Talk:Internet access

Purpose of article

Can I have a few days on this one before it appears on vfd? ;) Discussion here is welcome though.

I can see an objection to this article along the lines of "but this is so blatantly obvious that it doesn't need pointing out -- use Hotmail!". It's sort of true, but the discussion I'm moving in from the pub below suggests that it might be useful to do a write-up for people with non-webmail accounts that they need shell/IMAP/POP access to. It does verge towards a "general tech" article rather than travel specific, but let me see what I can make of it from a traveller's perspective. (WT-en) Hypatia 18:38, 16 Dec 2004 (EST)

Email is a bit narrow. Should be renamed to "internet access" og we should have another article about that. --(WT-en) elgaard 17:58, 2 Feb 2005 (EST)

Internet café

If I go to an Internet café, will I be able to plug my laptop in and ssh to my home computer? -(WT-en) phma 00:35, 26 Sep 2004 (EDT)

This is a computer question isn't it? It all depends on how you have your machine at home set up. If you have a router set up to accept calls to your machine from outside then this should be fine. It also depends on what outbound traffic the internet cafe allows. What you should do is from your home PC ssh to a box somewhere far away and then from this box try and ssh back onto your box. Doing this you should be able to prove that your machine is accepting connections.

It's an Internet café question. I know I can ssh from outside, but I've done it only at someone's home or at work. I don't know if Internet cafés let port 22 through, or (should I leave my laptop at home) they have ssh clients there so that I can ssh from their computer and bring up my Kmail on their screen. -(WT-en) phma 09:35, 27 Sep 2004 (EDT)

My observation has been that very few internet cafés allow laptop use these days, probably because they don't want to take the chance of having a possibly virus infected unknown machine on their internal network, and also don't want to be bothered to set up a firewalled laptop network.

If you are carrying around a laptop anyhow there are a lot of options for wireless these days, including a lot of free ones.

Meanwhile if that doesn't work, you can usually download Putty from internet café machines, or if all else fails there's a java SSH implimentation called mindterm which you can install on your home machine, assuming you are running an httpd. -- (WT-en) Mark 09:42, 27 Sep 2004 (EDT)

I don't have wireless on my laptop. Why would I need to download Putty? Don't they have openssh installed? I can't count on Java being available, though in a café they may have Colombia ;) and can a Java ssh implementation access the X server? Maybe the best solution is to find a geek in the host country who either lets me plug my laptop into his network or lets me ssh into it. -(WT-en) phma 05:38, 28 Sep 2004 (EDT)

You should not count on being allowed to put your laptop on a wired net. Do not count on getting X to work. Even if you managed to install an X-server on a PC in the internet cafe, the connection to an internet cafe would probably be too slow.

• Install a webmail-server on your home computer. I use the one in usermin.
• Ssh home with mindterm or putty and use a textbased mail client. (like Mutt or Vm, Gnus).
• If you want access to your server, the most reliable way is the command interface in usermin because it only requires a browser with SSL.
• You could bring a Knoppix CD. From Knoppix you can start a local Kmail and get you mail with POP3 or IMAP. But i doubt an internet cafe would let you boot their computer. OTOH a CD does not take up much space.
• You can get a cheap 11Mbit wireless PCMCIA card

-- (WT-en) elgaard 07:31, 2004 Sep 30 (EDT)

Great advice Elgaard! I usually do all of the above... but seriously get the Wireless card. Depending on where you are going you are likely to save money, as there are lots of free wireless places these days. -- (WT-en) Mark 04:35, 1 Oct 2004 (EDT)

...or get a mobile phone with ssh client. lightweight solution. Not necessarily more expensive than an internet cafe if all you need is ssh terminal mode and gives you soo much more freedom. (WT-en) Wojsyl 13:09, 1 Jan 2005 (EST)

I had to use Internet in while traveling around France laste year, and nearly in any place I've asked I was allowed to plugin my laptop (to wired Ethernet network). Sometimes they had special seats for plugging in laptop (table+chair+socket), sometimes they unplugged other computer to make me a place with wire. It happened that I had to adjust my settings for some proxy for web access and/or set my IP/router addresses by hand. Never had problems with outgoing SSH connection.

I think that level of acceptance of connecting laptops increases. Probably because of number of people interested. In fact, once when I wasn't allowed to connect my laptop, I just searched for another café.

Also consider to add to page: email by WAP, email by voice messaging, email (notification?) by SMS.

--(WT-en) JanSlupski 20:07, 2 Feb 2005 (EST)

Yes more people have laptops. But wireless networks are also a lot more common. I am writing this from the Vienna cafe in Lafayette. Two other cafes have wired internet. But I doubt new networks will bother with wired internet. --(WT-en) elgaard 20:15, 2 Feb 2005 (EST)

Webmail

What is the key to the selection of webmail services on this page ? Can anyone add his/her favourite webmail site here ? (WT-en) Wojsyl 16:07, 3 Feb 2005 (EST)

Yes, just like restaurants. We should try to selection a few that covers different tastes.

Yahoo: popular, Gmail: big storage, Ekit: travel oriented. --(WT-en) elgaard 17:53, 3 Feb 2005 (EST)

Gmail is not publicly accessible so far. It's misleading.