Originally Posted by ewensell3

Forgive me if this has been discussed. My Google skills aren't what they used to be. Point me to whatever site that describes all this.

Been looking around for a common standard for defining a hotspot as open for public use. So far all I have found is recommendations to put "open" somehwere in the SSID.

That's nice and all... Look for SSID=*open* ... Problem is my Windows wifi utils do not appear to have a means of looking for hotspots according to wildcards. Manually looking for and joining *open* hotspots as I'm riding (someone else driving) down the interstate sounds like a chore.

What would be nice is if those who want to provide open access could all agree upon a common [set of] SSID and/or WEP key. Then all I have to do is create a "Public Only" profile with that information and feel fairly confident that when my laptop/device automagically joins a hotspot that it is one other people have explicitly setup for public use. That way I don't accidently join John Q. Public's out-of-the-box-never-read-the-instructions and panics-whenever-the-adsl-modem-light-blinks SSID=linksys/default/belkin54g WAP.

IIRC, some of the smaller community networks do this. Would be nice if we could do something similar on the nationwide level.

Thanks!