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Ask HN: How can your WiFi life be made better?

4 points by orenmazor ↗ HN
Lets say, hypothetically, that I could change anything* about the majority of wireless hotspots you folks visit to work at (or just incidentally end up using, like at a bar or an airport).

What would you like changed?

*Within reason. Everybody involved in the hotspot, from the hosting business to the ISP to the provider, are a business. This isn't your neighbours linksys.

9 comments

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Haz
Time online limited to a function of how much you've purchased. $5 at a coffee shop may buy you 30min wireless -- spend more, get your time allotment bumped up. Spend less, get booted off the wifi.
orenmazor
its an interesting idea, but I see a lot of technical overhead (and failure points), not to mention employee training.
fragmede
Following the latest trend... Firesheep protection - VPN offering for open wifi; or wifi that's open, only to give you the password for the WPA2 network.

A publically routable IPv4 address...

IPv6...

Ordering drinks/food via wifi...

orenmazor
with IPv4 addresses being such an endangered species, I'm surprised at your callousness requesting one!

(seriously though, is this something you need? publicly routable IPs?)

fragmede
Endangered? Yes.

Useful? Yes.

Required, with no alternatives? No.

But in hypothetical-land? IPv4 address aren't hard to come by.

I wasn't being facetious when I mentioned IPv6. IPv4 addresses are hard to come by; but IPv6 addresses not so much.

orenmazor
I know, I'm not actually making fun of you. just curious what you're doing that that is one of the first things you thought of.
adammcnamara
1. No more time-limited sessions. Baristas always issue you another session when you ask. 2. More explicit directions on how to get "up and running". Every vendor is different. Disclose the business rules of the hotspot on the landing page. Defer most marketing material to after authentication. If I'm on the landing page there's a good chance I already have a coffee in hand. My priority is the internet, not more coffee.
bengl
Some kind of notification that I'm on a paid access point rather than a free one would be nice. Too often I'm on one of my mobile devices and I'll connect to a network named after the location I'm in (say, "Moe's Tavern"), and there's no indication that it's a Boingo, Broadstreet or whatever other kind of paid hotspot. If I'm not using my browser first (say a Twitter client instead), I get "connection refused" or something that makes me think fail whale rather than "I need to open up MobileSafari and cough up some coin to go any further". The whole non-browser hotspot experience could use a lot of work.
orenmazor
this is what the iphone's captive portal feature is for, actually.

ironically though, apple created an 'exception' list that lets certain apps disable that feature. so while its a useful feature, most people's phones disable it (for example, boingo app)