Free WIFI on Tour --- Secrets to finding!

Here are some ways you can find and get free WIFI when you're on tour.

If you're new to WIFI / cellphones, 3G vs LTE, etc. skip to the bottom for a primer.

For starters there are McDonalds, Home Depot, Starbucks and other businesses that offer free WIFI access, along with public libraries, etc.

There are several apps you can install on your smartphone to LOCATE free WIFI (you gotta have a 3G or 4G tower in sight for the app to work, of course)

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.jiwire.android.finder&hl=en

I know you Iphone users don't need help finding apps, lol...

Motels are a mixed bag; some are free, some aren't. Seems the fancier the hotel the more likely they are to try and charge for it.

Many cellphones today allow you to set up your own WIFI hotspot, although you're now chewing into your cellphone/data plan. This allows you to use your Iphone to feed data to your tablet or laptop where there is no other WIFI coverage but there is 3G/4G/LTE.

(I don't know about Samsung / non Apple phones capabilities, maybe someone can chime in here...)

If your cellphone carrier is AT&T, they have a nationwide WIFI network you can access gratis. I looked up my hometown in their coverage map, and found it consists MOSTLY of businesses and restaurants. In addition, AT&T''s coverage map worked under Mozilla, but not under Chrome, at least for me.

http://www.att.com/maps/wifi.html#fbid=bhIUNP-KJBD

Turns out Time/Warner ALSO has a WIFI finder app, and offers nationwide hotspots....

The greatest amount of coverage you can get for the least $ comes from Comcast/Xfinity, assuming you OR A FRIEND has an @comcast.net email address and password. (or account name & password, which they give you when you sign up for home Internet with them)

It turns out Xfinity is provisioning WIFI through its customers' home routers. That's right. YOUR router. The WIFI you use in your house IS ALSO being made available to anyone driving past.

Don't believe me? Here ya go:

http://arstechnica.com/information-t...ublic-hotspot/

Now, mind you, Xfinity claims there are "two sides" to their cable modem, that WIFI-poaching-drivers-by won't impact your bandwidth or download speeds, yada yada yada, but the simple fact is their nationwide WIFI is coming out of people's home & business cable modems. Unbeknownst to many!

(How long till a hacker breaches the firewall between the two sides? 3..2...1)

So if you're not an Xfinity customer, borrow the email and passsword from someone who is (yadayada@comcast.net) and you can access millions of WIFI nodes across the country for free. All ya gotta do is find the right driveway.

Comcast WIFI map:
http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-conten...ts-640x316.png

Another way to obtain free WIFI is simply to troll; drive around neighborhoods looking for unsecured networks. Of course that's a lot easier in a car.

There are also offline LISTS of WIFI hotspots you can download that will work even if you don't have a cellphone tower in "sight."

I personally didn't put my tablet on my data plan alongside my cellphone, thinking I didn't want to run up data charges and would only use it in WIFI hotspots. Now I realize I can use it almost anywhere there's 3G/4GS/LTE service with a combination of my AT&T account & my brother's Xfinity address.

With WIFI you can access map applications, watch movies on your tablet, videoconference (Facetime, Skype) and anything else you can normally do over the Internet.

If anyone else knows of any other ways to get cheap or free WIFI while out on the road, or business chains that offer free WIFI at all their locations, please post them here.

Wade Nelson, Writer

http://www.wadenelson.com/best.html

PRIMER for Cellphone/Tablet/WIFI newbies: Cellphones generally use 3G/4G/LTE technologies to connect to the tower and allow you to place and receive calls, and text messages.

When you want to surf the net, send big pictures, or watch movies, etc then LARGE amounts of data are involved. That can get pricey over a cellphone "data plan" Mine, for example limits me to 1GB per month.

Enter WIFI --- basically free data, to download program updates, pictures, watch Youtubes or movies, run Skype or Facetime (videoconference) surf the net at a REASONABLE speed, and so on.

WIFI is generally available within a 100' radius of a WIFI modem, that is HARD WIRED to the Internet, rather than being broadcast via radio signals like cellphone calls, etc.

To a large extent the two are interchangeable, BUT WIFI tends to be a whole lot faster and cheaper than sending/receiving data over 3G/4G.

And that's not to say that at 7 am in the hotel lobby SO MANY people are checking their emails that the WIFI router gets congested too. Ditto at 7pm when everyone decides to try and stream movies.

But overall, it tends to work very well. Amazingly well!