Wellington free wifi
The Dom Post reports:
Wellington waterfront visitors will be able to connect to the internet for free from this morning with the launch of Trade Me’s wi-fi network.
Initially expected to cover the area south from Frank Kitts Lagoon to the waterfront side of Te Papa, it is likely to extend to areas including the Sunday markets.
Weather’s not great today, but hope to try it out at the weekend with an iPad at one of the fine bars on the waterfront.
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Tags: Trade Me, Wellington
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February 2nd, 2011 at 3:07 pm
Yay. Torrents. Here I come. Thanks Trademe.
February 2nd, 2011 at 3:19 pm
I went out lunchtime, and the connection was repeatedly refused. When I did get a (very weak) connection, trying to surf to gmail or stuff.co.nz resulted in an unknown address error.
Not a positive experience
February 2nd, 2011 at 3:33 pm
So what sites will be banned, one of course must keep up with the Mac’s ? Trademe is a fairly capitalistic organisation so I would hope the left get the big flick, ie substandard etc.
February 2nd, 2011 at 4:36 pm
@ben. P2P traffic is blocked on Trademe’s wifi
February 2nd, 2011 at 5:32 pm
anonymouse
@ben. P2P traffic is blocked on Trademe’s wifi
Of course. But is my proxy server in Uganda?
February 3rd, 2011 at 7:07 am
You take an ipad to a bar ?
February 3rd, 2011 at 1:42 pm
Right. As usual this has been implemented in a remarkably stupid manner. The picture in the link shows three coverage areas in green (trademe) blue (nz wireless) and red (city council). I have no idea whether the council has implemented anything, I suspect not.
Yesterday I went down to the south end of Frank Kitts Park, line of sight to NZX building. I connected to an SSID called “Free Public Wifi”. All attempts to surf anywhere went to an “invalid address” page. I did the same today with the same result.
Then I phoned Wellington Council, who transferred me to Wellington Waterfront who told me that “it’s nothing to do with us, we are just promoting it”. The guy knew nothing. He did say though that it was provided by NZ Wireless.
So I phoned them. They told me they were broadcasting on 2 SSID’s, “Free Public WiFi” and “nzwireless free Wifi” and that I ought to be redirected to a registration page when I try to surf. They also said that south end of FK Park is at the extreme edge of their range.
So I went to FoxGlove and tried again. Same result with “Free Public WiFi”, but when I connected to “nzwireless free Wifi” I was away. So I phoned NZ Wireless back. The tech support guy mumbled something about how the “Free Public WiFi” did have a problem blocking ip addresses but they thought it was sorted…
So the end result that I can glean is that there is not one, integrated, contiguous free wifi along the waterfront. There are two competing networks, trademe and nz wireless. I have no idea what trademe’s is called cause I never saw any ssid with trademe in it at the south end of FK park.
If you see “Free Public WiFi”, and you have problems, try “nzwireless free wifi” instead. That seems to work. Probably pay to be in the Dockside, Shed 5, Foxglove area rather than Monteith’s bar, but the trademe one may be more obvious there
February 3rd, 2011 at 10:36 pm
Isn’t the contagious “Free Public WiFi” SSID one of the problems Windows had with ad-hoc connections? I can’t remember the details, but somehow if you had your computer open for ad-hoc, then connected to a wifi spot, your computer would start using the same SSID.
I’ve googled and found a few links:
* http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/hiner/study-shows-viral-ssids-could-be-creating-a-massive-wireless-botnet/602
* http://wlanbook.com/free-public-wifi-ssid/
In short, disable ad-hoc connections unless you know what you’re doing, NEVER connect to “Free Public Wifi” and if you have, you should delete it from your list of known SSIDs.