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| Written by Jono Cono I’m currently sitting in Montreal airport on my way back to Ottawa. This was my first trip travelling with a laptop after having recently obtaining one. I had always been under the impression that there was free WiFi access in airports but I guess that was a silly idea. In the Ottawa airport you must pay of course but what’s weird right now is that sitting at the gate in Montreal I can see two unsecure wireless networks. I can connect to both but only locally and no access through to the internet. I don’t even see a secure network that you can connect through and pay. At any rate I suppose I can live without internet access for a few hours, ha,ha.
I must say that this trip has been an interesting one for SSID’s. I’ve seen some such as “Paula, get off our shit” and “Don’t steal my Net ya Mooch”. What I find surprising is that the owner of the latter SSID knew enough to be able to change their SSID but no idea on how to secure it. They also knew enough to change the default username and password on their router. I enjoyed using their internet connection quite a bit I must say.
Most people would benefit from keeping their SSID short and sweet. The longer it is the more it can slow down network traffic. The SSID gets tagged onto the header of each data packet sent over the network. People who use their SSID as a message headliner are unwittingly hurting themselves. I’m also surprised how many people are only using WEP security on their routers as well. Quite interesting I must say.
I always thought the WiFi hotspots or whatever they are called are free as well! I also didn’t know that the longer the SSID the more it wil slow down network traffic… Our SSID back at home is called “Now Loading”. :P
Some WiFi hotspots are free, it just turns out that the ones in airports are a paid service. The airports I was in seemed to have contracted out the WiFi service to a 3rd party provider.
If you’re on a really fast network connection then any amount of slow down caused by a long SSID would be negligible. On a slower network comparing a 32 character SSID versus a 4 character SSID you might start noticing. I like the “Now Loading” SSID.