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Free Wifi Hotspots

GeoDiver/GeoGrammy

By GeoDiver/GeoGrammy
in Northwest

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GeoDiver/GeoGrammy

+GeoDiver/GeoGrammy

Posted
Posted

In the "Gig Harbor Cache Machine" thread, Criminal post that he had just learned that the Cutters Point Coffee Shop in Gig Harbor has FREE WiFi. I, too have used that location several times to log finds and check for new caches from my laptop.

I thought it would be fun and helpful to cachers who use their wireless-enabled laptops or PDAs for caching to share known locations.

 

I have created an MSWord document that lists a number of the hotspots I am aware of in the South Sound area. I will cut and paste it here for those interested...or I will email you an attachment if you send me a private email request.

 

My list is just a starter...so, please add any locations you are aware of to this discussion. Anywhere that this NorthWest discussion group might be interested in. My only request is that we limit it to FREE hotspots. If you want to pay for access, go to any StarBuck's.

 

Here's my list:

 

South Sound FREE WiFi HotSpots

 

King County Library - Federal Way

848 South 320th Street

Federal Way WA 98003

 

King County Library - Federal Way Regional

34200 1st Way South

Federal Way WA 98003

 

Mandolin Cafe

S. 12th St and Proctor

Tacoma, WA

 

Sol Coffee

10625 Pacific Avenue, Suite B

Tacoma, WA

 

Midnight Espresso

1 Tacoma Ave. North

Tacoma, WA 98403

 

Holiday Inn Express

8601 S. Hosmer St.

Tacoma, WA

 

BidderSuite Coffee

6404 Waller Rd. E

Tacoma, WA

 

Silver Cloud Inn

2317 Ruston Way

Tacoma, WA

 

Vin Grotto Café & Wine Bar

813 Pacific Ave.

Tacoma, WA

 

Northern Pacific Coffee Co.

401 Garfield S.

Tacoma (Parkland)

 

Tacoma Community College

Wanamaker Library

6501 South 19th Street

Tacoma WA 98466

 

Fife Community Center

2111 - 54th Avenue E

Fife, WA 98424

 

Cutters Point Coffee

13210 Meridian E

Puyallup WA

 

Holiday Inn Express Hotel and Suites

812 South Hill Park Drive

Puyallup WA 98373

 

Crazee Espresso - Lacey

640 Woodland Square

Loop #A

Lacey WA

 

Caffe Vita

124 4th Avenue

Olympia WA 98501

 

 

Clubside Cafe

406 4th Avenue Southeast

Olympia WA 98501

 

Eastside Club Tavern

410 4th Avenue Southeast

Olympia WA 98501

 

Kundalini Espresso Company

408 4th Avenue Southeast

Olympia WA 98501

 

Last Word Books

211 E. 4th Ave

Olympia WA 98501

 

Mud Bay Coffee

1600 Cooper Point Rd, Suite 630

Olympia WA

 

New Caldonia Coffee Company

116 East 5th Avenue Southeast

Olympia WA 98501

 

Old School Pizzeria

108 Franklin Street Northeast

Olympia WA 98501

 

Olympia Farmer's Market

700 Capitol Way

Olympia WA 98501

 

Phoenix Inn - Olympia

415 Capitol Way North

Olympia WA 98501

 

Zipperz

412 Cherry Street Southeast

Olympia WA 98501

 

LanWer X Game Centers

10600 Silverdale Way

Silverdale, WA

 

Cutters Point Coffee

5500 Olympic Dr.

Gig Harbor, WA

 

The Inn at Gig Harbor

3211 W. 56th St. N.W.

Gig Harbor, WA

 

Hall & Co. Coffee House

2620 Bridgeport Way Ste. B

University Place, WA 98466

 

Lacoste Coffee

8623 87th Ave. SW

Lakewood, WA

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Criminal

+Criminal

Posted
Posted (edited)

The TAPCO credit union in Fircrest has free WiFi from their parking lot, over by the ATM. I don't know if that is by design or not. I'll pick up some coordinates next time I go by there.

 

EDIT: I only found out about it because they were listed in some internet site as a free WiFi location. I assumed it was legit.

Edited by Criminal
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Fledermaus

Fledermaus

Posted
Posted

In Bremerton you can use WiFi on the front steps of the Downtown Branch of the Kitsap Regional Library, on 5th Street across from the Sun Newspaper business. I have also been told that you can access WiFi from the parking lot of the Eastside Branch of the Kitsap Regional Library, on Sylvan way near the post office.

 

I'm sure there are others and I will contact another cacher in the area that is more aware of these sites than I am, since he uses WiFi whenever he can and I don't use it at all.

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W7WT

+W7WT

Posted
Posted

As Ray mentioned you can access the Main Library on Sylvan Way in the parking lot on the West side of the Kitsap Regional Library in East Bremerton. If it is open they have nice desks where you can plug in and operate in comfort.

 

Manchester Library also has free Wifi

 

Silverdale is reported to have free Wifi at Heads up Brewing

 

McCleary Quinton Computers

 

Port Angeles Port Angeles Inn

 

North Bend King Co. Library , Gordy Steak & BBQ, North Bend Bar & Grill

 

Levenworth Best Western, icicle Inn Resort

 

Port Hadlock Inn at Port Hadlock

 

Renton King Co. Library -Fairwood

 

The only one I have been to is the main Kitsap Regional Library which is less than

500 feet from my house. The antenna is turned the other way and i can not access it. To get on there, as soon as you have a signal, just bring up Internet Explorer and you have it.

 

Thanks for the site. Some of the other librarys in Kitsap County may have free Wifi. Some have Boingo.

 

Dick, W7WT

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W7WT

+W7WT

Posted
Posted

Thanks Criminal. Interesting antenna. I was talking about accessing the WiFi at the library from my home. Would be fun but not $100 worth of fun. I do have a little WiFi Detector that indicates a strong signal in my house from across the street but my neighbor says he doesn't even have a computer. His Ex Wife got it in the divorce. My laptop can't latch on to it so it must be a secure site. Still lots of fun.

Dick, W7WT

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W7WT

+W7WT

Posted
Posted

All locations matching your search criteria

Bremerton Howard Johnson Plaza Hotel

5640 Kitsap Way

Bremerton WA 98312

Map | Directions 2 FREE providers

 

Kitsap Regional Library - Central

1301 Sylvan Way

Bremerton WA 98310

Map | Directions

Get a Month Free

 

Boingo and 1 more

 

Olympic Coffee & Espresso

5050 State Highway 303 Northeast

#119

Bremerton WA 98311

Map | Directions

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travisl

+travisl

Posted
Posted

I think all King County libraries offer free WiFi, and if you're lucky you can get enough of a signal from your car sitting outside.

 

Glad to see Lacoste Coffee in Lakewood is on the list. It's a great spot, just across the corner from Ft. Steilacoom park, home to three or four caches.

 

Of course, you could always hook up your GPS to a wireless laptop runningNetstumbler, and find open nodes on your own just wardriving around. I've heard rumor that a recent drive between Federal Way and Bonney Lake found 37 open connections. Legally, you should only use connections that are intentionally left open for public use. How you determine the intent... that's up to you.

 

Others have a lot more knowledge about this than I do, but W7WT, I've seen something similar from my neighbor. If the SSID is "MSHOME", I belive that's the wireless connection from their PC, not a wireless router, so if they're connected to the internet through a dial-up connection, and you connect to MSHOME, you can access the internet through their PC. Again, you should only do this if that's your neighbor's intent. If he says he doesn't have a computer, then he probably doesn't intend for you to be accessing it.

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GeoDiver/GeoGrammy

+GeoDiver/GeoGrammy

Posted
  • Author
Posted
I think all King County libraries offer free WiFi, and if you're lucky you can get enough of a signal from your car sitting outside.

 

Glad to see Lacoste Coffee in Lakewood is on the list.  It's a great spot, just across the corner from Ft. Steilacoom park, home to three or four caches.

 

Of course, you could always hook up your GPS to a wireless laptop runningNetstumbler, and find open nodes on your own just wardriving around.  I've heard rumor that a recent drive between Federal Way and Bonney Lake found 37 open connections.  Legally, you should only use connections that are intentionally left open for public use.  How you determine the intent... that's up to you.

 

Others have a lot more knowledge about this than I do, but W7WT, I've seen something similar from my neighbor.  If the SSID is "MSHOME", I belive that's the wireless connection from their PC, not a wireless router, so if they're connected to the internet through a dial-up connection, and you connect to MSHOME, you can access the internet through their PC.  Again, you should only do this if that's your neighbor's intent.  If he says he doesn't have a computer, then he probably doesn't intend for you to be accessing it.

Got Lacoste Coffee from a list...have not personally confirmed it.

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MarcusArelius

MarcusArelius

Posted
Posted
Well, if you have the money to blow on one, they sell a kit here that will greatly improve your range.

 

EDIT: Typo

Or if you're cheap and eat chips. you can still get better range.

 

I have used ministumbler on my PDA while it was connected by a cable to my legend. It does a good job of logging the access points along with thier coords.

 

You can find open access points anywhere there are people.

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Criminal

+Criminal

Posted
Posted
Well, if you have the money to blow on one, they sell a kit here that will greatly improve your range.

 

EDIT: Typo

Or if you're cheap and eat chips. you can still get better range.

 

I have used ministumbler on my PDA while it was connected by a cable to my legend. It does a good job of logging the access points along with thier coords.

 

You can find open access points anywhere there are people.

Is a Pringle's potato chip can good for warscanning?  In a word, no. That is, it may work, but it won't work as well as a "cantenna" made of a metal can like a coffee can or (my favorite) a spaghetti sauce can. If you're going to go the distance to make an antenna yourself, make one that works well, not one that works so-so. Pringle's cans are nonconductive cardboard, and thus do not operate in waveguide mode, as a metal can does.

 

Excerpt from this site.

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Bull Moose

+Bull Moose

Posted
Posted (edited)

The coffee place just across the pedestrian bridge from the ferry terminal in Seattle on the level of the bridge has free WiFi and even a few computers for customers that don't have a laptop.

I can't remember the name of it. Top Cup or something like that.

 

Edit: I suppose it would help to know what city I'm talking about.

Edited by Bull Moose
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Happy Gillmore

+Happy Gillmore

Posted
Posted (edited)

I like the idea of being able to get internet access to get new cache info or post a find while on the road. I took TravisL's suggestion and downloaded NetworkStumbler and started driving around the GH cache machine route in order to post open/fre Wifi's so those who want to use them during the cache machine can.

 

If I am the only one interested in this I won't do it. If you would like some info on GH Wifi's let me know and I'll do some Wardriving.

Edited by Happy Gillmore
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Criminal

+Criminal

Posted
Posted (edited)

Netstumbler works really great at detecting WiFi locations, however….

 

What it does is send out some sort of ping that causes any wireless access point in range to identify itself. The information is interesting. It will tell you what the name of the AP is, usually Linksys or D-Link, or whatever the owner has changed it to. (There are some in the barracks on McChord that would not make it through the forum filter!) It will also tell you if the AP is WEP or WPA encrypted and what channel it is using.

 

98% of the time though, the signal will be too weak to be usable and your card will not lock on. That is the reason for getting a card with an antenna jack and using an outboard antenna. The Netstumbler program has a page that shows the signal strength so you can drive around looking for where the signal is strongest. In an informal drive through a few dense residential areas I estimate that less than one-third of the APs are protected.

 

Netstumbler is a neat toy, it makes a cool “brrrrww” sound when it detects an AP, and driving through residential areas is one “brrrrww” after another. “brrrrww” “brrrrww” “brrrrww” “brrrrww” “brrrrww” “brrrrww” “brrrrww” “brrrrww” “brrrrww” “brrrrww” “brrrrww” like that.

 

EDIT: The point I meant to make was just driving around with Netstumbler is not going to get you usable WiFi connections; it will only tell you they are there.

 

There is a way to log the lat/longs automatically if your laptop is connected to your GPSr.

Edited by Criminal
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vds

+vds

Posted
Posted
Of course, you could always hook up your GPS to a wireless laptop runningNetstumbler, and find open nodes on your own just wardriving around. I've heard rumor that a recent drive between Federal Way and Bonney Lake found 37 open connections. Legally, you should only use connections that are intentionally left open for public use. How you determine the intent... that's up to you.

I did a drive from Boeing Field down 599, through DesMoines, and down Dash Point road and found something like 50+ access points, 75% open using my laptop. It was quite illustratiive grabbing the wp from netstumbler and mapping them in Streets+Trips. There's also netstumbler for PDAs, works great on my Dell Axim X30.

 

For example, drive from the 'Big Catch' statue in Des Moines southward to RedRobin, which is maybe a mile or so. You'll find at least a half-dozen access points at 802.11b (had my pda running), but with my laptop (802.11a/b/g so I get all the possibilities) there were even more.

 

If I get a chance, I'll redo my 'wardriving' adventure and post a picture of open-vs-closed somewhere on the web for grins.

 

That said, I agree with Travis, I find it a bit of a stretch to use somebody else's wireless just because they're not smart enough to lock it down. Personally, I use the KC Libraries when I need to get free access, but thanks much for posting a better list.....

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vds

+vds

Posted
Posted
Well, if you have the money to blow on one, they sell a kit here that will greatly improve your range.

 

EDIT: Typo

Or if you're cheap and eat chips. you can still get better range.

 

I have used ministumbler on my PDA while it was connected by a cable to my legend. It does a good job of logging the access points along with thier coords.

 

You can find open access points anywhere there are people.

You hooked your PDA to your GPS ? Cool. What kind of PDA/cable (and from where) ? I'd love to hook up my Legend to my Dell AximX30 and try to get PocketStreets+Trips to show coords. I know Belkin had a bunch of cheap cables to power both PDAs and GPSr from the lighter power for some kinds of hardware.

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vds

+vds

Posted
Posted

Here goes....I left the laptop and GPS on while driving home from Boeing Field to the Twin Lakes area of Federal Way with netstumbler running, I found '162' access points this time (3x what I found a year ago), of which still only about half had encryption turned on. The PDA (802.11b) had noticeably poorer results, that one found only about 25 access points along the route. The route passes only one Starbucks (which it found a strong signal 300+ feet from) and one KC library.

 

Of course my little test isn't worthy, folks in LA are warFLYING, check out the story HERE. They found something like 4000 access points. Amazing story.

 

Strangest thing is the effect if you turn the sound and midi strength signal up, you get something somewhat musical as it finds access points and chimes melodically as the strength changes. There was one place in my neighborhood where I hit the right combination of signal strength and vehicle speed and the tones played out "twinkle twinkle star, how I wonder where you..." and then it lost signal. Didn't know Miss GTS lived down this way, how else could that be possible ? :blink:

 

Here's the whole route:

 

overview-map.gif

 

Here's the map of my neighborhood, we likely don't need to plug in the Christmas lights to get them to glow

 

near-lakota.gif

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Happy Gillmore

+Happy Gillmore

Posted
Posted

I did a short wardrive past a few caches. There are open wifi's every where! I was going to list them but there is no need. If you need a wifi in GH just use the Network Stumbler and you will find them.

 

BTW, 12 were secure, 13 non-secure. Two of the unsecure wifi's were put up by network "professionals" that I know. They charge $70/hour to install wireless networks. Should I charge them $70 to tell them which of their networks are open? :blink:

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Criminal

+Criminal

Posted
Posted
I did a short wardrive past a few caches. There are open wifi's every where! I was going to list them but there is no need. If you need a wifi in GH just use the Network Stumbler and you will find them.

OK, one more time. Just because Netstumbler is detecting it, does NOT mean you will be able to connect to it. Give it a try sometime.

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kd7rvh

+kd7rvh

Posted
Posted (edited)

Well, since we're sharing. This is the map we did of Mount Vernon a couple weeks ago. Red dots are secure (WEP) and green are insecure.

 

mv1.gif

 

edit: also, just a note. Most wardrivers upload their findings to Wifi Maps, so you don't need to stumble yourself to find these open access points.

Edited by Rizgar
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vds

+vds

Posted
Posted
VDS, I would like to hear the midi sounds while wardriving. What settings do you have on yours?

view -> options -> midi

check enable midi

mine was set at the defaults of channel=1, patch=0, transpose=0

 

I also turned the volume to max in my XP o/s for everything possible

 

(and to criminal - I agree, you can't connect to 'em all, but you sure can connect to a lot if so inclined, even my PDA drove me half crazy with popups asking whether I wanted to connect to Internet with the detected access points, which doesn't happen if the signal's too weak).

 

As I said, I use the KC Libraries in general, but I know there are some open wireless points around Green Lake as well, there's a Seattle free wireless project on the net aiming to do a cooperative network, and many cities looking at setting the whole city up as a hotspot (Philly to name one) at worst a nominal fee. Makes you kind of wonder if in a couple years we'll need to pay for Internet access any more.

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vds

+vds

Posted
Posted
I did a short wardrive past a few caches. There are open wifi's every where! I was going to list them but there is no need. If you need a wifi in GH just use the Network Stumbler and you will find them.

 

BTW, 12 were secure, 13 non-secure. Two of the unsecure wifi's were put up by network "professionals" that I know. They charge $70/hour to install wireless networks. Should I charge them $70 to tell them which of their networks are open? :blink:

I had a next door neighbor who did financial reporting for a living, who I'd barely met. I bought the Mrs. a nice laptop a while back, and had to listen to complaints that her wireless didn't work reliably. Eventually I realized that my house was surrounded by access points on the same channel, and that unless you sat in one room (where I usually work), things got very weird due to how far you can get strong signals.

 

Imagine the guy's face when he came home one day and I walked to the end of the driveway, re-introduced myself, asked "hey - do you have wireless inside", and demonstrated how I could sit in my car and use his Internet connection for free "and" see the system on his network with the data he was "guarding".

 

I turned his WEP on and beaconing off while sitting in my driveway (with his ok of course), but unfortunately never did get that beer he promised before they eventually moved. Ugh. Renters.

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TotemLake

+TotemLake

Posted
Posted (edited)

I got a pretty good chuckle out of the cartoon too. :(

 

Some WiFi access points are free to use as a service for using their other service, thus you have the owner's implied permission.

 

Some WiFi access points are illegal to use because you do not have the owner's permission even if the access point is not secured. You're not compensating for the bandwidth you use. Thus the trap. It's kind of like looking at it as a speed trap on the highway. You have permission to go at the speed limit, but if you go over it, you increase your chances of being caught.

Edited by TotemLake
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nolenator

nolenator

Posted
Posted

Ok, I got to ask. What if you are caught "stealing" a wifi connection? Wrist slap or jail time? I just got a new laptop with a wifi card and this interest me because I cache a lot of time without sheet and only coordinates. If I had my laptop under my seat that I could pull out and get a bit of online help. Hmm... Peace, Nolenator

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TotemLake

+TotemLake

Posted
Posted

Well the service you would be stealing would be from the bandwidth provider. I know there are punishments as provided by law if caught, but I don't know exactly what they are... they are relatively new. It would be classified as theft of services. It would be akin to getting a taxi ride someplace, and then failing to pay for that service.

 

How you get caught is entirely different. There are logs but the owner has to be savvy enough in order to catch it and they already have two points against them:

1. They own an unsecured wireless network... what's that tell ya?

2. Bandwidth usage allotments are so high; nobody really notices what their usage is and won't know till their service is cut off due to reaching the limit or they receive a bill for extra bandwidth. I average about 2GB of my 5GB. Can you tell me the same of yours? Not many people know what they use.

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