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Travelers Confront Confusing Number of Strategies for
 Getting Online; Where Is the "How To" Idiots Guide?


By Keith Reed, The Boston Globe
Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News

Sep. 22, 2003 - So you've successfully navigated airport security, survived a long, turbulent flight, and escaped the harrowing cab ride to the hotel with your life. After check-in, there's only one thing left to do: break out your laptop and check e-mail -- a simple enough task, right?

Well, not exactly.

The proliferation of high-speed Internet connections at hotels, airports, and Internet cafes, not to mention the growing wireless phenomenon and the old dial-up standby, have given travelers a bevy of ways to stay connected while away from the office. But variety has a downside: not-so-tech-savvy road warriors aren't always up to the task of picking the best, most cost-effective way to get online.

Finding the best option often involves asking a number of questions: What cord should I be using? Where do I plug it in? I've got a wireless card and this hotel says it has WiFi, so why won't this thing work? What to do, what to do, what to do?

"It's what I do for a living, so it's easy for me. But for other people, getting online when they're traveling is a little daunting, I guess," said Michael Cordelli, who lives in Norwalk, Conn., and is manager of information systems for the Multiple Sclerosis Society in New York. "Sometimes you're forced to dial in when you could be using high-speed or something. You sometimes have to change your network configuration to connect."

So how do you figure out the best way to stay connected in a multiple-choice world?

Most travelers have three options for connecting to the Internet through their laptops: a slow modem connection, or high-speed connections via either ethernet or wireless service, also called WiFi.

Modem connections are simplest; just plug a regular telephone wire into your laptop's modem port and stick the other end into any telephone jack. The modem then calls a telephone number to connect either to the user's company network or personal Internet service provider.

Though nearly ubiquitous, dial-up is extremely limiting because of its slow connection speeds, which at maximum are only 56 kilobytes per second, making access to anything more complex than a text-only e-mail pain-stakingly slow. Forget that last-minute Powerpoint download from the office.

"It's really slow, painfully slow," said Jim Thompson, a biotech researcher for an Omaha company who was in Boston for a conference last week. Thompson said his company requires employees to dial into its network using a modem when on travel.

"I go to Starbucks and get a cup of coffee and wait for it to finish downloading," when checking e-mail from a hotel, Thompson said.

Dial-up can also be expensive because the telephone number your modem dials might trigger costly long-distance charges from your hotel.

"If you use dial-up service and you're using AOL in Braintree, I will charge you, because it's a long-distance call," said Lisa Tocci, corporate controller for the Holiday Inn Express, Home Suites Inn, and Courtyard by Marriott hotels in Waltham.

The second option is a high-speed ethernet connection, which can be 50 to 100 times faster than dial-up, but has its own limitations. Getting an ethernet connection is almost as simple as dial-up.

Just plug in a cord similar to a telephone wire into the ethernet card on your laptop and into any available jack, then sign on to either your company's network or the hotel's -- that is, if both are available.

Not every laptop, especially older models, come equipped with ethernet cards. And though high-speed access is increasingly a demand of business travelers, many hotels have so far forgone the expense of getting wired.

Darrin Pinkham, telecommunications committee chairman for the American Hotel and Lodging Association in Washington, D.C., estimates that only 20 percent of hotels in the United States are wired for high-speed connections; research firm Forrester Research puts the estimate at no more than 50 percent.

Some hotels give away high-speed access for free to guests, while others charge between $10 and $30 for a 24-hour period. Then there are the technical snags.

"I think that they ought to have idiot's guides to how to do it," said James Lock, a salesman for Demaplast Co. Ltd., a company that sells industrial machinery.

Leaving Boston last Wednesday after a sales call, Lock said having high-speed access wherever he goes is a necessity, so he carries his Apple iBook laptop, equipped with a modem, built in ethernet and wireless cards on every trip and calls ahead to request a room with a connection.

But Lock said he often can't figure out how to log on after plugging into a hotel room's ethernet port. Sometimes the connection is automatic, and at other times his computer's software doesn't jibe with the hotel's network settings. He's even been prompted for a password that he wasn't given upon checking in.

Surprisingly, the traveling salesman said, he found easier going at hotels in Haiti and Honduras, where many properties skipped the expensive step of wiring guest rooms for access, opting instead for cheaper wireless connections.

"In less developed countries, this has allowed them to bypass the old systems completely. So in Honduras and Haiti, you get better service often than at hotels in the United States," he said.

Wireless connections, also called WiFi, are growing in popularity among travelers because of the potential to use the Internet without being tethered by any cords. As the name suggests, computers with WiFi cards can connect to the Internet as long as they are within range of a transmitter, also called a hotspot.

Many hotels, including several in the Boston area, now offer free WiFi service in their lobbies and even in some guest rooms.

But that doesn't mean you won't have to pay anything; you'll often need an account with a wireless ISP like T-Mobile, which can cost between $30 and $40 per month.

"The fact is that you've got to have a $30 account with a phone company" to connect at many WiFi hotspots, Lock said.

Another problem with WiFi: security. Because WiFi networks transmit data via airwaves, they're not as secure as wired connections. And they're still not as widely available as either ethernet or dial-up connections.

Pinkham, of the American Hotel and Lodging Association, predicts that situation will change drastically in the next five years, as wireless computing becomes more commonplace in both homes and offices, and travelers begin to demand wireless convenience on the road.

"We're into the age where people want to be totally wireless, and that means being able to take your laptop anywhere, sit down and connect without a wire. That's where this is going," he said.

In the meantime travelers are stuck with cycling through a sometimes-confusing suite of strategies to get online.

At Logan International Airport last week, graduate student Sarah Pendergrass of Canaan, N.H., was forced to pay $10 to check her e-mail at a public Internet terminal, even though her iBook laptop recognized an available wireless network.

"We noticed that the airport has two networks, but you had to have a password to connect to those," she said. "WiFi is really not as common as it ought to be yet."

-----To see more of The Boston Globe, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.boston.com/globe

(c) 2003, The Boston Globe. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News. DT, AAPL, MAR, IHG, SBUX, AOL,

 
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