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Internet Cafes around the world About Hotspots

Internet Cafes around the world

One of the first things most people want to know when they are traveling nowadays, is "where can I find internet connection where I am traveling?". For me, its always a constant struggle to find a good spot to connect. Here are some places listed. IF you know of any others, please let us know by listing them here:

T-mobile Hotspots:   http://hotspot.t-mobile.com/

Free spots:  FON

Cyber cafes:

http://dmoz.org/Computers/Internet/Cybercafes/

http://www.globalcomputing.com/CafesContent.htm

Hot Spots (to use your own laptop):

http://www.free-hotspot.com/

http://www.wi-fihotspotlist.com/

About Hotspots

During the dotcom boom and subsequent bust in the year 2000, dozens of companies had the notion that Wi-Fi could become the payphone for broadband. The original notion was that users would pay for broadband access at hotspots. Although some companies like T-mobile, My Hot Zone and Boingo have had some success with charging for access, over 90% of the over 300,000 hotspots offer free service to entice customers to their venue.

Free hotspots continue to grow. Wireless networks that cover entire cities, such as Municipal broadband have mushroomed. Muni Wireless reports that over 300 metropolitan projects have been started.

Many business models have emerged for hotspots. The final structure of the hotspot marketplace will ultimately have to consider the intellectual property rights of the early movers; portfolios of more than 1000 allowed and pending patent claims are held by some of these parties.

A commercial hotspot may feature:

• A captive portal that users are redirected to for authentication and payment

• A payment option using credit card, Paypal, iPass, or other payment service

• A walled garden feature that allows free access to certain sites

Many services, such as Boingo, My Hot Zone, Surf And Sip, Nomadix, zonaWiFi.biz, and Netnear U provide these payment services to hotspot providers, for a monthly fee. HotSpotSystem.com provides their software for free for everyone who want to start their paid HotSpot service but asks for a commission from the income generated by the customers of the Hot Spot. Zone CD is a GNU/Linux Live CD that provides payment services for hotspots who wish to deploy their own service. 2hotspot.com offers similar services for Microsoft Windows

Major airports and business hotels are more likely to charge for service. Most hotels provide free service to guests; and increasingly small airports and airline lounges offer free service.

FON is a Spanish portal that shares wireless broadband among members and sells excess bandwidth to what they call Aliens. The latter feature breaks broadband agreements that most members have with their broadband provider. Thus, commercial hotspots cannot join the FON community.

Free HotSpots operate two ways:

• Open public network is the most easy way to create a free HotSpot. You only need a Wi-Fi router and your HotSpot is ready to use. But you have the disadvantage of not knowing who connects to the router thus you can't control it any ways.

• Closed public networks are using a HotSpot Management System to control the HotSpot. These are softwares that are running on the router itself or using an external computer for it. With the help of these softwares operators can achive that only those guest will be able to use the internet, who are authorized and they often associate the free access to a menu, or to a purchase limit. HotSpotSystem.com for example offers their software for a small monthly fee depending on the number of connections that a HotSpot uses a month.

Free hotspots have mushroomed. So have sites that list these free services.

• WiFi FREESPOT - Provides most of free Wi-Fi hotspots worldwide.