I’ve been relying on public wifi hotspots for all of my communications with home this week. In the process, I’m discovering that the Manhattan airwaves are cluttered with wifi signals.
I didn’t have any luck finding any access points on my first day touring lower Manhattan. I checked three of the hot spots advertised by the Lower Manhattan promotion group and didn’t see anything. I was beginning to think that the wifi card I had brought from New Zealand hadn’t survived it’s three or four dips under the airport security x-rays.
While looking through one of the downtown gadget stores I found the Kingston wifi finder key ring for $20 US. It displays LED signal strength indicators when it detects a 802.11 access point; I’m not sure how closely it examines the signal but claims to do more than just look for 2.4GHz RF. It turned out to be quite a useful gadget, confirming that I needed a new network card.
Side note; was this just bad luck or are these radio circuits more fragile under x-rays than other computer equipment; what happens to machines with integrated wifi radios?
The cheapest available card was about $80 NZ, meaning that this gear isn’t any cheaper in the US than New Zealand. The sales people did seem to be fielding quite a number of enquires about access points. Access points get top billing in the US stores; PCMCIA cards are nearer the back of the shelves. Intel are really pushing their mobile brand as well.
I’ve been using the Cornercast public node on Union Square for email. It’s interesting to observe what else is out there though. The Kingston key ring showed signal more often than not in my wanderings around lower and mid Manhattan; It even showed a signal on one of the subway stations. I don’t think I’ve been more than 2 minutes from a wifi signal all week. I’ve never turned the laptop on at a location showing signal on the Kingston and seen less than 4 access points.
I located a usable node 200 metres from the hostel. Obtaining a connection would seem to be as easy as sit down, open laptop, select the a ‘linksys’ node. You’d probably get Cafenet style coverage in most of the city by locking the card on the ‘linksys’ SSID.
The screen photograph above shows the site survey where I ate lunch this afternoon, up in the business district on Park Avenue. Note the scroll bar on the node list; there’s 20 odd access points visible at that location.
