WLAN access in London

25/03/03 Received an Email from Cityspace ...

Hi Ottaky

I was delighted to read your comments regarding the i+ network. I have the lucky
tasks of implementing the wireless solution on our kiosk network. To date we
haven't really advertised what we are doing, but the network is growing. We have
taken a company decision to rollout all new i+ kiosks with wireless capability,
and will gradually upgrade the rest of our network same as Oxford street to
ensure broadband access is available from every kiosk.

As you probably realise from the contents of the kiosk web site, i+ is an
imitative between Cityspace and local authorities. Each kiosk seeks to deliver
local governments services to the user community. Depending on how the kiosk is
funded determines the content, in an instance where the kiosk is funded by local
transport initiatives you find content relevant to journey planning and
ticketing etc. Other kiosks look more at social inclusion and deliver details
about benefits, employment and local community. The wireless element will soon
be supported by a walled garden that looks to deliver a pocket sized version of
these services to the user, before allowing users access straight out on the
World Wide Web. I hope you continue to use our services, and I will keep you
posted of new networks. In the near very future we hope to offer wireless
connectivity from our site in Islington, Ealing, Bristol and Gloucester.

Kind regards

Name and contact details removed by request

I replied saying that it'd be a shame to force Westminster Council's content down the throats of the Wireless community ..

Steve

Thanks for your reply and feedback, we do plan to continue to offer wireless
internet access, however we might have to slightly hinder it with a council
sposored web page. This page will be as a forced redirection from the users
browser, It will give details as to the ownership of the wireless cloud and
then a number of urls off this page. One of those links will be straight off
to unhindered web access. I think it important that we place an ownership label
on the cloud if not only to support the local authority and providing
recognigition for their involvement in this initiative but also to help promote
cityspace as a wireless hotspot provider. Also the more recognition local
authoritites recieve together with support from users tends to see more units
deployed and thus more wireless hotspots.

As an aside do you happen to know who owns the other wireless access on Oxford
Street EDSID UK-LON ???

Name and contact details removed by request

I replied again asking about services other than the web (FTP, SMTP, POP3), but received no response.

So you can probably look forward to Westminster's Web Portal in the near future. >8-(

Ever wondered where you can get yourself onto the 'net for free in London?

A Cityspace i+kiosk is a good place to start because some i+kiosks incorporate an 802.11b Access Point.

Oxford Street has at least three i+kiosks, although I have heard there are four in total. On the day that I went looking, only two were actually working - one located outside Dorothy Perkins on the Tottenham Court Rd side of Oxford Circus, the other outside Zara just the other side of the Circus. The one other kiosk that I saw was outside of Pizza Hut, close to Tottenham Court Rd, the last kiosk is apparently at the other end of Oxford Street, close to Marble Arch.

As I understand it, the i+kiosks usually have a dual ISDN line (128KB?) so they're OK for general web browsing but I did find the throughput was a bit sporadic, although that may have been due to another user who was associated with the AP and using the Limewire client to share files on the Gnutella network ;-)

The i+kiosk outside Dorothy Perkins is accessable from inside Borders bookshop where you can sit down with an espresso and browse the web. Sadly, the old coffee shop has been replaced with yet another bl**dy Starbucks, but you can't have everything I suppose.

Here are the details for the AP:

As you'd expect, the kisok is running a DHCP server - I was allocated 192.168.0.12 on an infinite lease. This is the output form a traceroute to www.google.com ...

 1  gateway (192.168.0.1)  65.343 ms  22.863 ms  8.737 ms
 2  SpeedTouch.lan (192.168.1.1)  11.007 ms  8.350 ms  6.539 ms
 3  * 62.69.64.53 (62.69.64.53)  36.433 ms  76.185 ms
 4  213.253.166.2 (213.253.166.2)  87.737 ms  33.156 ms  30.864 ms
 5  195.134.30.249 (195.134.30.249)  27.851 ms  29.685 ms  26.817 ms
 6  213.253.166.5 (213.253.166.5)  123.688 ms  33.430 ms  34.453 ms
 7  AGNOC-E3-gw.webfactory.co.uk (195.134.0.5)  33.049 ms  132.598 ms  41.100 ms
 8  213.253.166.9 (213.253.166.9)  50.192 ms  41.041 ms  69.891 ms
 9  london2.thl.cerbernet.co.uk (193.243.227.9)  95.824 ms  45.118 ms  74.964 ms
10  62.69.64.225 (62.69.64.225)  71.987 ms  51.081 ms  40.963 ms
11  213.166.3.133 (213.166.3.133)  77.869 ms  39.741 ms  44.386 ms
12  213.232.64.50 (213.232.64.50)  55.267 ms  190.911 ms  53.081 ms
13  p6-2.london2-cr4.bbnplanet.net (212.133.14.89)  49.480 ms  41.820 ms  55.155 ms
14  p1-0.london2-cr3.bbnplanet.net (195.16.175.173)  43.789 ms  44.958 ms  44.496 ms
15  195.16.175.249 (195.16.175.249)  116.955 ms *  4921.351 ms
etc

The 'gateway' in the first line is being read from my hosts file, it's the name of my home gateway.

WHOIS suggests that 62.69.64.53 belongs to a company called OnCue Telecommunications, but a quick Google reveals that they went bust in 2001 .. the rest of the trace indicates that connectivity is through Cerbernet aka Business Serve.