Welland’s Gone Wireless!
Posted on October 25, 2006
Filed Under Internet, Networking |
On October 19, 2006, WiFi Welland was officially launched. A pilot project funded by the Municipality, WiFi Welland will provide free wireless Internet service at seven locations around the city.
While there will eventually be ten wireless hotspots in Welland, the initial seven sites are the Civic Square, the Welland Public Library, the Welland Transit building, the two arenas, and the Rose City Seniors Centre.
The service is high-speed and while there will be some limitations on what can be accessed, web sites and email can be used as well as VPN connections to the office. The service will attract visitors and residents alike to the venues where it is offered.
It is interesting to note that Welland is the first community in Niagara to offer such a service and only the second community in Ontario to offer it for free.
To use the service, you will need a notebook computer or a wireless PDA device. The configuration is very similar to what one would expect from a residential wireless router and there are no security keys to setup or other barriers to successfully connecting to the service.
While connecting with PDAs might be a bit beyond this column it’s worth looking at how one might get connected with a notebook computer. Most new notebooks come with built-in wireless capabilities and older notebooks can be easily upgraded to connect to a wireless network with a Cardbus adapter.
Cardbus is an upgrade to the old PCMCIA technology and is a means to add peripheral components to portable computers. A Cardbus adapter fits into a slot on the side of the notebook computer. Cardbus adapters add functionality to notebooks in much the same way expansion cards (modems, sound cards, network cards, etc) do for desktop computers.
Once the Cardbus adapter is plugged in and the drivers have been installed, getting connected to WiFi Welland is the same regardless of the wireless adapter being internal or of the Cardbus type.
While many internal and Cardbus wireless adapters come with their own configuration utilities, generally a user will be running Windows XP on their notebooks and Windows XP has it’s own built-in wireless configuration utility. While the XP utility is called the Wireless Zero Configuration Service, to connect to Wifi Welland, there are really three steps involved. They are however very straightforward.
When a notebook running the Wireless Zero Configuration Service comes within range of one of the WiFi Welland hotspots, a message should pop up that reads “Wireless networks detected”. All the user needs to do is click on the balloon, click on the network labeled WiFiWelland that appears, and then click the “Connect” button.
That’s it. In the system tray (the area on the bottom right of the screen where the clock is), an icon that looks like radio waves will become green when the connection to WiFi Welland is complete. You can now use the wireless network to access email, the web, or other Internet services.
When you open a web browser, you will be asked to agree to a disclaimer and sign on before you can access any web sites. This is a precaution meant to protect the user as well as WiFi Welland.
According to the press release “WiFi Welland was conceived and carried out by representatives from several community organizations including the City of Welland, Welland Hydro, Talk Wireless, Venture Niagara, BitNet Niagara, Club 2000 Niagara and RDÉE Ontario”.
I, for one, can’t wait to get out to some of these sites and getting some work done too!
I’m interested in making use of these hotspots but haven’t found any information regarding security.
Is this a complete ‘open’ connect, or is some security available (VPN, WPA or WEP)? (Your article mentions “VPN connections to the office”, but I wonder if this extends to VPN to the WIFI network so all transmissions are secure.)
Thanks for the article!
Thanks for your comments BrettM!
The hotspots do not make use of any security mechanisms and are an ‘open’ connection. You would probably want to consider using a firewall when connected.