really stressed is that they are going to be adding many more bus routes to handle the short distances people would need to travel from the train to work.

The thing that impressed me the most was that CapMetro seems to have their shiat together. I know they have had a bad past, but these people seem to have a clear vision of what could help us in our continuing population boom.

Re:Give me a better reason to move to Austin!

[Omega1045]

I live off Parmer Ln and it wont do me jack

I don't have children, perhaps I should quit paying my school district property taxes? Is this fairly equivelant to what you are saying? Or perhaps when I worked at home I shouldn't have had to pay hardly any road taxes since I only occasionaly went anywhere I couldn't walk?

Adding rail line is going to become increasing important to Austin. With the 183 extension and the new 183A (toll road through Cedar Park and Leander opening in a couple of years), more and more traffic will be getting down to IH 35 and Mopac, faster. These two are already choked with traffic. Gridlock is just going to get worse and worse. And neither highway has much room expand with more lanes, especially I 35.

With commuter rail running every 30 minutes, a lot of traffic can be taken off those roads. Even if you never want to take the train, it will benefit you in some way. If you are commuting outside your neighbooring areas, fewer cars will be on the road allowing you a faster commute. It will be more environmentally friendly that all the cars on the road. And CapMetro is going to be adding a lot of short-distance bus routes to get people where they need to go. And these are going to be green.

I would invite you to explore their new plan, perhaps you will become a convert.

Re:Give me a better reason to move to Austin!

[Luyseyal]

Right, which is exactly why I voted against light rail last time. Did you see what they were gonna do to Guadalupe?! The commuter rail plan is much more sane and makes much more sense... not that I'll be able to take advantage of it (Northwest Hills in the hizzie). Still, I did email them asking for wifi on the buses. That'd be the only way I could justify moving from a 30min commute to St. Edward's to roughly 75. Personally, I wish they'd taken the 1.5 bil they had in the bank for light rail and scheduled some more routes (like mine, dammit!).

And while I'm bitching, let me just say we better get that route around I-35 done ASA[f]P or those Mexican trucks are gonna make it completely undrivable (versus, just mostly :)

Cheers,
-l

Re:Give me a better reason to move to Austin!

[Omega1045]

I hear the new roads (45 & 130) are way ahead of schedule, which is good news. They also mentioned they are going to add more routes. One thing that CapMetro needs to do is raise their rates. This may sound stupid at first, but check out this Statesman article. They are way below national rates in a community which can probably afford a little more than the dead minimum. Then maybe they could afford more routes.

Re:Give me a better reason to move to Austin!

[errxn]

Our BBQ is better than yours. Period. Here are just a few:

Black's
Salt Lick
County Line
Stubb's

Re:Give me a better reason to move to Austin!

[_RiZ_]

They are ahead of schedule becuase they will be toll roads. The faster they get the damn things built, the faster we can all get double taxed to drive on roads we have already paid taxes to help build. Everyone in Austin is like, tolls roads are good but they are all ignorant folks who are part of the herd anyhow.

Re:Give me a better reason to move to Austin!

[Omega1045]

They are ahead of schedule becuase they will be toll roads

Not true. Most roads never get ahead of schedule because contractors realize there is no profit in it. Even with most bonus programs, the contractors will end up making as much or more money with less risk by coming in on regular schedule (or over schedule). This time the TXDOT and others structured the contracts so that it would be much more financially advantageous for the contractors to get the jobs done ahead of time. In the case of 130 there is a huge bonus if they get it down 6 months + in advance.

we can all get double taxed to drive on roads we have already paid taxes to help build

You are only marginally correct. In fact I would probably call that 90% false. While some tax money goes to TXDOT and others overseeing the projects, no tax dollars are going to the actual contruction. The toll roads themselves are NOT double taxed, strictly speaking. 183A, 45 and 130 are all toll-funded - Texas borrowed the money to build them and the tolls will pay that money back.

Now, I am opposed in general to the idea of toll roads. But, it seems like this was the only solution that would work. It seems like so many people in Austin believe that if they stick their head in the sand the problem will go away.

Everyone in Austin is like, tolls roads are good but they are all ignorant folks who are part of the herd anyhow.

It would seem that it is you who has proven ignorant on the facts of the matter, and are going along with 'the herd' of FUD anti-rail/anti-road sheep who don't take time to study what is going on.

Re:Give me a better reason to move to Austin!

[Omega1045]

They probably will without the enforcement by Austin PD - I am not sure where you came up with the 49 mile figure looking at the 130 bypass through Austin (not the full 130 far south of Austin), but if I could take a route around the decks I would. In trucking time = $$$, and they will spend the small $6.30 to get there faster.

Re:Give me a better reason to move to Austin!

[rhaig]

yes rail. I live off parmer also. Did you not read about the 5-6 stations between leander and downtown? Did it not occur to you that one of these stations will probably be closer to your house than downtown?

So what's wrong with driving to the rail system? So I'm guessing you think park and rides are stupid too right? Drive to the station, park in the lot, get on a train.

And when you get to the destination, yes, you take a taxi, or a bus, or walk. So take a cab, what's wrong with that? Maybe you take a cab from a company that uses bio-fuel since you're so bent on that...

Re:Give me a better reason to move to Austin!

[rhaig]

One of my favorite t-shirts is from Texadelphia.
"Welcome to Austin. Now eat up and go home!"

Re:Give me a better reason to move to Austin!

[Omega1045]

I can understand your point of view concerning double-tax with gasoline. I still think it is mostly false to say this is double taxation. That being said, I believe toll roads are a bad idea in general. However, no one is willing to increase taxes, or put in a decent mass-transit system. Nobody has the 20 years picture in mind. Every argument I have heard against rail, etc is "It won't help me" which is usually better stated as "I don't see how it is going to help me now". I find this kind of thinking not only greedy, but short sighted and stupid. Until we can get a decent mass-transit system in place we have to get roads up. The only way to do this is with tolls (at present).

I have also studies the economics and contracts of these particular toll-roads. I have run a lot of my perceptions by a good friend in the Austin DOT, and he really agrees. These contracts actually are costing the state a lot less than many other road projects. They are written really well. While I am not naive enough to think that someone is not getting some pork somewhere, I just don't think it is as bad of a picture as you paint.

I really appreciate the sincerity and intelligence behind your post. Those characteristics were lacking from the parent post.

Re:Give me a better reason to move to Austin!

[DigiShaman]

Too much of a hassle, fuck it. I'll just take my car and drive it from point A to point B. I want my privacy in the morning and listen to talk radio. Also, I may want to run the store or go out to eat on my lunch break.

This might be a great idea for some depending on your lifestyle and where you work. But for me, I love driving my car in the mornings.

Re:Give me a better reason to move to Austin!

[summernot]

I'll take whatever road the trucks aren't taking then. If the trucks are on I35, then I'll take 130.

Re:Give me a better reason to move to Austin!

[rhaig]

now personal preference I can understand and respect. Makes more sense too.

Some folks might like to take the train, connect to wireless and get some work done in the morning, hop a cab to the office, eat lunch 2 blocks over (lunchtime stroll) hop a cab back to the train and finish up scheduling your next day on your laptop on the train ride home.

Some folks would rather drive, and there will always be those who would rather...

Urm what?

[gotr00t]

You have obviously NEVER EVEN been to Austin. This city itself is enormous, with a population of well over a million by now. The UT campus is a mere 500 acres north of downtown (not counting the other properties), with a total population of less than 100,000. Sure, its a huge university, the largest in the world, but it is still just one part of a much larger city.

What you're saying might be true for towns say, Bryan College Station in Texas, where Texas A&M is located.

Re:Urm what?

[Omega1045]

Totally with you, except the population. Austin is at around 656,562. I bet if you add Cedar Park, Pfluegeville, Round Rock, and all of the others, you might have close to 1 million.

Re:Urm what?

[Glonoinha]

I've been to Austin, it is massive. Takes an hour to get where you want to go, driving full speed on the freeway. And yes the city is a hotbed of open WiFi.

If Hanlon had a corollary, however, it would be : 'Never attribute to good heart or generosity that which is easily explained by ignorance.' Just because a city has a Fry's (electronics wholesaler, sells wifi dirt cheap) and ten thousand unsecured wireless access points, don't think for a second that ten thousand people all decided to to donate bandwidth out of the goodness of their hearts. More likely scenario : get home / to the office, plug it in, watch the blinkenlighten, It Works!, drink beer, surf Internet.

Then again, Texans (and Austin'ites) are pretty good at heart people, some of them may know they are open and leave it so people can use it.

Re:Urm what?

[joggle]

Well, the greater Austin area is certainly over 1 million. It made the news there about 8 years ago.

Re:Urm what?

[Luyseyal]

but it IS the best university in the world hands down

...unless you're an undergrad. Then, it's the lottery if you get the good teacher or the TA whose English is just slightly better than line noise. It's been a long time coming, but UT really is becoming more of a graduate research institution fed by undergrads who don't realize they're getting poor service. You'll find many of the good UT teachers also teach at ACC and St. Edward's (and to a lesser extent, Concordia) since a good many of them aren't in tenured positions since they don't do tons of research (which would be a detriment to their real passion -- pedagogy).

$0.02USD,
-l

Re:More to the point

[Omega1045]

The University of Texas at Austin makes up about 90%

That may have been closer to true 15 years ago, but not now. With the huge expansion of Austin during the dot com years, the UT Campus doesn't make up anywhere near 90% of the city. Heck, it didn't make up 50% 15 years ago. Have you been to Austin, and if so, did you make it out of downtown?

The "Northern Coridor" up highways US 183 and IH 35 are where many of the tech companies are located (IBM, Motorola, Dell), and where many of the techies live. It is hard not to find a coffee shop in the this area that doesn't have wi-fi, at least from my experience. And I would be willing to bet most of those campuses are WiFi.

In closing, RTFA.

Re:Great, but about here?

[Tranzig]

Of course you can do much.
It doesn't need too much money and effort to create a hotspot. A decent broadband which you would pay anyways and an AP, which is a one time cost.
Alternatively, if you can't afford it, you can still approach for example pubs, fast food restaurants or other similar places telling them that running a free hotspot worths the money, because it increases attendance.
Helping the wifi community is nothing an individual can't do.

Re:Great, but about here?

[Omega1045]

You can hope, or you could get involved with a local WiFi club. I am already going to try to seek these guys out (Austin Free-Net) after reading the article.

Not quite the world's WiFi leader

[node 3]

Portland's Personal Telco Project has well over 100 free hotspots throughout the city. Austin Free Net has 36 (based on their listing of hotspots which have libraries listed from 1-22 and other places as A-O). The city of Portland is also working, in cooperation with the local university, the city government, and various megacorps (such as Intel) to blanket the entire city with free WiFi (see Free For All).

But, it doesn't matter much who wins. What's great is that independent groups are popping up all across the country (and presumably, the planet). I know that Portland, Boston, and Austin all have growing free WiFi organizations, and I'm sure there are others.

Do you know how nice it is to take your iBook, Vaio, whatever, down to the local park and have free high-speed WiFi access? Thanks to these people (and others!), some day you will.

Let me tell you, it's nice. It's the sort of thing you'd expect from the 21st century.

Re:Not quite the world's WiFi leader

[gmaestro]

Ah, it seems you are confused. Texas is the most important state in the union, just ask the President. And since this modest wireless network exists in a Texas city, it automatically trumps any much larger wireless networks in any much less important states.

Re:I don't get the Wi-Fi buzz.

[jwcorder]

Dude, the buzzzzz is there is NO WIRE! No one every said it would replace a wired connection. If you are trying to get speed, stay with a wire. But you want to enjoy surfing the web from the recliner, or while taking a dump, wireless is more then a convient way to access the internet.

802.11 B isn't the way to go anymore either. Move on over to 802.11 g and experience faster data transfer. The basics are that you have to know what kind of monster you are trying to attack here. What kind of building do you live in? Do you have copper pipes? What about plaster walls? Do you have a microwave oven and a keg-a-rator next to where you are going to be surfing the web? If so, you need to step you the transmission a little. Do some googling on boosting your signal.

I don't want to flame you, but you can't kill a technology that has tons of potiential and may alter the future only because you have had some bad experiences. For all you know, it could have been that 2.4 ghz cordless phone you bought at Best Buy that killed your connection. Or maybe you may leave in a nuclear fall out bunker. I bet a Wi-Fi WAP wouldn't transmit 10 ft in one of those.

Re:More to the point

[BlueCup]

Maybe I'm wrong, but shouldn't 2+2=10 in base four?

WiFi irony...

[RLiegh]

I live in a small town -with wal*mart being our nearest retail store- and I chuckle every time I see their WiFi cards, routers, etc sitting and gathering dust.

The nearest hotspot is most likely 12 miles away!

Re:WiFi irony...

[agent dero]

Yeah I mean, who would want to ever have a wireless network in their HOUSE! Ha!

Seriously, I live in a small town, in texas no less, and it's almost common for people with broadband to have wireless, just because it's easier

Re:More to the point

[juneadelle]

2+2 != 5, but RTFA + mapquest > "simple logic".

Re:More to the point

[TerraFrost]

UT Austin's wireless network is only available to paying students or faculty members. As such, I'm not really sure how it would contribute, in any way, to Austin, TX, being the "Wi-Fi Capital of the Free (as in beer) Wireless World."

Additionally, and as someone else has pointed out before, UT Austin does not make up 90% of the city. Austin, TX has almost a quarter of a million square miles, according to this site, whereas UT Austin only has 0.5 square miles associated with it, according to this site (you can do the unit conversion from acres to square miles yourself).

its true.

[rebelcool]

a friend and i were driving among the streets of austin (not just downtown or near UT, but in and around other places) and it is possible to simply jump from hotspot to hotspot while waiting for the light at an intersection or while driving around.

They're everywhere. Virtually every decent pub, restaurant and coffee shop here has free wireless.

Oh great Toronto in the making...

[peeon]

Here comes the child porn surfers driving around with no pants on.

I would use the internet if I could stop twiching

[Anonymous Coward]

Austin has great wireless indeed. Alot of it is due to the great coffeehouse scene. Sure many parks, neighborhoods,bars,theaters, and restaurants are getting them at a breakneck pace. But the boom in wireless here is mainly at the coffeehouses in Austin which rivals the coffeehouses that I have been to in New York, Seatle and San Fran.

"wireless"?

[Twid]

I chuckle every time I hear about "wireless" networks because every time I wander into starbuck's or any other spot with wireless everyone with a computer is jockeying for the power outlets. There usually aren't nearly enough outlets for the number of people who need power. Heck, when people bring laptops into one-hour meetings in my workplace they are usually jockeying for outlets too.

So, maybe we're seeing a large deployment of "one less wire" networks, but until battery life gets much better, I don't think it's fair to say wireless. Most laptops and pda-type gadgets are lucky to get two hours of "real" usage in the field. By "real" I mean actually using the laptop or gadget on the wireless to surf the internet while, for example, playing music. (Everyone in these coffee shops seems to have headphones plugged into their laptop when I see them.)

Just an observation, not a critique on the article.

Re:"wireless"?

[Twid]

Sorry to reply to my own comment, but I looked closer at the picture in the article of Richard MacKinnon, captioned as part of the Austin Wireless City Project. He has a rather conspicuous power cable plugged into his laptop.

Wireless? I think not. :)

Re:"wireless"?

[egreB]

Well, on my Dell Inspiron 1100 I tend to get about four hours of real usage in the field using wireless networking. Perhaps a bit less while playing music. But I can live with between three and four hours of battery time.

But the difference between finding wired networks and finding power outlets is that the latter is much more available and seldom firewalled.

The next step for coffee-shops and the like would probably be power outlets. When you get free power AND free Internet connection, imagine the amounts of coffee one can drink!

Re:"wireless"?

[Laz7]

I get about 4 and a half hours of real use time out of the battery in my Dell Latitude D500. When I get the second battery installed, that should jump to 8 hours. Being able to do a full business day of computing without plugging my laptop into anything, is a nice thing. I hear you on some older laptops though. My last Inspiron got a mere 30 minutes of battery life - one of the reasons for the move.

Re:"wireless"?

[eggboard]

This is a neat part of the design of newer restaurants and coffeeshops: they have to plan for more juice!

A coffeeshop that opened last July in Seattle near my office had put in several outlets before they opened, and they have free Wi-Fi. About two weeks later, overwhelmed with laptops -- and doing great business -- they installed a whole strip of outlets and changed their table layout for more two-person tables. The place sometimes has 8 to 10 people working in it, all of them buying coffee and contributing to a nice air of comradeliness.

Re:"wireless"?

[Zoinks]

I'm half chuckling with you, especially as I tend to be in airports a lot and have a hard time finding AC power adapters. Massport just installed Wi-Fi in Logan, for instance, but didn't help out with new outlets in the terminals. Likewise in Heathrow, they have a hotspot in one of the terminals, but no AC plugs to be seen. Had to sit on the hard windowsill in San Jose airport just to get close to the power. Seems like they want you to run your battery down before you get on the plane! (Can't count on seat power in the plane, either)

By the way, none of those places offer free Wi-Fi. And Logan's rates are especially ridiculous: $12 for 24 hours - as if!

Re:"wireless"?

[ennuiner]

I go to UT-Austin and frequently use wireless at the coffeeshops near campus. Most of the coffeeshops have power outlets available. I suspect customers demanded these even before Wi-Fi, so they could spend hours working on papers or other offline activites. One coffeeshop I frequent, Little City, nearly has a computer lab, with a long counter and enough power outlets for each seat.

Re:"wireless"?

[Milican]

Glad I got a Centrino notebook... ;)

JOhn

Re:"wireless"?

[smilingirl]

I just got a new laptop, a Fujitsu P5020, the little teeny tiny one (I LOVE it). I can run it for at least 4 hours easily with the battery it came with, not the high capacity one, while using wireless internet. That is plenty for me. So, they have battery life out there much better than you are talking about.

Re:"wireless"?

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Ah, the hyperbole. Just tell people not to buy shit.

I have a Pentium IIIm laptop that gets three to three and a half hours on a charge, and the battery is two years old, so I might get four hours if I bought a new battery.

People need to buy shitty desknotes and pretending they are true laptops. By weight (often 10lb), they are practiaclly luggables when a good laptop can weigh only half that.

You don't put a 3.4GHz Pentium 4 (desktop model) chip into a laptop and expect it to last more than an hour. That's stupid, they weren't made for that. Get a Pentium M or at the very least, Pentium 4 M. Forget the M and you can forget your battery life. Same goes for Athlon too.

Re:"wireless"?

[/dev/trash]

Buy more batteries.

Re:"wireless"?

[kesuki]

all the girls seem to love the littly teeny tiny laptops... but most of us slashdot geeks aren't happy unless our laptop has at least a 15" display, the ability to burn dvds, and of course the ability to run the latest 3-d adrenaline pumping games...
those laptops, simply don't last more than an hour on current li-ion technology... unless you strap 25lbs of battery to it they'll never get much 'wireless' time... that model of laptop you have is tiny and has a slow cpu, and us using an integrated intel agp graphic processing unit, and also, has a tiny screen.. yeah sure, it surfs the web, and can run word processors, and yeah, it can even burn cds and be used as a portable mp3 player (at least it has a decent sized 60gb hd) but still, it doesn't quite satisfy the 'more is better' crowd... who seem to think we should all be using portable fusion genenrators, and having a 12 ghz laptop with the ability to progect up to a 60' display if you have a wall that size handy...
whee.. i'd die if i had to use a tiny laptop like that one for more than an hour at a time, just because i'd keep hitting 4 keys at a time >_ i know my friend has a tiny little subnotbook, which are made for small fingered ppl....

Re:"wireless"?

[Twid]

You don't put a 3.4GHz Pentium 4 (desktop model) chip into a laptop and expect it to last more than an hour. That's stupid, they weren't made for that. Get a Pentium M or at the very least, Pentium 4 M. Forget the M and you can forget your battery life. Same goes for Athlon too.

You make a great point. Most people seem to ignore the battery life of their notebook or their usage patterns and just buy whatever looks shiny (or believe the manufacturer's battery ratings.)

I think most people, if they were truly informed, would trade 25% less performance for 50% more battery life. But, Intel and others have trained consumers that speed is king.

Re:"wireless"?

[Twid]

That seems smart to me, especially if the coffee shop is charging for wireless access. It pays for them to keep people connected as long as possible!

It still seems kind of funny. I mean, we didn't need the wireless revolution for a bunch of people to cluster around a table and plug in, we could have done that years ago with wired ethernet! :)

Although, to be fair, wi-fi brought a level of plug-and-play to the equation that wasn't there before. I think Win2K was the first microsoft OS that cleanly could handle multiple ethernet configs. I distinctly remember running a little shareware app called NetSwitcher on Windows 98 so that I could have two different ethernet configs for home and office.

Re:"wireless"?

[Twid]

I used to have a Latitude and I wish more vendors would take up Dell's multi-battery design. It was great on a long flight to be able to decide to ditch the DVD and go for the double-battery long life. In fact, I can remember many times with co-workers at Novell (we all carried Latitudes) swapping batteries with someone who was on AC power when I couldn't get to an outlet.

Dell gets a lot of knocks for being unoriginal, but the multi-battery design is one place where companies like Apple could learn from Dell.

Re:"wireless"?

[Technician]

Not providing power may be a business stratagy. It discourages campers that just come to surf KaZa all day. This makes room for the morning, evening, and lunch business folks to get a seat, grab their caffene fix and mail on battery power. You don't make much money on the campers. Higher turnover is better. Imagine if you ate lunch regularly at McDee's. Now immagine if most people instead of staying 30 minutes for lunch now just got a drink and stayed 4 hours. In busy places, creating an environment that discourages camping is good business. The limited life of most laptop batteries can help encourage the business traveler to check mail on a break because there is room and discourage camping.

Re:"wireless"?

[magefile]

More juice? Why not say more wirewater?

Re:"wireless"?

[smilingirl]

Haha, well I *am* a small-fingered person... actually tiny fingered. I wear like a size 4 ring. I like that keyboard better than a regular one actually. The reason I wanted a tiny laptop was because of weight... I'm a small girl (this is why girls like them, some of us have a had time carrying heavy things), and there is no way that I would be able to carry a 10lb laptop around campus, especially with notebooks and books added to that. And, I didn't get the laptop to be able to do some crazy mega graphic crap on it. I still have a desktop for that, I can do that sort of thing at home. The whole point of it is to be able to surf the web anywhere, use IMs, word processing, etc.

Having a laptop that can do everything a desktop can do but making it huge defeats the entire purpose of a laptop for me.

Well, of course! It's Austin.

[xIcemanx]

Austin's becoming a hot hot spot because it's still a comparatively small city with the likes of New York and such.

Imagine stretching WiFi from the Bronx to JFK Airport, and I don't find it surprising that Austin is so hot. Some small city was bound to become a hot hot spot, and Austin happened to have good luck.

Re:More to the point

[rebelcool]

im pretty sure UT is larger than .5 square miles :) From north to south it stretches from 19th to 27th street, and east to west is a bit wider than that.

Re:More to the point

[Anonymous Coward]

UT makes up 90% of Austin? What are you smoking man. I live in an Austin suburb, and UT is big, but it is only a small percentage of the metro. The greater Austin area is over a million people, and UT is about 50 thousand students. Even if you figured there were one faculty/staff per student (which isn't even close), that only comes to 100 thousand directly UT related people, and that is what, 10%? Not only does Austin area have UT, it also has most of the state government of Texas, which employs thousands of people, Dell, which employs over 20 thousand people in the Austin area, a major IBM facility, major facilities from Motorola, AMD and numerous other companies.

Even if you are talking square miles of land, and only talking about the actual city limits of Austin, UT isn't anywhere near to 90% of the city limits of Austin.

Re:More to the point

[equiraptor]

If the princetonreview.com figure and the conversion by http://www.onlineconversion.com/area.htm are correct, UT Austin does only have ~.56 square miles (357 acres). Have you been there? Most (nearly all?) of the buildings have basements, some as many as 4 floors down, and there's many, many levels above ground in nearly all of the buildings. UT Austin is not designed like Texas Tech; it's designed to take up a small amount of space. It started as a mere 40 acres, just north of Austin, and has been enveloped by the city. Only a portion of the students live on campus.

Austin?? Well I have a few concerns

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe it's a somewhat polluted city, so I'd be concerned about WiFi performance. Would WiFi Speed Spray do the trick??

WiFI Speed Spray

Re:More to the point

[AndroidCat]

Austin, TX has almost a quarter of a million square miles

If it did, it wouldn't leave much room for the rest of Texas! Texas is 266,807 square miles, Austin is 2,705 square miles in metro areas according to that site.

SFLan - Free San Francisco wireless internet

[Castaa]

San Francisco has a free wi-fi network called SFLan.

SFLan

SFLan node map

Re:They'll need to do some catchup - fixed links

[Richard_L_James]

I wish slashcode would automatically convert URL's.... fixed links in a handy list for the lazy (like myself :)

• http://www.wirelessleiden.nl/english/
• http://wleiden.webweaving.org:8080/svn/node-config
• http://www.wleiden.net/cgi-bin/g_list.pl
• http://uuu.wirelessleiden.nl/nodemap.jpg

Re:More to the point

[xsupergr0verx]

I know you mean University of Texas, but every time I see UT I think of the announcer guy from Unreal Tournament saying "HEADSHOT!"

Why? Lightning!

[Temkin]

Having just moved to the Austin area from Silicon Valley....

Wireless is very popular here because they get more lightning strikes per week than Kali gets in a year! Having everything connected with wires is like playing russian roulette. I'm going to need at least 3 more APC UPS's.

On the upside... The BBQ is excelent, and gas/diesel/rent/food/etc... is cheap. :)

unwired kid

[loid_void]

Exactly. I have a nine year old who has been online for 4 years, has never been hooked to a wire, and likes to surf the net from her bed, prints her homework without a wire. She charges up at night and surfs by day - unwired. It's about freedom and mobility.

Re:I don't get the Wi-Fi buzz.

[lawngnome]

But you want to enjoy surfing the web from the recliner, or while taking a dump, wireless is more then a convient way to access the internet. Go capitalism !!! This is truly the peak of human culture...

a better reason to move to Austin!

[loid_void]

Chicken fried steak w/ bisquits and gravey.

UT-Austin's WNGG

[yttrium]

The ECE dept here at Univ Texas-Austin just opened a newly $1.5 million remodeled lab for the Wireless Networking & Communications Group. Austin is moving up the ladder in WiFi. Here's the WNCG webpage: WNCG.

MODERATORS ON CRACK

[Black Perl]

The parent post was not insightful. It was clueless.

Makes me wish I lived in Texas

[0utRun]

..well, maybe.

I went back to Boston this Spring and found a bunch of un-WEPed base stations around my parents house so I didn't have to worry about internet access.

Over here in Japan, people lock their base stations down -like ALL of them. I've never been able to get on one. When I /do/ manage to find one broadcasting, it's always WEPed. Where's Japan's free WiFi? )-:

Re:free = profit?

[chia_monkey]

It's not as baffling as it sounds. Setting up a WiFi hotspot doesn't cost that much these days. A company that provides free wireless can obviously have an advantage over similar companies that don't have free WiFi when catering to patrons that are looking for WiFi. Just as some travelers may want to stay at a hotel that has a free pool as opposed to a hotel without one, a hotel (or coffee shop, or...) can draw more people simply because they have free WiFi. So for minimal cost, you can fill that room in your hotel or have more people stopping at your restaurant. Profit!

They should exploit Austin's unique advantage...

[gojomo]

...and WiFi the Austin Moontowers.

Re:Well, of course! It's Austin.

[djeaux]

Austin's becoming a hot hot spot because it's still a comparatively small city with the likes of New York and such.

Austin may be small by comparison with NYC but it's a major metro area compared with most places.

Still, your comment made me wonder if wi-fi could be the basis for an economic development model for smaller cities & towns. I wonder if any of the profs at UT are looking at that aspect of the Austin "model"...

Hey, I work there!

[RussR42]

Thank god for slashdot, wouldn't have know to tell doug he was in the chronicle. Except that was last weeks issue. And I read it. Anyway, that's Doug on the left in background, on right is Mike. He hasnt' worked there for several months...

Re:I don't get the Wi-Fi buzz.

[aXis100]

For any long range ourdoor uses, 802.11b still kicks g's arse.

G needs higher SNR to work well, and it's coding scheme is more succeptible to interference. Fine for coffee shot or home access, but no good for 20km links.

MeshAP project by locustworld.com

[agent]

I would like to mention the MeshAP project by Locust World.

http://www.locustworld.com

Thank you,
-Steve

Re:free = profit?

[Propaganda13]

Already covered....

What is the Less Networks business model? How do you make your money?

"Phase I: First you steal the underwear..."

Wardriving Austin?

[drewzhrodague]

For those of you interested in wardriving or what's out there, here's a look at Austin Texas from a wardriver's point of view.

By Transmeta...

[mikelang]

The reason is that most people PREFER not buy power-saving notebooks, which easily sport 7h of battery power... :-)
Your own choice...

Re:Well, of course! It's Austin.

[griffjon]

Austin also got started on community wireless before it got to be such a huge fad recently. A few indy coffeeshops have been providing free wifi for years now, and AustinWireless has been mapping out locations (intentional and otherwise) since the late 90s.

Re:free = profit?

[timeOday]

1. Free Wi-Fi Internet
2. ???
3. Profit!

How about:
2. More people come to your business

Simple, huh?

Re:I don't get the Wi-Fi buzz.

[jwcorder]

Dude, unless you have one hell of a setup, there is no way you getting 20 kilometers on a standard retail WAP. Well, unless you live on the salt flats and are made of conductive material.

hotspot security

[Anonymous Coward]

This article comes just in time! I bought Linksys WRT54G for my home network and I'm intterested to open it for my fellow net users, BUT. As I have experience in hosting / server administration, I'm concerned of security. Mostly MY security, to prevent my AP becoming a source of spam. I think I should set up firewall to limit smtp-traffic, but what's sufficient? I think the problem is common with other free internet access points / cafes, schools etc. How is it done?

I do know how to set up firewall / routing / bandwidth control, but which rules to use? Any points to good sources of information?

Re:free = profit? Just look at the coffee shops

[raider_red]

It's actually working out pretty well. Starbucks is getting no draw whatsoever from their wi-fi installations which are run by T-mobile. The locally owned shops like Halcyon, Little City, and Mozart's are packed almost every day with paying customers who drop by to drink coffee, surf, and check their email. Wi-fi costs them little more than their initial installation plus monthly ISP fees, and they draw in more customers.

Re:Why? Lightning!

[DigiShaman]

This is common in late spring/early summer. Also, early fall as well. Just wait till July and August, your going to wish for nice thunderstorms to keep the area cool. Otherwise, Summer in Austin is that of a fucking desert. I hope you don't drive with black leather seats or you will burn your ass off.

Re:More to the point

[dave1g]

Yeah we are all stuck on Riverside LOL

Calling in from Jefferson Commons at the Ballpark on Pleasant Valley and Elmont...and Wickersham

Re:More to the point

[mcrbids]

If it did, it wouldn't leave much room for the rest of Texas! Texas is 266,807 square miles, Austin is 2,705 square miles in metro areas according to that site.

Yeah, as soon as I saw "Quarter of a million miles" my hands twitched instinctively towards the calculator.

A quarter of a million miles square would be a solid, packed, square-shaped city 5 hundred miles to a side.

That would represent a full day's driving at highway speeds.

Bzzzzzt!

Check your facts before you spout...

"free as in beer?"

[ignavusincognitus]

I'm having difficulty imagining any other kinds of a free wireless network. What exactly does it take to be an FSF-approved wireless network?

Enlighten me

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Is Wi-Fi big in the states? Just how big?
I'm finding all this coverage a little puzzling.

I haven't heard of a single Wi-Fi hotspot in this country(Ireland).

In the UK -- Locust

[Alan_Peery]

There is a UK variant of the software described that has been up and running for a while.

http://www.locustworld.com/

I've not compared the two solutions.

Re:More to the point

[AndroidCat]

If it were true, you could run a one mile wide bridge of Austin from here to the Moon--which is why a quarter of a million miles caught my eye. (You could actually do this with Texas, but only a fool would suggest that would be a pretty good use for it. ;)

That Austin is over 1% of Texas (according to that site) is pretty impressive.

Re:Why? Lightning!

[Temkin]

Nope. Grey cloth. But the paint is dark blue. :(

I'm OK with the heat. In Kali I lived in the far east SF bay, which IS a desert in the summer. No rain, no humidity, just hot. What gets me here is the UV. It's enough of a latitude change that the UV numbers are really up there. I can sunburn in about 15 minutes at noon here.

We had a commute train called "ACE" that ran a reasonable route for me, and had both WiFi onboard, as well as UoP MBA classes. The rail project they're trying here doesn't seem very promising.

Austin wi-fi how-to

[cabazorro]

Move to Austin and crash w/ a friend.
Apply for UT or ACC get admitted.
Grow a pony tail.
Get a job at HEB or Fiesta or Central
Market.
Wear a belly pack.
Get a Student Loan (2k).
By a cheapo laptop and used bike.
Default your loan.
Get your own place in the crappy
side of town (East I-35).
Finally get your back pack, your belly
pack wait 3 hrs for the dillo bus
down town. Go to cafe on South Congress.
Go to the bathroom and change your sweat
drenched shirt and remove the fire ant
that's been chewing your skin inside your
sock all the way from Ben White.
Finagle an AC outlet. Log-On to Slashdot
and brag about Austin is intensity in
ten cities..cool dude!
Buy Chai tea with the last dollar
til payday(bring extra bag for refill).

Re:Austin wi-fi how-to

[dane23]

Or you could skip the pony tail, get a decent job, actually graduate, get a car/apt live in S. Austin, pay off your loan, and go into virutally any AC'd food/coffe/alcohol establishment in austin and get free wifi. That's what I did. Don't know why you would want to do it the hard way.

Re:Well, of course! It's Austin.

[Omega1045]

Yes and no. New York has 301 square miles vs Austin's 232 in city limits, and 2705 in metro area.

I know you can only put so many people on an WAP, and big NY building probably mess with the signal. But I bet Austin has a lot more land to cover than NYC does.

[ot] transport

[Luyseyal]

I emailed Capmetro about getting wireless services on their buses. That would be the only way I could justify the longer commute time.

And yeah, the rail is intended for cross-county service which, given our demographics, layout, etc., makes a lot more sense. (Feel free to drop me a mail or telnet into silverchat.com[local austinite bbs chat thingy] if you wanna chat about it -- getting kinda off-topic here :)

-l

worst technology news source in Austin

[ruiner5000]

Interesting story Chronicle, but the old editor Lewis Black has them a few years behind the times, plus he is one of the bigger jerks in town. Austin has been a wifi hotspot for years. The Chronicle needs to stick at making stuff up about George Bush, that is what they are good at.

enforcement

[Luyseyal]

The City and APD have already committed to enforcing it.
-l

another glowing testimonial (tm)

[Fezzik]

i've lived in austin about 4 years, and it's a great city in general. the wireless is nice. some friends and i participarted this last weekend in a road rally where a lot of the clues were easier to answer with the internet available. we were careening around the city with 2 laptops in the car moving from hotspot to hotspot (spiderhouse, the public library, manuel's, etc.). it was a lot of fun.

Re:Why? Lightning!

[DigiShaman]

Heh, I suppose you have a point. But I'm originally from Houston. Now THAT'S a city that feels like your living in a sauna.

carry one of these :)

[timothy]

http://www.hometech.com/power/wallwart.html#GC-CAM YAF1

If you spot someone with a laptop hooked up to an outlet, ask politely if you can share it, and supply one of these splitters :)

I have a few of the non-splitting variety, useful for getting full use of a powerstrip. (And often that has the same happy result if you're looking for a spot at a coffeeshop, namely un-blocking an outlet ...)

Cheers,

timothy

Free Austin Spots (consolidated list)

[summernot]

I combined several lists from various sites for one, big master list of Austin free wireless locations.

I'm sure there are tons more. But this should keep you going for a while. Who knew we had so many coffee shops? This message spans two posts, due to too few characters per line. This is post #1/2.

Every Schlotzsky's sandwich shop
Austin Convention Center
Triumph Cafe
Little City (2)
Alamo Drafthouse (3)
Spiderhouse
Halcyon
Cafe Mundi
The HIdeout
Several auto service waiting areas
Several car wash waiting areas
UT (you don't have to be a paying student; you just have to have a UT EID)
Austin Libraries
Amy's Ice Cream
Aussie's Bar & Grill
BD Riley's Irish Pub
Chili's
Common Grounds Coffeehouse
Copacabana Coffehouse
Jo's Coffee (I think)
Crimson Restaurant
Curra's Grill
The Daily Grind
The Dog and Duck Pub
Flightpath Coffeehouse
Hooter's
Joy of Austin Gentleman's Club
Austin Java Company
JP's Java
La Tazza Fresca
Lava Java
Mimosa Cafe
Mojo's
New World Deli
Opal Divines Freehouse
Quack's 43rd Street Bakery
Quality Seafood Market
Resistencia Bookstore
Ruta Maya
Saradora's Coffeehouse and Emporium
Shoal Creek Saloon
Scholz Garten downtown
Seattle's Best Coffee (3)
Texpresso (2)
Threadgill's
Trianon (3)
Uno's Cafe
Ventana Del Soul
Xpresso Lube
The Yellow Rose Gentleman's Club
Lanz Sport
Carousel Pediatric
Antonio's
Bobee Coffee Shop
BookPeople

Re:Free Austin Spots (consolidated list)

[summernot]

A consolidated list of wireless spots around Austin compiled from other listings posted on the web. This message spans two posts, due to too few characters per line. I've got to keep typing stuff here to get the characters per line count higher so this message will post. Maybe this is enough text now. hehe. no, it isn't. keep typing typing typing. sometimes slashdot rules are kinda silly. I guess they wouldn't have to put rules like this in if people weren't so dorky. anyway, maybe this is enough characters to break the avg. goddamnit. still not enough characters. and the error message tells you how many characters your post has per line but not how many it has to have. how helpful. I suppose I could go look it up, but I'm sick of looking shit up. I just looked up a zillion wifi spots. geez. ok. now I'm kinda pissed. this is still not enough text to throw off the little bot. I want to kill it. smash its little bot head in, then maybe drop it into a very salty tub of water. how'd you like that, you irritating little, salty bot? you know what? I don't care how you'd like it. I think it's a grand notion. uhoh. still not enough characters. it's probably not really considered a "bot", per se, which means I've blown my cover and I've exposed the fact that I'm not very hip or with it with nerd lingo. I'm going to get modded down now and sink forever into oblivion. Slashdot irrelevance. the herd. please don't feed us animal bi-products at least. Holy fuck, still not enough godddamn characters per line. we're up to 38.something. Most people would have said fuck it by now. But I looked up all the hotspots. It didn't take all that long, but I don't want to waste the time I did put into gathering them together. They'd probably be useful to people, but nooooo. not enough effing characters. well have a look at this character. It's my middle finger. that got saltybot's attention, apparently. now he'll let this message post. good, because I want to go to sleep. This is post #2/2.

Cain & Abel's Bar & Grill
Capitol Gril
Changos
Crown and Anchor Pub
Cuba Libre
Dick's Deja Disco
Doña Emilia's South American Bar & Grill
Draught House
El Sol y La Luna
Flipnotics Coffeespace
Galaxy Cafe
Garden Spot Deli
Güero's Taco Bar
Hickory Street Bar & Grille
Longhorn Collision Center
Lovejoy's Tap Room & Brewery
Manuel's (2)
Mom's Cafe
Municipal Building/City Hall
One Texas Center
Pipes Plus
Portabla
Republic Square
Resistencia Book Store
Round Rock Public Library
Saradora's Coffeehouse
Speakeasy
Stars Coffee Shop
Texas French Bread (3)
Texas Picnic Company & Bakery
Ventana Del Soul Cultural Center & Coffee House
Zen (3)
219 West
503 Coffeebar
Austin History Center
Azul
Babbo's Gelato (changed their name, but I dunno what to)
Bouldin Creek Coffeeshop
Castleberry's
Cedar Perk Coffee Company
China Hill
CiCi's Pizza
Cipollina
Coyote Ugly
Crescent City Beignets
DoubleDave's PizzaWorks
Elizabeth Clemons
El Arroyo
Green Mesquite BBQ
Iron Cactus
Jakarta Jack's Café
JB Goodwin Realtors
Kenny's Coffee
Marcie
Maudies Milagro
McDonalds on Cypress Creek Rd in Cedar Park
Mezzaluna
Much Ado About Coffee
Palacio
Raspnberger
RPM Indoor Raceway
Scholz Garten
St. Edward's University (students, faculty and staff)
Texadelphia
TGI Fridays on Cesar Chavez
The Green Muse
The Hookup Lounge
Tuscany Cafe
Westbank Community Library
Whole Foods @ 183
Wild Wood Art Café
Elgin Memorial Park
Galaxy Café
Hickory Street Bar & Grille