WiFi at conferences

[Tim Vasquez]

With conference season coming up, I'm wondering if any of you have tried setting up a WiFi WAP up in your room and actually getting reception in the conference rooms through all that concrete and steel.

I think there's probably one hotel I've stayed at, period, that offered its own WiFi access through the building, so I'm checking out options for some connectivity & live data.

To add further uncertainty to the mix, it looks like NSWW 2006 is in a new venue.

Tim

 

[Tyler Allison]

With conference season coming up, I'm wondering if any of you have tried setting up a WiFi WAP up in your room and actually getting reception in the conference rooms through all that concrete and steel.

Unless it's a small hotel the conference rooms are usually FAR away from the rooms. If you are not within 300feet you can pretty much forget WiFi.

You could always request a room close to the conference area and hope for the best.

-Tyler

 

[B Ozanne]

I'm thinking that's gonna be hard. Hotels are built with a lot of concrete. Best chance would be with a high end wap and directional antenna beeming the signal in your direction.

Chasing country is littered with motels that have free wifi. Higher end hotels in the city tend to be more restrictive though. They often charge for their LAN connection and rarely have wifi. That is starting to change though.

 

[George Flickinger]

For what's it worth, I stayed at a Holiday Inn conference center two weeks ago and the wifi signal in my 7th story room was strong even without external antennaes...a nice surprise...GF

 

[Tim Vasquez]

There was one hotel I stayed at for the Columbus OH conference last April. It was getting 3 WiFi signals, but I investigated them and found that they were absolutely crawling with back-door exploits. Safe to use otherwise. I think the "bots" know where the travellers stay and hit those IPs especially hard for maximum effect.

Tim

 

[Chris Nuttall]

To add further uncertainty to the mix, it looks like NSWW 2006 is in a new venue.

Tim

Actually, I think the Severe Weather Workshop last year was in the Reed Center. I know it was in Midwest City last year because I actually had to drive to more than 5 minutes to get to it last year.

 

[Jason Hetzel]

I think if the signals are "decent" then yes you should be fine with getting a Wi-Fi signal in a conference room. I personally would reccommend however that you have a licensed copy of ZoneAlarm installed on your laptop and configured properly because from what i hear lately, hotels have been getting nosey on peoples' Wi-Fi business and yes many exploits and back door trojans have been added to that list, so having a copy of ZoneAlarm will greatly help to block all of it out. Also for best reception on the incoming signal try to position yourself to stay as close as possible to the emitter as best you can, and keep as few solid structures in front of you as possible. Other then that your signal should be generally fine. If you start getting within that 300+ foot range though you will most likely experience signal lost and d/c's. Overall though yes your signal should be within limits.

 

[bill mudd]

het Jacon,
Wouldnt SPYsweeper keep you protected from the back door trojan horses? or does it find it only after you get one? anyone?

 

[Eric Whitehill]

Originally posted by bill mudd
het Jacon,
Wouldnt SPYsweeper keep you protected from the back door trojan horses? or does it find it only after you get one? anyone?

No, the way that the trojan's work, a great majority of them are able to get around SPYSweeper and other adware/spyware programs.

I would advise utilizing a firewall (such as windows firewall built in to WindowsXP installs) and AntiVirus. Either Norton, MacAfee, or Grisoft, or something.

-Eric

 

[Jason Hetzel]

No, SPYSweeper is a decent program but not for full protection, and the Windows XP SP2 firewall is horrible by all means against all newer day attacks. I still strongly reccommend ZoneAlarm Internet Security Suite. It has a triple defense firewall, antivirus, anti-spyware, IM security and much much more... Feel free to check out their home site and grab a free trial of their product at the same time here: http://www.zonelabs.com/store/application?...g=en&lid=nav_db