This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Agile Buzz
by James Robertson.
Original Post: Free Public WiFi Explained
Feed Title: Cincom Smalltalk Blog - Smalltalk with Rants
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Feed Description: James Robertson comments on Cincom Smalltalk, the Smalltalk development community, and IT trends and issues in general.
This is funny - the way Windows retains SSIDs it runs across has turned some guy's search for free WiFi into a viral spread of a useless SSID:
What's the thing almost everyone wants to find when they open a WiFi-enabled notebook and search for a connection? Why, free public WiFi! If you see that -- and you don't know any better -- you connect to it.
Your notebook then retains that SSID, broadcasting it as an ad hoc network. Others see you, connect to you, pick up the name, and later pass it on. And on and on it goes. Since people travel with their notebooks, it's easy for this to have moved quickly, across the country -- like a cold spreading in the closed confines of an airplane cabin.
It has spread "everywhere" - I've seen the SSID pop up on airplanes, in public places, pretty much everywhere I've had a laptop.
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