WiFi "Lite", US & Canada - Forum

added 2,116 Tim Hortons locations in Canada

current POI count: 28,560

Forgive me if I am missing the obvious but what exactly are the ID numbers for each location in this POI file referencing?

They are just unique sequential ID numbers assigned to each POI record as they get inserted into my Access database. I included them so if somebody reports an update I can find it in the database (even if it is from an older version of the file) and either make the correction myself or pass the update along to the owner of the source file (e.g. for McDonalds or Starbucks).

Thank you

Thanks too.

Fred

w00t! This file just reached 1,000 downloads.

Not bad, considering it was established less than 6 months ago; 154 days ago, to be exact. That works out to an average of 6.5 downloads per day.

Nicely done.

I'm curious about the omission of Panera Bread locations..
Are we not reasonably sure about all of them having WiFi??

Also, as far as I know, all Sheetz locations have free wi-fi as well.

I haven't purposely omitted any particular chain, I just started by amalgamating POI files that I knew were (1) well-maintained, and, (2) places where there was a high probability that free WiFi would be available at any given location.

In other words, I wanted a list with reasonable coverage - and McDonalds+Starbucks certainly provide that - without all of the false positives from the "other" WiFi file (either because there was no free WiFi there, or because the location was simply wrong).

If you're willing to vouch for the availability of free WiFi at Panera Bread and Sheetz then I'll take a look at the files and see if I can incorporate them into "WiFi 'Lite'".

Well, I can't say that I've been to ALL iocations of either place, but I've found wifi at all of the ones I've been to so far.

Sheetz is an east coast operation, and the wifi connection quality is generally similar to their name.. but they are handy when you need them and are typically right off of major highways and interstates.

Every Panera Bread I have ever been in offers free WiFi, and while I can't find a source to point you to, everything I've read in the past says they offer it at all of their locations. A few years back, they were listed as the largest provider of free WiFi in the US.

all Panera locations have WiFi, some have community rooms and others drive-thrus.

Thanks for the feedback! I'll definitely add Panera Bread based on

1. the recent comments here re: free WiFi availability, and
2. the fact that it is one of mahoney's files, so I can be quite confident that it is well-maintained.

Okay, Panera Bread has been added.

Current POI count: 30,173

I never knew this file existed. I've used the full WiFi file for a little while now, and sometimes questioned its accuracy. I just downloaded your file, and will give it a whirl. It sounds like just the thing I'm looking for when I need to have a quick bite and check my e-mail when I'm on the road!

Thanks to mahoney's hard work the file now contains 5,117 Dunkin' Donuts locations with WiFi.

New POI count: 35,288

Thank you so much. This will make my trips much nicer, and hopefully reduce my data usage. lol

Anybody have any thoughts about how safe it is to go online at these free wifi locations generally? Since anybody can get on there, are they riskier places to go online than password-controlled wifi sites or hard-wired hotel rooms? If used there, can your login passwords be seen by other users? Is the risk of getting malware higher in these networks?

If you don't take steps to protect yourself you can get malware most anywhere. I just bought a new Netgear router and in the process of shopping around I see they have a travel router with a built in signal extender and a built in firewall that I'm going to check out. It wouldn't be any good for restaurant wifi unless you had access to a 110 volt outlet, but it sounds like it would be just the thing for motels. I stayed in one motel that the wifi signal was so weak that I ended up using the wifi from a motel across the street.

Thanks, Don. Since posting that question I have gone to a strategy to stay safer using wifi in public places, very important as we are coming to the end of five months on the road. How well it's working, it's hard for me to judge, but it gives me much better peace of mind. The main part of it is using a VPN service which purports to encrypt everything after logging onto it from a browser.

The service I'm using was one of two recommended VPN services by PC Magazine. The one I'm using is Private Internet Access, at https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/pages/buy-vpn/ . It costs a reasonable $40 a year and one can try it for shorter periods to make sure it doesn't mess up your system. It hasn't caused me any slowdowns or other problems.

I also have file and printer sharing disabled. I also use Lastpass for password management, but that by itself would not be worth much if I were using Lastpass to enter passwords on public wi-fi networks at restaurants and hotels. With VPN enabled, I can log into secure websites, and it would be much harder for someone else on the public wifi network to see the passwords or see what I was doing.

Since my daytime job is technical support, I bought a SoHo (Small Office/Home Office) firewall that has dial up VPN built in. The benefits to this are:

• Like said before, all transmissions are encrypted
• There's no additional annual fee
• I can still access all my servers/PCs from the road
• I can access and manage all my clients systems from the road
• No need to go crazy trying to send email from my remote client since I'm on my home network

Makes remote management much simpler and way more secure.

Is there an easy way to filter out Canada WiFi spots from this file? Just delete anything higher than 49 in column B?

I see this question from time to time and wonder what prompts some to want to restrict a POI file to certain states or areas.

Deleting anything higher that 49 would remove a lot of the less populated areas of Canada - but leave in the more populated areas of Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.

This action would remove, by my observation , 1,657 lines from a file of 36,049 locations. To me this is not worth the effort regardless of how concerned one is about space on the unit.

Leaving in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia with a total population of approximately 1.7 million while leaving out BC and Alberta with a total population of approximately 8.7 million doesn't seem like the right thing to do.

But I do agree, going to the work of pairing this file down probably isn't worth the effort.

Here is the link address I see: http://versatileguy.dyndns.org/icon_files/WiFi_Lite.bmp

Here is the error I receive:

This webpage is not available

The server at versatileguy.dyndns.org can't be found, because the DNS lookup failed. DNS is the network service that translates a website's name to its Internet address. This error is most often caused by having no connection to the Internet or a misconfigured network. It can also be caused by an unresponsive DNS server or a firewall preventing Google Chrome from accessing the network.
Error code: DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_NXDOMAIN

This file I use all the time. You would think free wifi would be the norm nowadays with such competition in the business sector, not the case.

Is that a nee brand of beer

http://dydns.org itself is up for sale.

Thanks for the reminder. Earlier this year Dyn stopped offering free dyndns.org registrations, even for customers (like me) who already pay for other Dyn services. I could have kept versatileguy.dyndns.org, but I would have had to pay extra for it. I passed.

I will remove the link from the POI page.

That's "dydns.org", not "dyndns.org".

Ran into the same thing. I actually have a friend who fell for the extortion, but I didn't like the way that they did it. In large part because they have been buying up a lot of other companies that also offered free domain look-up and, now that there is less competition, they started charging for what the companies they bought up were giving for free. I looked at a few alternatives, the best that I found is Free DNS (http://freedns.afraid.org/). I'm actually even happier with them than I was with dyndns.org.

How do I get my GPS device (Garman Nuvu 2555 in my case, but my wife has another version) to show the ICON or any ICON to these POI's?

that is to ask: I have the wfi lite (great stuff) but it shows as a dot on my map as I get close to the area. I would like a symbol or an ICON to appear. Is that possible?

I am VERY adapt to using Excel therefore instructions to add to the CSV is acceptable or maybe its a setting within the device itself.

Thank you in advance.

http://www.poi-factory.com/faq/index#Icons

Look under icons.

You will need to download a bmp file http://www.poi-factory.com/node/4240 and name it the same as the csv or gpx file except for the extension.To save bmp.Right click on file name and click save as or save link as. Then put in the same folder the wifi lite csv file is located.Name it the same except for the extension.

wifi lite.csv
wifi lite.bmp

See https://support.garmin.com/support/searchSupport/case.faces?... for more info on the icon(bmp) showing on map.

Loading custom Pois see http://www.poi-factory.com/node/25721