WLAN?

I live 20 miles from even a small city, no cable, so I am hopelessy stuck with dialup, maybe. I have a wireless capable laptop that I have used in hotspots in Dallas and on my son's home system. Meanwhile, back at home I see that it automatically connects to a Wireless Network Connection (peer-to-peer). It has a speed of 11Mbps, excellent signal strength and appears to be begging me to use it. The LAN icon says I am connected but If I try to open a browser, it tries to use the dial up connection. Properties don't tell me much, so how can I find out what this signal is, where it is coming from, and how can I get into the broadband world way out here? While waiting for my 26.4 Kbps connection to work I can take a nap, play a game of Sol, or do some other mindless task. I don't mind paying for broadband but satellite seems to be the only other way and I am not quite ready to go that way yet. Thanks.

Reply to
hawkeye
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Your browser is probably just set to only use a dialup connection.

Whether it will work or not, who knows. It may not be going to an internet gateway, may be VPN'd, or any other number of things. Its Adhoc? I'm betting it doesn't have an permanent internet gateway. Out there in the boonies, the owner probably just uses it to connect another PC to, and perhaps occassionaly share dialup internet over ICS.

Whether you should play around with it or not is your moral call. I wouldn't, but if you want to then try pinging

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and if that works, simply change your browser's connection settings.

Reply to
Eric

On 18 Oct 2006 08:37:11 -0700, "hawkeye" wrote in :

Just like items in racks outside stores are begging you to shoplift them.

Move around with your laptop recording the signal strength on a simple map. As you approach the access point, signal will tend to increase, and vice versa. Use Network Stumbler for an accurate reading of signal strength.

Then approach the owner of the access point, and see if you can work out a deal for Internet access.

Reply to
John Navas

If you are connecting peer-to-peer you are just connecting to another computer. Unless that computer is set up to share its Internet connection you won't be connected to the Internet. That peer to peer connection could even be another computer in your own house (if you have another one with a wireless card). Obviously that computer will not have a connection to the internet to share.

If you can find out who is the owner of the computer you are connecting to, you might be able to convince them to share their broadband (if they have broadband).

Reply to
Bryant Smith

A weird thing happened to me once and I'm not really sure why.. I connected to a ad-hoc network with a SSID it never let me go anywhere.. after I left the location I was in i noticed that it still showed me connected but of course didn't do anything.. i removed the connection from my preffered connection list and proglem solved.. sounds like your computer just wont let go

Adair

Reply to
Adair Witner

Just out of curiosity, where do you live? I got a 5 acre place in northern idaho and had the same prob (no cable/dsl only dialup), was gonna do the sat thing, and luckily, about a month after I moved in (and was really sick of dial-up), they started the spokane-rathdrum skynet (basically a 260+ sq mile hotspot, now they have 12 others.. Nice graphical map at

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if you want to see what available/covered in your area, they have a US map at
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)

Reply to
Peter Pan

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peer-to-peer is possibly another computer in your own house. It is unlikely to be anything else. I presume that if you are 20 miles from a small city, you also have a few hundred feet from you to the nearest neighbor. That is likely beyond the WiFi connection range of your laptop.

Does that 20-mile-away city offer high speed internet? If it does, you might be able to get a high speed connection, if you want to pay enough for it. I presume you would want something less than $100 month, though.

You could get a cellular connection. Sprint, Verizon and Cingular all offer high speed cellular data for around $60 per month. That can range from 30kbps to 400kbps and higher. When I was in a similar situation, my dialup rarely went above 21600, so even 30kpbs would have been an improvement.

The hardware can be a card to put into your laptop, or some phones that can be "tethered" to act like a modem for internet access. In my case, the Cingular/Motorola v551 can tether via Bluetooth, so I can set the phone in on a windowsill where it gets good signal. It's also possible to hook up an external antenna. If you have cellular coverage, even spotty coverage, you might be able to get good data coverage.

Reply to
dold

It would help if you informed us as to which operating system you are using (i.e. Windows XP, Windows2000, Linux, etc).

Windows XP and the latest distributions of Linux have network management tools built in that will show you what wireless networks are around. If you are using Windows, you need to go into Internet Explorer and change the connection settings to never automatically dial a connection (something to that effect - I'm not near a Windows machine right now). That will prevent your browser from trying to dial out when you open it. The default network settings for Windows should allow you to access *OPEN* wireless networks. That's it in a nutshell.

Reply to
johnny

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