Hotspots WiFi

A hotspot is a venue that offers Wi-Fi access. The public can use a laptop, WiFi phone, or other suitable portable device to access the Internet. Of the estimated 150 million laptops, 14 million PDAs, and other emerging Wi-Fi devices sold per year for the last few years, most include the Wi-Fi feature.

For venues that have broadband service, offering wireless access is as simple as purchasing one AP and connecting the AP with the gateway box.

Hotspots are often found at restaurants, train stations, airports, libraries, coffee shops, bookstores, fuel stations, department stores, supermarkets and other public places. Many universities and schools have wireless networks in their campus.

The Hotspots WiFi History

Wi-Fi hotspots were first proposed by Brett Stewart at the NetWorld+Interop conference in The Moscone Center in San Francisco in August 1993. Stewart did not use the term 'hotspot' but referred to public accessible wireless LANs. Stewart went on to found the companies PLANCOM in 1994 (for Public LAN Communications, which became MobileStar and then the hotspot arm of T-Mobile) and subsequently Wayport in 1996.

The term 'HotSpot' may have first been advanced by Nokia about five years after Stewart first proposed the concept.

During the dot-com boom and subsequent bust in 2000, dozens of companies like WPMedia of the Rural Agriculture town of Kingstree SC had the notion that Wi-Fi could become the payphone for broadband. Although WPMedia Inc. invented, developed and patented United States Patent 7,035,281, . Retrieved on 2007-09-20 the concept of authenication, metering and billing for public domain WiFi use, the company's implementation never expanded beyond a few hundred square miles. The original notion was that users would pay for broadband access at hotspots and then expand to a completely roaming network. Although some companies like T-mobile, and Boingo have had some success with charging for access, over 90% of the over 300,000 hotspots offer free service to entice customers to their venue. [citation needed]

Free hotspots continue to grow. Wireless networks that cover entire cities, such as municipal broadband have mushroomed. MuniWireless reports that over 300 metropolitan projects have been started.

Many business models have emerged for hotspots. The final structure of the hotspot marketplace will ultimately have to consider the intellectual property rights of the early movers; portfolios of more than 1000 allowed and pending patent claims are held by some of these parties.

Free hotspots operate in two ways:
- Using an open public network is the easiest way to create a free HotSpot. All that is needed is a Wi-Fi router. However, the disadvantage is that access to the router cannot be controlled.
- Closed public networks use a HotSpot Management System to control the HotSpot. This software runs on the router itself or uses an external computer for it. With the help of this software, operators can authorize only specific users to be able to access the internet, and they often associate the free access to a menu or to a purchase limit.

Hotspots are locations with public wireless access points where you can connect your mobile computers (such as a laptop or a PDA) to the Internet, using standard WLAN (Wi-Fi) technology. Most new laptops come with adaptors built in, and on some hotspot locations it is even possible to borrow a PCMCIA adaptor.

A commercial hotspot may feature:

- A captive portal where users are redirected to for authentication and payment
- A payment option using credit card, Paypal, iPass etc.
- A walled garden feature that allows free access to certain sites

However, many hotspots are open and free for use, either set up by the public or by a commercial enterprise hoping to use it to attract customers.

ZoneCD is a GNU/Linux LiveCD to easily set up hotspots.

A "poisoned hotspot" refers to a free public hotspot set up by identity thieves or other malicious individuals for the purpose of "sniffing" the information being sent by the user. This abuse can be avoided by the use of VPN. For end-users free VPN services like iPig are available.

Today many universities and schools have wireless networks in their campus.

You can refer to the book, Wi-Fi Hotspots: Setting Up Public Wireless Internet Access[1], to learn how to setup your own Wi-Fi Hotspot.

What can I do at a Wi-Fi-FreeSpot?

The Wi-Fi wireless broadband connection allows you to do anything you'd do from home or the office. You can surf the Web, check your e-mail, connect to your Corporate network (be sure to use a secure VPN connection), make free Voice over IP phone calls, play online games, update your blog, and IM with your friends. If you just have a modem dial-up account at home you'll probably end up spending more time at the Wi-Fi-FreeSpot once you see how much faster it is. Who knows, maybe you'll give up your dial-up account and just use the Wi-Fi-FreeSpot when you want to go online.(Your ability to send e-mail from a Wi-Fi-FreeSpot is somewhat dependent on the policy of your local Internet Service Provider(ISP) that provides your home/office internet and e-mail access - some ISPs restrict the ability to send email when not connected to the Internet directly through them. If you have a problem ask the Wi-Fi-FreeSpot location owner for their SMTP server info, or consider a web based e-mail account for use at a Wi-Fi- FreeSpot.)