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

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?