Discovering and Connecting to Wireless Hotspots
Because hotspot locations want to advertise their willingness to accept your business, they broadcast their SSID and do not require an encryption key to connect. But you do need to discover or be told what the SSID is for the hotspot so that you can tell your wireless NIC how to connect to it.
You can use several methods to discover the hotspot’s SSID, depending on the Windows operating system you use, the capabilities of the wireless NIC in your laptop computer, and the hotspot service to which you want to connect. In general, there are three possibilities:
• The wireless NIC management utility that ships with the NIC, such as Linksys WLAN Monitor
• Windows Wireless Network Connection utility
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