Portable Wi-Fi Hotspots

Dekortage writes "David Pogue reviews several portable wi-fi access points in the New York Times. If you have cellular Internet access, you can plug the PC card into the wi-fi box and presto, you've got Wi-Fi from wherever you are." From the article: "The card provides the Internet connection, courtesy of those companies' 3G ("third generation") high-speed cellular data networks. The box just rebroadcasts that connection as a Wi-Fi signal so that all nearby computers -- not just one privileged laptop -- can go online. With those PC cards, you can go online anywhere there's a cellular signal: in a taxi, on a bus, in a waiting room or wherever. In major cities, the speed is delightful, like a D.S.L. or slowish cable modem (400 to 700 kilobits a second)."

Comments

And the price...

[thegrassyknowl]

3G data here (in Australia) is farking expensive. I don't know why you would want to share your limited data allowance that you pay more than $1/meg for with everyone else?

also notable...

[Mister White]

Also it should be known that the Kyocera 'KR1 mobile router' is also capable of connecting via cable to several cell phones, as well as the PC cards. Currently, there's not a ton of models supported, but you can pretty much guarantee that will change pretty soon.

Mobile Wardriving

[drewzhrodague]

Now you can wardrive AND provide internet access at the same time. I wonder if you can broadcast a better signal than people's own APs, and redirect them to your own loacal propaganda. I think I have a summer project now...

The price is prohibitive here as well

[Opportunist]

As long as prices run in the 1/mb range, this will not really be the killer application. Compare it to internet access, until the price got affordable (it was like 5$/hour here until about 1992), nobody went on the 'net either.

Not to mention the old saying "I got WiFi access now, my neighbor bought an Access Point". Who's want to run an AP through a line that's probably costing more than your rent if some leecher finds your AP? How secure can those APs be made so it's possible to make sure you're not going to invite everyone on the airport to a P2P party?

Re:The price is prohibitive here as well

[FleaPlus]

If you had RTFA you would have known that most cell wireless providers offer "unlimited" access plans for about $60 - $80 per month which is expensive but not outrageous.

Alas, at least in my experience, it's definitely "unlimited" rather than truly unlimited. I used to listen to Shoutcast and other internet radio stations regularly on my Treo 600, but after a few months of this got a phone call from Sprint PCS telling me to stop using up so much bandwidth.

Internet Connection Sharing...

[FuryG3]

Is easy to do under Linux or Windows, so you can already do this without any fancy hardware.

1) Plug in WAP wherever you are
2) Enable ICS or iptables on whatever computer has both the mobile internet card and a wifi card
3) Configure IPs to use the computer in step 2 as gateway
4) Profit! er, I mean: Surf!

We did this on the way up to defcon between 3 cars like 4 or 5 years ago... :)

Worked for us at Linuxworld 2005

[mattbee]

We exhibited at the UK Linuxworld 2005 and because previous shows wanted like £300 for a 64Kb internet connection to the stand, it turned out to be cheaper for us to commit to paying that much over 1 year for an unlimited 3G/UMTS plan and PCMCIA card. We attached a wi-fi & 3G cards to a laptop, some software written in the car, and it turns out our portable hot-spot was providing 200-300Kb of internet access for several stands in the room that had found our AP. I like the principle but when the ridiculous per-MB usage charges kick in for 3G access it might not be so smart :-)

Does Unlimited really mean Unlimited yet ?

[JerLasVegas]

I remember my dial up companies bitching about my usage beacause I would be on 24/7. They tried to say that they only provide Unlimited Internet if you are actually using it. It was nice though when I had one dial up isp called CTS net in San Diego back in 1997 or so. I would leave the red hat box on 24/7 with a firewall. They actually were convinced that I was not online because they could not ping me. It was quite a laugh. However, Verizon and Sprint both provide high speed wireless in Las Vegas with EVDO technology. They charge around $60USD/month for unlimited access. At what point are they going to limit the unlimited like the dial up companies did? I understand that the dial up companies did it because they were limited to the physical number of phone lines, but can Sprint and Verizon come up with some ridiculous exuse? I think they are probably working on that right now.

Re:Does Unlimited really mean Unlimited yet ?

[msobkow]

Rogers, Cogeco, and others (Toronto area) have already come up with the "excuse" to limit bandwidth far below the rates they advertise. In some cases their traffic shaping results in poorer performance than you'd get with an old dial-up modem.

In most industries you're expected to grow your capacity to service the market. With cablecos, they'd rather charge you the full price and limit your service. The problem is, why pay for an "extra fast" link if it doesn't even perform as well as the "light" package is supposed to?

Who needs portable Wi-Fi?

[KingJoshi]

You mean people actually leave their parent's basement?

Verizon does some kind of checking...

[mcrbids]

I tried to do this once with my Laptop and the Verizon "Air Card". As soon as I turned on NAT, the aircard went dead. I suspect that they're using some sort of NAT detection on their end to keep this "roaming hot spot" thing from happening on their "unlimited" plans.

Just to be sure, I tried the same thing with a different connection (eg: Ethernet) and my setup worked fine - it was definitely something to do with Verizon....