I finally got to use the Airport Extreme card I recently got. I found myself on campus today visiting some friends at the help desk, and I noticed my AirPort menu bar status showing 4 bars. I had to install the Cisco VPN client, which was kind of inconvenient, but I was still online in about 5 minutes (on the other hand, they were having some trouble helping out some guy with a Windoze laptop... hehe). I then took my laptop and walked around for a while, looking for hotspots.
I thought the whole experience was insanely cool when I had coverage, but because only some places on campus have coverage, it wasn't nearly as cool as I thought it'd be. For example, at least on the Chico State campus, you won't be able to sit outside under a tree and get access. Also, because you'll lose your connection moving from location to location, you'll most likely need to re-authenticate everytime you relocate. But then, if you have to sit in one place, that really isn't all that different to ethernet, is it? Sure, you don't need a jack in the wall or a CAT5 cable, but you still don't get the kind of freedom wifi's supposed to give you.
All in all, it seems like wifi is only as good as the coverage you get. Which means, in most places, it really isn't all that great (i.e. it doesn't exist). But when you've got coverage, it's pretty nifty.
Posted Fri, September 5, 2003 02:21 by Tim Swanson
I really should build a WiFi network for the house I'm living in right now, but I plan on moving in the next few months... so that has been put on the back burner. The AirPort sounds great, now if only I had a Mac : )
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