[ILUG] Eircom's free WiFi hotspots

[Timothy Murphy]

Has anyone succeeded in using any of Eircom's free WiFi hotspots, as listed in
<http://www.eircom.ie/cgi-bin/bvsm/bveircom/bladerunner/showContent.jsp?BV_SessionID=@@@@1480758385.1108743748@@@@&BV_EngineID=cccgadddljmjdkicefeceiedffndffg.0&cid=HotspotListBus>
I sat outside the pay-phone in Georges Street, Dun Laoghaire, with my laptop
but did not see any evidence of WiFi transmission.
I rang Eircom to ask for help, and was connected to somewhere abroad
(I assume, as the person who answered had never heard of Dun Laoghaire).
I was told that the service is "on trial" and may only work sometimes.

But it may be my fault, as I may not have tried to connect properly.
Under Linux, I just tried with ESSID=Any (which gave ESSID="").
I also tried it under Windows-XP by "Starting a New Connection".

Is there something else I should have done?
The two lights on my WiFi card (Orinoco Gold PCMCIA card)
remained completly blank,
while my experience is that if I am near a WiFi transmitter
one of the lights comes on even if I cannot connect.
But that my be nonsense - I have never understood
the exact significance of the two lights.

Also, I wasn't quite clear what I could connect to if I did succeeed
in establishing a connection?

Hopefully, some of you ILUG gurus spend your entire time
at your laptops in pubs near to one of Eircom's free access points ...


-- 
Timothy Murphy  
e-mail (<80k only): tim /at/ birdsnest.maths.tcd.ie
tel: +353-86-2336090, +353-1-2842366
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland