FON - You like?

kmick

I have a Fon hotspot and have made about 40 euro from it in 2 months,. How much have you made from yours. Have you had any problems or feedback from users? I have three users who use it all the time and seem very happy with it. Its damn good value EUR3 for 24 hours and a five day pass for a tenner. I think they could double the charges easily. It costs about 3/hr in an internet cafe and you have to leave the house .

RuggieBear

kmick wrote:

I have a Fon hotspot and have made about 40 euro from it in 2 months,. How much have you made from yours. Have you had any problems or feedback from users? I have three users who use it all the time and seem very happy with it. Its damn good value EUR3 for 24 hours and a five day pass for a tenner. I think they could double the charges easily. It costs about 3/hr in an internet cafe and you have to leave the house .

where you based? I make nothing from mine!!!!:D

robinph

The only person ever connected to mine was me.

I think people tend to drive past too quickly on the dual-carriageway outside my window to notice it, but if it gets me some free access elsewhere at some point then I'll be happy enough.

Wcool

I bought a Fon router but after a month have switched it off.

I live in the middle of nowhere so I became a Linus. I already a had cheap router (Buffalo WYRG54 , 45 euro, same as the Fonera) and I don't want to have 3 wireless signals: the Buffalo, the private Fon and the public Fon so I wanted to switch off my Buffalo.

The Fon has several problems:
- the connection keeps dropping or you can't connect to it. Rebooting takes about a minute. This happens with one laptop but not my other, but never happened with my Buffalo.
- Fon has locked down everything, and that's a pity as the device is based on Linux Open Wrt and is very programmable. No "official" room to mess around.
- The device is a separate subnet on your existing router, not in bridge mode.
This means that I can't access my home servers files from a wireless computer.
This sucks big time, as I store everything on my server.

I opened up the Fonera and got SSH to work on it. Search for Kolofonium hack if you are interested. But because of the dropping connection (this is my better half's laptop), I reverted back to the Buffalo. I have to admit, I won't look back on the experience, 45 euro wiser...

You are lucky that you can make money of the Fonera. I thought it would be nice to be able to log on to some access point when I am somewhere else, but in the end I am happy to pay you the 3 euro's

robinph

Why worry about how well you can access your own stuff via the Fon My_place signal if you've got another router connected as well?

As long as no one else is getting in via that route then just leave the thing running and don't worry about if it keeps on resetting itself or anything too much. But as long as it remains connected to the internet then when you are out and about and you come across someone else's Fon signal you can get online for free with your Fon login.

Wcool

robinph wrote:

Why worry about how well you can access your own stuff via the Fon My_place signal if you've got another router connected as well?

As long as no one else is getting in via that route then just leave the thing running and don't worry about if it keeps on resetting itself or anything too much. But as long as it remains connected to the internet then when you are out and about and you come across someone else's Fon signal you can get online for free with your Fon login.

Yes, good point.

Only thing I can say is that I don't like a device on my network doing nothing 24/7/365, it's a waste. And another is that it's quite crowded with wireless signals already in my house: 2 wireless routers, 1 panel and omni, and 1 wireless audio/video converter, all in the 2.4 Ghz range

kmick

Based in Rathgar. I suppose you need a lot of close neighbours to make money from it.

nava

robinph wrote:

The only person ever connected to mine was me.

I think people tend to drive past too quickly on the dual-carriageway outside my window to notice it, but if it gets me some free access elsewhere at some point then I'll be happy enough.

HI

exactly the same here for me, no connections but if I cna get free connections when I travel I will be happy.

Regards

kmick

It took a while for me to get the first connections (6weeks) but the same people use it over and over. I am in a terrace with lots of people renting short term so its perfect for getting people on. Id say the distance you can pick up a good signal from is limited. Must do a wardrive to see.

robinph

kmick wrote:

It took a while for me to get the first connections (6weeks) but the same people use it over and over. I am in a terrace with lots of people renting short term so its perfect for getting people on. Id say the distance you can pick up a good signal from is limited. Must do a wardrive to see.

The signal strength does seem to be pretty good for the Fon as I pick that up much better around the house than the signal from my Netgear router positioned in the same place, and the Netgear claims to have six arieals pointing in different directions or something to give it better coverage, allegedly.

I've not actually checked how far away from the house the Fon signal can be picked up yet though.

jonnybax

I got a FON router as there was a problem with my internet card and couldn't connect directly to the modem.

This was after I was using a neighbours FON for about 2 weeks (guy made a fair bit from that I'd say).

One thing however, friends of mine moved in two doors away and one of the reason's I got the FON router was so they could use it. Although they get a "very low" signal the odd time, most of the time there's nothing... I was a bit disappointed with that as I expected the range to be better.

jonnybax