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Small office / Home office
Wi-Fi device finds hotspots

By Craig Crossman
Knight Ridder Newspapers

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More and more venues are becoming hotspots. Using the wireless 802.11x protocol better known as Wi-Fi, these hotspots can be found in airports, libraries, coffeehouses, restaurants, shopping malls and just about any other public location you can imagine. But unless there's a sign posted somewhere, you may not be able to easily find one.

Normally, the only way to find a hotspot is to turn on your portable computer and have it see if it can detect the Wi-Fi signal. That may be a rather large pain, given that it's not usually that easy to take your laptop out of its case, turn it on, wait for it to boot up and then let it try and detect the signal. Plus, even if you do detect a signal, there's no guarantee it's an open hotspot intended for general public access. It's very possible that you may have stumbled onto a private network where you cannot get online without a password.

What is needed is some kind of detector that not only senses the Wi-Fi signal but can also give you the hotspot's relevant information. Until now, detectors could only display the presence of the signal and its strength. But the Digital Hotspotter from Canary Wireless (www.canarywireless.com) shows you everything you need to know.

The Digital Hotspotter is a second generation Wi-Fi detection-and-analysis device that sports an LCD screen that displays everything you need to know about a detected Wi-Fi signal.

Unlike its predecessors that can only detect a signal's strength by a series of colored lights, the Digital Hotspotter's screen has a signal-strength indicator that shows a series of bars, the way cellphones display signal strength. The more bars you see, the stronger the signal.

After you find a signal, the Digital Hotspotter will display the network ID or SSID, which is usually the name of the signal provider. For example, if you were at a local Starbucks, you would see the T-Mobile name on the screen since that's the Wi-Fi provider Starbucks uses.

The other most important piece of information you can check is the encryption status. Because most hotspots in public places are intended for public usage, no encryption key is necessary to gain access and the Digital Hotspotter will display the word "Open" on its screen. If it's not open, chances are the people who put it there don't want you using it.

Finally, the Wi-Fi channel number can be indicated on the Digital Hotspotter's screen. This can be of value in hotspots that use more than one channel in order to cover a big location that exceeds the 300-foot range limitation of the Wi-Fi signal.

In a school, for example, different areas will be assigned different channels to avoid any overlapping or crosstalk that might occur when placing Wi-Fi transceivers too closely together.

So after detecting the Wi-Fi signal with your Digital Hotspotter and determining all of the pertinent information about it, you can then decide whether to open up your portable computer and begin your online session. With a Digital Hotspotter in your hand, you can quickly and easily determine if your Internet-ready device is ready to reach out and touch someone. And at $49.95, it makes for a great stocking stuffer.

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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