High Speed Internet

[Martha]

You need to buy a Verizon Mobile Office kit for your phone. Some phones don't have a corresponding kit, but most do now. The kit comes with a cable to connect your phone to your computer. It also comes with software to install on your computer.

We have a plan vanilla America's Choice plan. With that plan, when you access the Internet you use your cell phone minutes. No big deal on the weekends when minutes are free.

The Internet isn't always available everywhere. It is available when you are on the Verizon Wireless digital network, but often isn't available if you are on the "extended network." If it is available on the extended network, only the slowest version is available, called Quick to Net.

There is a Yahoo group that talks a lot about Internet by Cell phone that has a very complete tutorial on this topic: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/InternetByCellPhone/

 

[Martha]

BTW, Verizon doesn't really promote access of the Internet using only your phone, a kit, and your cell phone plan. A lot of Verizon sales people know nothing about it and think that you have to buy the data plan and get a card for your computer to get on the Internet. However, Verizon's customer service by telephone has been very helpful and these representatives how it works. We have had to call them a couple of times when one problem or another occured. Good, prompt help.

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Thanks CFB for that info. I had tried the WET11 but it didn't see my network so I returned it... from reading amazon reviews it seems a lot of them are defective. The WET54G might be the one for me. And I hadn't considered power line networking...makes good sense to me.


While this is definitely could occur, it seems to me more of a theoretical problem than a practical problem. With so many unencrypted home wifi networks around today, the law can't prove or even presume that the connection owner is necessarily the originator of the offending traffic. Even the WEP encryption that we use for our network is known to be hackable, so there's plenty of reasonable doubt even if your wifi network is encrypted. And dynamic IP addresses make it hard for the spooks to to track traffic over time.

My understanding is that when people are caught doing illegal things online it's usually because of the actual content of their traffic revealed their identity.

But the times are a-changing, and the spooks seem to be getting their tendrils into all kind of places we might not expect them. Like the recent revelation that the NSA is datamining AT&T's network traffic without proper approvals:

http://www.eff.org/legal/cases/att/

My wet-11 "went bad" too after I made some changes to the configs after owning it for a few weeks. I think they can get into a state where they no longer respond. I've used some other wireless bridges as well, and those have worked as well as any other wireless gadget. The powerline stuff has just been rock solid for me. Didnt hurt that they were super cheap on overstock.com a while back. The powerline networking folks are threatening to come out with a higher speed version and one that will do full home video distribution over powerlines. If and when that happens, it'll be pretty handy stuff. Only problem i've had with the powerline stuff is ONE of the vacuum cleaners we have, when plugged into a specific outlet and used, disrupted the powerline network. But then again, when I run the microwave my wireless network drops to almost zero throughput.

As far as the legality issues, i'm not a lawyer and dont play one on tv, and I didnt even stay at a holliday inn express last night...but I keep hearing more and more cases about people having problems with shared or "open" wireless and neighbors or 'war drivers' using their connections to download child pornography or other such scumbaggery, then the owner of the line ending up on the hook...at least for a while. Not something I'd like to end up seeing my name in the paper over.

 

[guitarplayer]

wow 70 bucks is a lot

 

[REWahoo]

wow 70 bucks is a lot

You damn betcha. That's why I lived with dial-up for 7+ years, waiting and hoping something else would come along more reasonably priced. It didn't, except for the idiots who won't answer my questions about their contract. No way am I going to do business with them just to save $20/month. My budget's not that tight...at least not yet.

And as Nords (I think) pointed out, once you've had a high speed connection, no way you'll go back to dial up.