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Internet on the move

Posted on 26 Sep 2002 at 17:27

I've received quite a few emails from readers asking about the best way to make Internet connections while travelling abroad. I've mentioned this briefly in recent columns, but it seems that readers want to know more. There have been many changes in these technologies recently, so I'll cover some of the newer tricks now available.

You can download a multimegabyte list of PoPs in a format suitable for importing into any spreadsheet (if you don't use Microsoft operating systems, the Excel format isn't going to be very attractive), but this isn't a good idea. The list of member ISPs and PoPs is volatile and I prefer to use their website to look up local numbers based on the local area code; for instance, I'm writing this in Maui, area code 808. There are two access numbers in the same area code, although these are on Oahu and so aren't a local call, but they are a lot cheaper than long-distance rates. These aren't the same numbers as the last time I was in Hawaii, and back then I'm sure there was a local number on Maui as well.
To sign in, you use a variant of your 'home' ISP username; let's call it 'myusername' and pretend that your ISP is Cix in the UK, which is a member of GRIC. The exact variant to use isn't the same for all member ISPs, and it isn't obvious from the GRIC website which variant any given ISP uses. But in my example, either myusername@cix.co.uk or gric/myusername@cix.co.uk, together with your home ISP password, will let you in anywhere. When moving to a new area, if one system fails I try the other one.
The next catch is configuring email access. You can obtain details of the local ISP's SMTP mail servers that you may be able to send through, but in my experience most local ISPs don't have this facility or it doesn't work. So I read my email as normal from my own IMAP server, but employ a different system to send mail, using a server with authentication. I use Apple's iTools to send email, which has been reliable and priced right - which is to say, free. However, Apple will be stopping iTools shortly and replacing it with a relatively expensive new service, so this may change.
All I can really say is that, in return for a small amount of effort, GRIC works. And that's good enough for me.

Hotel Networks
But more and more nowadays, I use dial-up connections as a fall-back system for when I can't get anything better. High-class hotels in Europe and the US offer, for a small fee every day, Ethernet sockets in the room or 802.11b wireless connections. However, these are limited to major cities, and staying in five-star hotels isn't always an option.
A much broader spread of hotels have a business centre with a leased line of some sort, often claimed to be a T1, and they'll let you connect for a (much smaller) fee or even for free, as I've found, at the whim of the business centre manager.
However, there are other problems you may find with this kind of facility that aren't present with normal dial-up ISPs. What's really going on, in most cases, is that you're sharing the Internet connection with the hotel itself, and it's put in some kind of firewall in an attempt to protect itself from whatever viruses (and attacks) may come from its guests. These firewalls aren't always set up with the level of competence you may expect from the average ISP. In one recent case, I found they were letting through ports 80 (HTTP), 443 (ssl), 23 (Telnet), 109 (POP3) and 25 (SMTP), but for some reason were blocking 143 (IMAP). This meant I could send mail, but couldn't read from my office mail server or from my iTools mail account, and it took me a while to figure out that the firewall had been set up by sufficiently ignorant people that this might have been the case.

Starbucks by Wireless
Another alternative for us common people was revealed in the press over 18 months ago - Starbucks. It announced a deal with T-Mobile to provide 802.11b wireless access in its chain of coffee shops. Since then, this has been off and on again, but I finally found a Starbucks in Santa Clara in May that apparently had this service running. At the time, I couldn't connect as I had to catch a plane, but the website was uninformative and the staff didn't know what the funny leaflets were on their counter.