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Ärende: FidoNews 23:39 [02/08]: General Articles
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GENERAL ARTICLES
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Join the family of FON, the search.
By Michiel van der Vlist, 2:280/5555
Two month ago I wrote about FON, a Spanish initiative to provide
members of the FON community with world wide free WiFi access to the
InterNet on the basis of reciprocity. This is a sequel, a diary of a
trip where as a side issue, I tried to find and use FON access points.
August was very wet and so we aborted our previously planned trip into
Germany following our stay at the Bad Bentheim international Hamfest.
Instead we decided to wait out the bad weather at home and start over
when the conditions became better. I decided to take the laptop along
with FidoNet point software installed and try to find FON access point
to keep in touch. But how to find them?
It turned out to be not as easy as it looked at first sight. Fon
offers maps based on Googlemaps with the FON points inserted, but
these are of little use if you do not have advance knowledge of where
exactly you are going. Now this may seem a bit odd for most of you,
but for us Dutch trailer/camper owners - we call them caravans here -
it is not all that unusual to just hook up the trailer and go without
any more than a vague idea of where the trip will go, let alone where
it will end. Some of us are true nomads.
FON offered - they dropped that recently - the possibility of
displaying a list of nearest points around a selected ZIP code, but
only the first 30 or so of that list are printable. So I printed a
list for two cities I thought I might come near: Middelburg in Zeeland
and Antwerp in Belgium. Some 60 FON points in total. Our idea was to
eventually go into France, maybe Normandy or even Brittany, but
printing lists for all that was just too much, so I gave up.
* * * * *
Friday Sept 8, 2006. We hooked up the caravan and headed in the
direction of Zeeland. We saw some interesting things on the way and
arrived at a camping place near Renesse in the evening. No FON points
in the neighbourhood, but as a ham I am always on the lookout for
antennas. I noticed a small vertical antenna on a flag pole near the
shower block. A bit shorter than a 1/4 wave for 2 meters and a bit
thicker than a simple rod.
Later I also saw the same antenna on the flag pole at the reception
and so I asked the receptionist what they were for and my guess was
confirmed: WiFi. When I asked how I could get access the man told me
that since "the router was broken, the network was all open and access
was temporarily free". That did not sound very logical to me - if the
router is broken, how can it work at all? - but who am I to argue with
a free lunch. And indeed, it was an open network and I succeeded in
having my binkp mailer on the laptop make contact with my system at
home and I exchanged mail. So far so good. But this story is about
FON and not about an accidentally free access point on a camping.
* * * * *
Saturday Sept 9th. Next stop Zoutelande. No Wifi on the camping, no
registered Fonero within 15 kilometers. We did some shopping and made
a trip to Veere, A very nice old city. Bit of a tourist attraction
though. There is a marina there and I noticed a WiFi access point on
the Harbour master's office. I guessed this one would not be open and
it certainly was not a registered FON point, so I did not take the
trouble of going back to the parking (300 meters) to get the laptop
and try it out.
* * * * *
Sunday Sept 10th. The camping place at Zoutelande turned out to be a
nice place and there were lots of trips to be made, so we decided to
stay there for a few more days. We made a trip to Middelburg and
enjoyed ourselves at "little Walcheren". Got plenty of suggestions for
things to go see in the real. There are four FON points listed in
Middelburg, but frankly we were a bit tired and hungry at the end of
the day. I didn't have the drive to go for an access point hunt, so we
went back to the camping for a meal.
* * * * *
Monday Sept 11th. Trip to Vlissingen. Home of the famous Dutch admiral
Michiel de Ruyter (I am named after him). There should have been one
Fonero in the city. This time I thought I would give it a try. I had
little trouble finding The address and I could even park there for a
moment. There was a signal but it was not on the expected channel 11 -
the default for the FON social router - and it was protected. No
access. So the guy had switched off the social router. Maybe he got
tired of it and replaced the FON software in the router with the
original Linksys software, or it was the neighbour's router or
something else. Anyway, I did not want to stay to investigate, I could
not park there for long so we moved on.
* * * * *
Tuesday Sept 12th. We hookup up the trailer again and went for Goes.
There should be four Fonero in Goes. With the caravan hooked up, going
into the city was a bit of an adventure. I had little trOuble finding
the first address, but I ran into a dead end street and it took a bit
of effort to turn the combination around without unhooking the trailer
but I managed. Luck was with me this time, I got a signal on channel
11. It looked promising. I got access and exchanged mail. what I had
expected did not happen however: I was not asked for a user Name and
password.
This appeared to be an open access point. I was not sure because my
experience with FON access point was very limited. Maybe a cookie did
the login for me. Who knows? Later when I had an opportunity to
consult the travel log, I saw that it had indeed not been a FON access
point. If it were, it would have appeared in the log. I had just
stumbled on an open access point. Maybe operated by the Fonero, maybe
his neighbOur. I did not stay around to investigate, I was parked a
bit awkward and Rosa felt uncomfortable and became impatient. So we
moved on and settled down at a camping at Wemeldinge.
* * * * *
Wednesday Sept 13th. The camping at Wemeldinge offered no WiFi and
there were no FON access points within 10 km. The place was presented
as a diver's Walhalla and maybe it was, there were plenty of wet suits
to be seen. But as diving is not our thing and it had little else to
offer, we hooked up the caravan again and moved on. We took the
Zeeland tunnel across the Wester Schelde and settled down at Groede
near Breskens, Zeeuws Vlaanderen. No Wifi on the camping there and no
Fonero in range. We planned to go south along the Belgian and French
coast next day.
* * * * *
Thursday Sept 14th. The weather turned bad, so we decided to abort the
plan of going down the coast and turned east at Brugge instead. We
expected better weather away from the coast. We landed on a place
called Oteppe in the French speaking part of Belgium. I had driven off
the Fonero maps I prepared, so no chance of finding a Fonero. No Wifi
signal on the camping but the flyer said they had InterNet capability.
So I enquired and it turned out that I could use The computer of the
"Internet Cafe" at the reception. No good of course, that one does not
have binkp installed. When I asked if I could plug my RJ45 into a free
port of the router I got a blank stare and when I explained, the lady
at the desk almost got a hearth attack. So I gave up. The weather was
nice though and there was a lot to see so we stayed a bit longer.
* * * * *
Friday Sept 15th. We made a trip to Huy and visited the fortress. Very
impressive. By then I had given up hope of finding FON access points.
They are too sparsely spread to make the chance of accidentally
bumping into them next to zero and I had no FON map of the area.
* * * * *
Saturday Sept 16th. We saw a variety of impressive castles, but - this
is getting boring - no FON access points.
* * * * *
Sunday Sept 17th. The weather turned bad again and we had a problem
with the car. No way to get it repaired on a Sunday, so we decided to
call it quits and drive home while we still could. We took our time
and made a few stops on the way. We were home just after sunset. My
FON point at home was still up and running. Nobody seemed to have used
it.
* * * * *
We had an interesting trip. Bit shorter than we planned but we enjoyed
ourselves. As a FON expedition I can hardly call it a success. On a
ten day trip with 1000 km on the meter, I did not contact a single
Fonero. I realize that FON is just starting but for it to become a
success as a first priority something will have to be done to make
them easier to find. There are too few of them, they are too far apart
and they are too hard to find when on the move. Plus that not all the
registered ones are on-line. When we are on holiday, we do not want to
spend the better part of the day dragging the laptop along, trying to
find an active access point do we? They should be as easy to find as a
gas station.
A weak point of FON is that most access points are where the Foneros
live: in build up residential areas. The nomad - to whom it would
potentially be most useful - is in a motel or a camping place. That is
a bad match. I do not know if these problems can be overcome. Fon has
recently changed their web interface with the Google maps. The new
interface is much more flashy, but unfortunately it is also harder to
find the Foneros than with the old interface. Not an improvement
IMNSHO. We will just have to exert some patience and see how it works
out. The more people who join, the more chance of success.
So Join The Family of FON: http://www.fon.com
(c) 2006, Michiel van der Vlist. All rights reserved. Permission
granted to distribute by means of the FidoNews echomail conference and
the FidoNews file echo only.
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