Word: fi
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...America's heartland, geeks and grandparents and good ole boys alike are signing up for wi-fi access in the last place you would expect: RV parks. Whether they pull up in $10,000 campers or $300,000 McMansions on wheels, the nation's mobile nomads are using 802.11b, the wireless Web standard, to work and play, to bank, to check their stock portfolios or just to stay in touch with loved ones from the road. Ditch those old stereotypes about RV parks, says Eric Stumberg, co-founder of the start-up TengoInternet, based in Austin, Texas, which supplies...
...fact, wi-fi in an RV park tends to attract more users than the pool. When Kara and Jesse Cox moved from wireless Waxahachie, Texas, to Austin so Jesse could finish his last semester at the University of Texas, the first thing they did after pulling up in their 28-ft. mobile home was hook up the electricity and charge the computer (which Jesse, a physics major, built himself). EverQuest came even before the water connection. "Our lives are on that computer," admits Jesse. "Being young, we have to have our Internet." Although he kids Kara about her gaming addiction...
...looking closely, it's easy to miss the wi-fi antenna atop San Bruno mountain just south of San Francisco. There are a couple of dozen TV and radio broadcast towers, each about 300 ft. tall, surrounded with chain-link fences and electromagnetic radiation warning signs. The wi-fi antenna is a solitary 18-in. plastic stick that radio engineer Tim Pozar stuck up there on his day off. If it disappeared, fewer than a hundred people would notice. "It takes geeks like me, putting up antennas, to make this work," says Pozar...
What the geeks get in return is nothing short of astonishing. If you live in San Francisco and can see San Bruno or any of 16 other nodes in the home-brew San Francisco Local Area Network (SFLAN), you can stick your own wi-fi antenna on your rooftop, angle it in just the right direction and receive a clear, high-speed Internet connection--even from the other side of the city. The cost? Less than $100 if you buy your own parts, which can include an empty Pringles can. After that, you pay nothing. Nada. Zippo. Not a dime...
...this sounds like a grownup version of schoolkids connecting tin cans with string for a science fair and dreaming of putting the phone company out of business, well, that's because it is. Proponents of free wi-fi like Pozar believe that paying for Internet access is as dumb as paying for a radio signal (which is, of course, exactly what wi-fi is). Already their tin cans and string have scored successes from Manhattan to Milwaukee. Small retail outlets such as bookstores and coffee shops are starting to get with the program too. They find that giving away bandwidth...