golobal travel and wi-fi

Am I right about this ? ...

Wi-Fi in different countries may have many common points, but on the
most important criteria, the radio frequency it operates at, there is
no common worldwide standard at all.

So this means an american businessman arriving in Europe with Wi-Fi
built into his laptop won't be able to connect into a Wi-Fi "hot-spot"
in a european airport or coffee shop, et ctera, and vice-versa for someone
else traveling in the other direction.

They would need to buy a special Wi-Fi card for the area they are
traveling to.

Right ? Or are things a bit better than that ?

Thanks for any info.

They all follow the 802.11 a/b/g standards, which spell out frequency usage
in detail.

In the U.S. and Canada, channels 1 - 11 are used. In most of Europe,
channels 1 - 13 are used. I haven't tried it, but a U.S. adapter should work
in Europe, except with APs configured to use channels 12 and 13.

"David Mazeau" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:bqqsc7$voj$(E-Mail Removed)...
> Am I right about this ? ...
>
> Wi-Fi in different countries may have many common points, but on the
> most important criteria, the radio frequency it operates at, there is
> no common worldwide standard at all.
>
> So this means an american businessman arriving in Europe with Wi-Fi
> built into his laptop won't be able to connect into a Wi-Fi "hot-spot"
> in a european airport or coffee shop, et ctera, and vice-versa for someone
> else traveling in the other direction.
>
> They would need to buy a special Wi-Fi card for the area they are
> traveling to.
>
> Right ? Or are things a bit better than that ?
>
> Thanks for any info.
>
>
>

In article <bqqsc7$voj$(E-Mail Removed)>,
David Mazeau <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
:Am I right about this ? ...

Not really.


:Wi-Fi in different countries may have many common points, but on the
:most important criteria, the radio frequency it operates at, there is
:no common worldwide standard at all.

:So this means an american businessman arriving in Europe with Wi-Fi
:built into his laptop won't be able to connect into a Wi-Fi "hot-spot"
:in a european airport or coffee shop, et ctera, and vice-versa for someone
:else traveling in the other direction.

http://www.wi-fiplanet.com/tutorials/article.php/972261


"The 802.11b standard defines a total of 14 frequency channels.
The FCC allows channels 1 through 11 within the U.S.; whereas, most
of Europe can use channels 1 through 13. In Japan, you have only
one choice: channel 14."

Your US adapter would not be able to connect to channel 12 or 13 (or 14),
but *would* be able to connect to the other channels.

More of a problem perhaps would be legal restrictions: the power levels
one is allowed to use in parts of Europe are lower than US restrictions.

There are also more restrictions on antenna in parts of Europe, in
particular on external antenna (not allowed at all in parts of Europe.)
--
"No one has the right to destroy another person's belief by
demanding empirical evidence." -- Ann Landers

David Mazeau <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
> Wi-Fi in different countries may have many common points, but on the
> most important criteria, the radio frequency it operates at, there is
> no common worldwide standard at all.
>
> So this means an american businessman arriving in Europe with Wi-Fi
> built into his laptop won't be able to connect into a Wi-Fi "hot-spot"
> in a european airport or coffee shop, et ctera, and vice-versa for someone
> else traveling in the other direction.

Doesn't seem to be the case; I've used Wifi via an American laptop in
Europe, Latin America, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East (as recently as
earlier this week) without problems.

miguel
--
See the world from your web browser: http://travel.u.nu/

gary wrote:
> In the U.S. and Canada, channels 1 - 11 are used. In most of Europe,
> channels 1 - 13 are used. I haven't tried it, but a U.S. adapter
> should work in Europe, except with APs configured to use channels 12
> and 13.

My Netgear Wi-Fi equipment allows me to select the Region I'm using it in.
It then gives me the channels that I can legally use in that region.

James

The problem is that different regions not only support different channel
ranges, they have different transmit power limits. Running a U.S. adapter
(or AP) at full blast in Europe might be illegal.

There is a standard called 802.11d, which is not widely implemented. It may
be supported by your Netgear adapter. It adds a few new information elements
to the beacon and probe request/response frames. For example: country,
number of channels, first channel number, maximum transmit power level.

If 802.11d is implemented correctly in an adapter, and enabled, the adapter
will negotiate the channel set and max transmit power with the AP. It will
*not* transmit unless it has been informed of max transmit power via the
AP's beacon frame. This implies that an adapter running with 802.11d enabled
will not associate with an AP that is not also running 802.11d (otherwise,
it could never learn max transmit power).

I think 802.11d is ignored by most vendors because it's cheaper and easier
to put the burden on the user. If you take a non-802.11d U.S. adapter with
you to Europe, it will work 95% of the time, because 11/14 of the possible
channels are useable, and chances are no-one will ever notice that you're
violating transmit power limits. If you do get called on it, due to
excessive interference with other nets or devices, the vendor is off the
hook because they never told you that it would work in Europe.

"Jootec from Mars" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> gary wrote:
> > In the U.S. and Canada, channels 1 - 11 are used. In most of Europe,
> > channels 1 - 13 are used. I haven't tried it, but a U.S. adapter
> > should work in Europe, except with APs configured to use channels 12
> > and 13.
>
> My Netgear Wi-Fi equipment allows me to select the Region I'm using it in.
> It then gives me the channels that I can legally use in that region.
>
> James
>
>