Korean Job Discussion Forums

[mindmetoo]

I'm posting right now from an open wireless connection in the GS Building Starbucks (at he Yeoksam station). Off the top of my head, here are the free wireless connections I've found in Seoul (all of them are at Starbucks mind you):

1) The Standard Chartered/Jeil Bank building Starbucks
2) The Coex Starbucks
3) The Kodae Starbucks that's not on campus

I suspect the new Starbucks at Technomart has an open wireless connection as well as maybe the Yongsan Space 9 building/Starbucks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warchalking

[BigBlackEquus]

So you dont have to sign up for some funky Korean thing in order to access these? Or be a member of SK Telecom, fill out a long-assed form, and pay an additional 10,000 a month?

[inthewild]

[mindmetoo]

[BigBlackEquus]

[keithinkorea]

There are loads of WiFi places in Seoul and other major cities around the globe.

To add to the list...Unless they stopped it both geckos, Nashville and a few other joints on Itaewon ro have free wireless internet. I think that even Hollywood bar and grill has it.

I'm sure loads of other places do and if you have a laptop or a WiFi equipped PDA then you could probably find a load of places with free internet in Seoul and other major cities in Korea.

[Wrench]

There are boat loads. My cooworker had his lappy fired up running net stumbler it found a whole whack. Must have been more then 20 spots.

Well we were war-driving

[chiaa]

A certain bookstore in Itaewon has it too.

[Pangit]

One probably doesn't have to pay for internet access with all the unsecure wireless networks set up all over the place.

[mishlert]

[BigBlackEquus]

I have a feeling this won't last too long. The net companies will feel too much competition for money-earning trains like nespot.

When this breaches the 100 speed barrier consistently, I'm certain internet companies will do what mine has done, and add a firewall block that automatically locks out all unregistered computers, based on their LAN card fingerprint number. When I had wifi hooked up to my house, it no longer recognized my computer, and I had to call the main company to get it all OK'd with the new numbers and stuff, due to the wifi router. Any other LAN card not in their system as a paying customer is automatically greeted with a login/password screen. Somehow, it was able to sniff out the LAN card fingerprint right through the router. I have no control over this. Then again, maybe the wifi I had (and returned because it sucked) was a cheap piece of crap with zero protection? I figured since it was a router, it would have at least some naturally.

I am certain we'll be seeing Hanaro and other internet providers doing the same thing very soon (unless, as I said, my wifi was so cheap it just happened that way). Wonder if lawsuits will happen over this.

Enjoy it while it lasts.

[BigBlackEquus]

Oh, and everyone should be careful. There are programs that save your passwords when you log onto someone's wifi connection.

Beware.

[Pangit]

I don't think that a lot of service providers are making these unsecure wireless connections available, it seems to be more that coffee shops or average users that set up home wireless networks become the big wardriving targets. People are still paying for wired DSL or cable connections that they're hooking up to their home wireless networks and the large majority of unsecure wireless networks are set up without the user protocol checking that Hanaro or whoever would use to keep non-paying users out. Not to mention the fact that a lot of people will still want to be able to use multiple machines with the one connection that they pay for. An internet service provider would undoubtedly charge for each connection, meaning each wirelss LAN card ID that connects to their service. Are you paying for each machine to connect, BBE? I just figure that's what they'd have to do because when you connect a secure router to the cable/DSL modem, the provider identifies your connection with your wireless router's MAC address and not any of the other computers that are connected to the wireless router. If you were to get rid of the router, then the provider would have to identify all the computers that were previously connected to the wireless router. That would mean multiple connections, thus multiple accounts, higher cost for the end consumer, and subsequently less interest in the service (if they're charging the same price per connection). I'm not sure how your wireless provider was able to snoop past your router.

Nonetheless, I could see how you would envision that providers would just eliminate the need for the hardware modem when they can just set up a router and a bunch of access points in a building so that they wouldn't have to deal with a modem in each apartment. It will take a long time to implement, however, because of security issues with wireless networking and the need that a lot of customers, especially businesses, would have for closed networks and tangible data lines.

[BigBlackEquus]

You are probably right...




The more I think about it, the more I think my router was screwey or something I had hooked up was screwey. I ended up taking the thing back after 2 days. I am tempted to buy a Netgear setup like Chiaa has. He is on the older "b"signal, but he seems to get good range and strength at 11mps. My sniffer picked up a strong enough signal outside of his front door, and across the street to the supermarket. I was reading online that at least one of the Netgear units is under fire for being too powerful. It has some newer technology that runs multiple antennas on different frequencies and fights/interferes too much with other area routers. I think they are fixing that issue, though.

I just want power. I want to share my connection with laptop users who want to connect at restaurants very close to my home. Not to mention, I'd like to be able to have a beer at the bar across the street and access my connection.

[Pangit]

You should probably get one of those netgear units, then. A bar across the street means you'd have to go through a couple walls, at least, and at some distance on top of that. Be careful you don't open up your network to just anyone.