[srnoth]

Hi there,

I'm not sure quite what you are asking. There seems to be two types of hotspots in Trinidad that I can think of. There are wireless routers that home users have setup and neglected to setup WEP encryption, and so anyone can connect to the router and use their internet. This is probably technically illegal, and it might annoy the heck out of someone if you do it too often and they figure out what you're doing. Basically this works, but don't park up outside their house all day stealing their bandwidth

I recently had my laptop on in the car on a drive from St. Augustine to Westmoorings, and I had Netstumbler running. It detected about 45 wireless networks, and about half of them did not even have encryption!

Then there are the 'official' hotspots, where a company/person sets up a wireless router with they intention of sharing wireless access with customers or with the general public. These used to be few and far between in Trinidad, but they are starting to become more and more popular. A few I can think of are Movie Towne, Haagen Dazs at Ellerslie Plaza and then TSTT has started offering wifi access at special events such as this years carnival, and Admin recently posted that TSTT was offering wifi at the Queen's Park Oval.

Also, last time I checked, Laptop City in Trincity Mall has an unencrypted access point with high speed internet. I'm not sure that is intentional, and I did get some strange looks from people walking past as I sat there on the ground with my laptop ;-) .


You asked what equipment is necessary to connect to these access points. Basically, you need a laptop (a desktop would actually work too, but you would look even more suspicious if you were lugging your desktop through Trincity Mall and setting it up outside the laptop shop ) , with a wireless card (802.11b or 802.11g). That is basically all you need. Most laptops bought today already come with a wireless card built in, if not I recently bought one off amazon.com for $15US.


Good luck with your wifi-ing,
Stephen.

[srnoth]

No problem man. By the way, it's called 'borrowing', not stealing. LOL. I never tried MovieTowne myself, just heard about it from others. By the way, Piarco Airport now has a hotspot ! Finally, we've caught up with the times . Just yesterday I was sitting in the Pizza Boys upstairs and surfing away! There are actually 2 hotspots there, a TSTT one and another one called 'hotspot'. Nice and descriptive. Anyway, as usual, the TSTT one didn't work properly, but the other one did, and it was nice and fast.

Laterz,
Stephen.

[admin]

Yes, I tried the Piarco hotspot on Wednesday morning too ... full signal, but wasn't able to browse any site with TSTT's TSTT_WiFi SSID. I was acually able to ssh/telnet to my US server, I could also do a telnet on port 80 and got a connection, but the browsing simply didn't work. Pinging some servers showed plenty packet loss (~40%).
The other 'hotspot' (SSID) didn't work for me. Maybe I was too far away (in front of the departure gate area at Rituals at 5:50am having a coffee).

[srnoth]

Hi admin,

That's odd. I was actually getting signal from the 'hotspot' from in the carpark! What's odd though, is I was sitting upstairs in Pizza Boys, and the signal was 2 bars, then all of a sudden it shoots up to full signal. Don't know why. Maybe they're still experimenting with it.

I was thinking that maybe for the TSTT one you have to use a proxy server. I think that's what they do at UWI, anyone know if this is the case?


Laterz,
Stephen.

[admin]

I am again at PiarcoAirport(.com), getting a good signal from TSTT WiFi, a not so good signal from 'hotspot' and a very good one from 'BWIA Security'. I can log on to TSTT's WiFi, can telnet to my US server, but I cannot get a web page (not even TSTT's), nor can I retrieve my email ... that must be a coldspot! Location: Upstairs, international departure at the food parlour at Rituals, watching Immigration. Again, I can only get onto the Internet (surf, email, etc.) using my GPRS cell phone.
Despite TSTT's huge advertising signs ... 'TSTT Wi-Fi HotSpot - WIRELESS INTERNET ACCESS' ... I am unable to use the service. ... well, I can ping all the servers etc... but that doesn't help too much.

Quick update ... I am now at international departure Gate 14 and I am getting very good access via TSTT's Wi-Fi hotspot. Very nice speed ... (signal strength is exactly the same as before).
--------
Your current bandwidth reading is:
1.21 Mbps
which means you can download at 155.16 KB/sec. from our servers.
--------

[atarat]

Has anybody ever been able to connect to the Wi-Fi at Haagen-Dazs? I've been three times and each time I get an IP address but no action. The worst part is that the staff can never tell you if they're having a problem or not.

[South Man]

Well I've never experienced the dial up connection popping up once it's on the wireless connection, however you can disable it when using it I suppose.

BTW: I read that there's supposed to be another hotspot at TGI Fridays (BP Building)

[R45]

Trotters and Sweet Lime in Woodbrook are supposed to have hotspots as well.

[Senti_al]

has anyone ever found a way to use p2p programs and torrents with wireless connections..i couldnt get them to work but from wat i know they dont work well with wireless...hoever i did some reseach and found out that u must forward the ports and this will correct this progblem .i got a program called porttrigger and wen im in my office in ngc moday i could try it out and forward the ports...now im not sure this will work so can anyone tell me if im on the right track or if there is more things to be done (of course i took off windows firewall and anything that most likely will block it)

if anyone knows other methods to get p2p apps to work that they would like to share it will be most appreciated

[Hexxx]

<quote>
I recently had my laptop on in the car on a drive from St. Augustine to Westmoorings, and I had Netstumbler running. It detected about 45 wireless networks, and about half of them did not even have encryption!
</quote>

I tried netstumbler and it didn't detect anything for me here. Wish I lived near one of those wi-fi sites!