[Air-l] Internet Cafes in Airports

Steve Jones sjones at uic.edu
Fri Oct 19 14:22:34 PDT 2001


Here's a little trick that works at some airports, and only with 
recent Apple computers that have the Airport wireless networking 
cards (and no, I don't think this is why they named it "Airport").

Seat yourself near one of those airline company "lounges" (e.g., 
Admirals Club, etc., the ones for which one pays an arm and a leg to 
join). Turn on the Airport networking function and let it scan for a 
signal. If it finds one, change your TCP/IP settings to DHCP, and 
you'll be on the Internet (much as we were able to be in Minneapolis 
thanks to Apple's help). Sometimes this works near Internet kiosks 
and restaurants that provide wireless connections. It works in other 
locations too, see this article at Slashdot: 
http://slashdot.org/articles/01/08/15/0150255.shtml

Sj

At 2:36 PM -0400 10/19/01, Jennifer Stromer-Galley wrote:
>I have noticed few Internet Cafes per se, but as Brian Newberry points out,
>rooms or places where people can take their laptop and connect up. Indeed,
>when I was passing time in the MSP airport before flying home on Monday, I
>noticed that in the food court I was eating at, there was a telephone jack,
>that if I had a modem attached to my laptop, I could dial into my ISP. It
>was fairly innocuous, and if I hadn't been sitting right in front of the
>jack, I would not have noticed it.
>
>A friend of mine worked for a company developing Internet kiosks at
>airports, where with the swipe of a credit card, a person could access the
>Web for 10 minutes at a time. His company went out of business after rolling
>out Kiosks in 3 cities' airports. The cost of the Kiosks themselves, the red
>tape at the airports, the cost of installing the fiber optics in the
>terminals, led to their demise (along with the drying up of venture capital
>. . . .).
>
>It does seem to me that in this new age of air travel (with longer stays in
>the airports themselves before boarding) that Internet Cafes (where the Cafe
>offers jacks for those with laptops and computers for those who do not)
>would be quite popular.
>
>~Jenny Stromer-Galley
>
>Annenberg School for Communication
>University of Pennsylvania
>jstromer at asc.upenn.edu
>
>
>>  -----Original Message-----
>>  From: Newberry, Brian Wayne [mailto:bnewberry at ku.edu]
>>  Sent: Friday, October 19, 2001 12:20 PM
>>  To: 'air-l at aoir.org'
>>  Subject: [Air-l] Internet Cafes in Airports
>>
>>
>>  I too have done a fair bit of traveling in the past year or
>>  two and have
>>  noticed a lack of Internet Access in airports. I have never
>>  seen an Internet
>>  Cafe in an airport but several I have been to have had some
>>  sort of Internet
>>  access.
>>
>>  Specifically, Salt Lake City Utah has little rooms you can rent with
>>  computers and Internet access. Several airports I have been
>>  in have had
>>  Internet kiosks. I think Chicago is one airport with this system.
>>
>>  All of these require a credit card to use which can be a
>>  drawback. I would
>>  also think that the coffee shop atmosphere of a cafe would be
>>  a welcome
>>  addition to the process of communicating.
>>
>>  Ulla, can I invest?
>>
>>  Brian Newberry
>>  University of Kansas
>> 
>>  <snip>
>>  Message: 10
>>  From: "Bunz, Ulla K" <ulla at ukans.edu>
>>  To: "'air-l at aoir.org' '" <air-l at aoir.org>
>>  Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2001 19:42:05 -0500
>>  Subject: [Air-l] internet cafes
>>
>>
>> 
>>  In the last three months, I've traveled a bit. I've been at
>>  the following
>>  airports: Kansas City, Minneapolis, Dallas/Ft. Worth, Seattle, Newark,
>>  Frankfurt (Germany), Cologne (Germany), Amsterdam (Netherlands), and
>>  Stavanger (Norway). I'm also familiar with airports in major
>>  cities such as
>>  Munich, Brussels, London, Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, Sydney, and
>>  Auckland.
>>
>>  And yet, at all these airports, one thing is missing.
>>
>>  How come I can't remember seeing any Internet Cafes in any of these
>>  airports?
>>
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>
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