Connections

Polly. And Chocolate. Nice names. Even sweet- excuse the pun. Whereas Linsys or PcNet02-956058154 don’t quite have the same feel.

These were just four of the many broadband connections I ran into on my five month, 15 country journey this year and illustrate some of the names used.

There are so many broadband connections these days and just about every accommodation place I stayed in had one. Many restaurants or cafés did also. And this was countries like China, Kyrgyzstan and Belarus as well as a range of “standard” western European and South American countries. The connections were usually free and if they weren’t free then there’d probably be a free one nearby.

In setting up a broadband connection there are only a few key decisions that need to be made [yes three decisions but sure there are lots of other possibly time-consuming things to do to set it up properly].

The decisions are: Naming. What is the connection going to be called? Password: Ditto almost. And lastly, the security method.

But those three decisions provide quite a bit of scope to deliberately or not make a statement.

Bolqri. We rented an apartment in Belarus. “Don't open the doors to no-one” I was soundly advised when I spoke to the owner on the phone and again later when we met him in person. “Not even if they say they are the police”.

This security consciousness extended to the Internet connection. It had to link via a Virtual Private Network which took the owner about 30 minutes to set up including putting a short-cut on our computers. Why? We weren’t told but it seemed to parallel the approach to physical security which – in addition to the verbal advice – included a triple-locked steel door.

We were told not to download TV programs and similar bandwidth intensive things because this might prove too costly and by the time they knew the cost we’d have been well gone.

We joked that we’d only download a few porn movies and he momentarily blanched. Because of the nature of the movies or the downloads involved? I suspect the latter.

Most connections are secured using either WEP or WPA but there are also many that are not secured. Amongst these were my friends Polly and Chocolate. If their signals were strong enough you could connect. Polly's and Chocolate's signals did wax and wane and occasionally disappeared altogether. However a lot of the time their signals were quite strong so we guessed that they were nearby. Chocolate was probably the wine-bar over the street but Polly? I really had no clue but we had fun speculating. If wireless signals travel in a straight line then Polly was probably over the street also but up a couple of floors. Was it the language school? Or what about those ladies who came out on their balcony to smoke and have a cup of coffee at about 10:30 in the morning. Was Polly named after one of them? Or perhaps Polly was in the clothes shop on our side of the street.

There are quite a few like Polly and Chocolate. Unsecured. So that provided you can get the signal you can log in. No help is available of course but then none is really required.

I don’t of course know exactly what this says about their owners. Perhaps they didn’t care about security, perhaps they didn’t know how to make the network secure or perhaps they were realistic. In a coffee shop for example why make the network secure if you are going to give the password to every customer who asks for it.

Manchiev was the name we gave the Adsl connection in an apartment in Sofia. We named it after the people from whom we rented it.

As a lead up to coming to Sofia and in particular to the apartment we asked the owner if they could provide us with a few details to help us get to the apartment: The address written out in Cyrillic [the alphabet used in Bulgaria], the street corner it is nearest [the map on the website was there but it was too small to read and was not in Cyrillic – good for us but not for us if we were to give it to a taxi driver] and the phone number to send an sms to when we were leaving the airport.

All these were provided promptly but the addresses were not readable – they’d turned into odd code in the email - and a further attempt to elicit them was unsuccessful. So in other words we had all the key information but not in a form that was useful to us – the map too small, and nothing in Cyrillic to, for example, show to a taxi driver to get us to the apartment.

The broadband was similar.

When we arrived we found the instructions for connecting to the Ethernet broadband all clearly written out: IP address, Gateway, DNS server, alternative DNS server and a number to ring if we had problems. Really helpful it looked

However apart from the phone numbers none of the information was actually useful. The phone numbers were correct and that was just as well because for some reason we couldn't connect.

In ringing the ISP there was a promise of an English speaker at the other end – press 3 for English - but when I actually got through the operator could only speak Bulgarian. In my rather poor Bulgarian I asked that she find someone who spoke English. Her response - she hung up. Not a usual Bulgarian response I must add.

So I rang the other number – the person from whom we were renting. She offered to ring them and get back. She did later in the day and advised us that the problem had been sorted out. She hadn't paid the bill! However we also had to register machines using the network with the ISP.

This meant ringing the same place where they didn’t speak English. Luckily this time I did get an English speaker and we registered the Mac address of one machine. At this point we received new details for ... everything that had previously been provided. Yes the IP address, Gateway, DNS server, alternative DNS server all changed and would also be different for the next person who rents the apartment. The only things that did not change were the phone numbers.

Very similar to the pre-arrival information. It flows through!

I was never brave enough to try to register the other computer so Polly or Chocolate was used instead.

Some wireless connections are named either after the establishment they are in or after the owners of the establishment. Why? Well it is simple. If the connection has the same name as the establishment then there’s a good likelihood that it is the establishment’s connection.

But for me when looking at all the wireless connections I collected over the trip these ones are a good reminder of what places I stayed at and what they were like.

Kreyenberg. Now that was a nice place. A hostal in Valparaiso where I was the only guest. My room had a desk, plenty of sun if I got up before about 8:00 and it was relatively warm for most of the morning. And of course Valparaiso itself. Quite stunning.

Don Telmo – after the Don Telmo hotel I stayed at in Buenos Aires. What did I say in my review on Booking.com:

The staff were extremely helpful both in telling me about where to go in the city and how to get there and also dealing with the fact that my flight into Buenos Aires was delayed by almost a day. The room was great, the wifi worked well and breakfast was good.

And it was in a really attractive area of the city.

And then occasionally you come across the “product” connections. Macchiato for example - named after one of the menu items sold by a coffee shop in Puerto Varras, Chile. I didn’t try their Macchiato but their espresso was not too bad. For Chile. Remembering this I can remember the smokiness of the cafe. Yes you can still do that in Chile though some cafes do have separate areas for smokers. But where they don’t the smoke can be almost overwhelming. Ok if you are there occasionally but pretty awful if you lived there.

I can also remember the cold of Puerto Varras. Particularly at night when perhaps four layers of clothing was not quite enough and the coffee shops and restaurants were poorly heated and often smoky.

In fact one afternoon I was so cold I thought I’d spend a bit of time in a supermarket. I really did have something to buy but I thought I might examine the shelves a bit longer than necessary and warm up in the process. Guess what? The building was not heated and so it was at least as cold inside as it was outside.

Chocolate – well we do think it was the wine bar - but maybe they do a line in chocolate as well. And it was in Sofia. Despite having been victim to three - yes three - petty crimes– money - it is one of my favourite cities.

The crimes. Well this time it was a pickpocket. I lost my wallet through having it readily accessible to thieves in an open side pocket of my trousers.

Last time it was the taxi. I paid 35 leva [about 35 AUD] for a taxi ride that should have been no more than 10 leva. I’d even asked that he use the meter which he did so I’ve never been able to work out how it ticked over to 35 leva.

The third was a sleight of hand trick when someone asked if I could change a 50 leva note into five 10 levas. I lost 10 in the transaction but was most impressed with the trick. It was almost worth the price.

Chocolate reminds me not of this but of other more charming things in Sofia like their restaurants and cafes, the shops in the hole in the basement and the range of historic architecture and the markets where you can buy fresh apples, cheese and lots of dried fruit.

But what about Llame 997661131 inter s/40-24hs. I can't recall where that one came from and it was fortunate that you don't have to type all the characters in. The computer does that for you!

The same with PcNet02-956058154

I’d have liked to find out where or what these connections were. Did they I wondered include their password as part of the connection’s name – and if so was that a mistake. Or did they need to distinguish them in some way from ...surely nothing of a similar name.

Some connections are much less imaginatively named perhaps calling themselves “wireless” or after the name of the router [I assume]. So I have come across quite a few Linksys, Netgear, or TP-link connections. A slight variation on the theme was WLAN – 36. Some thought was given to naming but obviously not much. And of course it leads you to wonder what happened to WLANs 1 to 35.

A wireless connection in Peru – perhaps it was GIDEON PERU S.A. – though that sounds evangelical and I don’t think I was near the Gideons.

Whatever, it was in a 5 star hotel that I had been put up in because my plane had been cancelled. Knowing that 5 star hotels tend to charge for Internet connection I asked if the airline could give me a voucher to cover it. No.But they did give me a phone card so I could ring my hotel in Buenos Aires to tell them I’d be a day late.

Anyway I got there and sure enough the Internet connection was not free. In my room. But down in the lobby it was free. The result was that the lobby was cluttered with quite a few unkempt travellers whereas had the hotel not charged for wireless in the rooms the lobby would have been quite uncluttered which was presumably what the hotel would have most wanted.

Occasionally you come across a connection that is named not after the business or the nature of the business but the whole city or town. Such was the case with Paracas. Paracas is a small town in Peru but it is not so small as to have only one wireless connection. In fact there were quite a few others but this one seems to have decided to claim the whole town for itself. And then for some reason they would not let anybody else log in. “This is just for staff.”

Passwords tend to follow the same approach as the naming and access. If the naming is obscure then the password is obscure. Most places though either hand out the password, have it written on perhaps the wall or the menu – if it is a restaurant or café.

At one place - I think the network name there was Default - the passwords were word processed and you were given a slip of paper with the password. That was so typical of this hostel. Everything was done carefully but slightly fussily. The breakfast laid out very formally in the morning, the electrical equipment neatly covered with fitted cloths which had to be taken off each time the item was used.

Lunasunrisa. The name of the hostal so the connection was obvious enough.

At this hostal about 10 minutes was spent with you on arrival. Showing you were everything was, explaining the need for quiet after certain hours and providing you with a hand coloured map of the town pointing out restaurants, sights and no-go areas.

Now if you didn’t feel wanted before you did when you made your connection. The password for this wonderfully thoughtful hostal was Lunasunrisaguest.

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