On a business trip to Greenville, SC, I learned at the public library that a new company called Gorilla Networks, Inc. had wired up enough hotspots to nearly blanket the downtown. After a few hitches involving the antenna aimed at the library and some issues with settings in my Windows 2000 laptop computer, I managed to get online from a park bench and then in a restaurant across the street. Since the early March weather was very nice it beat holing up in a dusty corner of a Kinkos and I certainly couldn't beat the price. A flyer at the library included a telephone number to call for questions or problems. It turned out to be the cell phone of one of the owners. He was eager to help and came out to meet me on a sunny Saturday afternoon to ferret out the settings problems that were keeping me off of their network. They support the network through a $500 a month, I think, cable broadband connection. They have so many access points aimed around downtown, he said, that it was unlikely I would even be sharing one with another user. I ran a speed test from http://www.bandwidthplace.com and they clocked in just over 3 megabits. They have an interesting business plan. The free service downtown is one of their principal marketing vehicles. They are selling service to companies that want to have an internet and secure intranet available inside their buildings. They take the internet access off of their open wireless system and bring it inside the business with a series of secure APs and then sign a service contract with the business. If an organization is away from the downtown core, they use a bridge and sometimes a repeater (no more than one) to reach out to their location. They note that companies trying to sell wireless access to roving laptop customers have not been financially successful. So they have found an interesting middle ground. Free wireless access that opens doors for them to write service contracts. When you first try to get onto their network you reach the following "landing page." http://www.gorillanetworks.com/wirelessdowntown/portal/landing.html Patrick Sheehy _______________________________________________ Twin Cities Wireless Users Group Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota http://www.tcwug.org tcwug-list at tcwug.org https://mailman.real-time.com/mailman/listinfo/tcwug-list