Here's an easy one for you 'wired' guys.
I'll be going to Virginia/DC for XMas and want to bring my better half's Windoze laptop. The hotel we are in has high speed internet access in the rooms.
At home I am connected thru a DLink wireless card via a DSL router plugged into the wall.
Obviously, I'll have to plug in straight to the laptop, but will I need to make a new 'connection' to get on? Will I be going thru my ISP or theirs? I've never done this before and I need DETAILS.
Thanx in advance.

quote:

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Originally posted by phat.bak:
At home I am connected thru a DLink wireless card via a DSL router plugged into the wall.
Obviously, I'll have to plug in straight to the laptop, but will I need to make a new 'connection' to get on?

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Probably there's already a connection there set up to use your internal Ethernet adapter. You will want to set it to "Obtain IP Address Automatically" and "Obtain DNS automatically" (In other words, use DHCP to configure itself on the network".

As for e-mail, some of these access providers block port 25 and some don't. If they do, they'll provide you with an SMTP server to use for sending e-mail, and if they don't block it then you can use your own. (If you're on Earthlink you may need to use the "authorized" SMTP server for outside connections, which requires login with a username and password.)

Receiving e-mail should be no problem with everything configured as-is, and web access will be no problem.

Some hotels provide wireless (wi-fi) access, be sure to ask and bring your wi-fi card.

I do this, as you might have guessed, a lot more often than I'd like to, so I'm happy to help if you have other questions.

Scott

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Scott Johnson (ScottJ)

Well I don’t know if it works the same in all hotels, but when my wife and I were in Savannah we spent part of the time in the Wingate that had high-speed Internet access. There was box with power outlets and an Ethernet cable. I had a laptop running Win2K. All I did was plug it in, then the first time I tried to access a website their software intercepted it and put a special webpage where I had to accept a user agreement. The agreement basically said that if anything bad happened I couldn’t blame them. When I accepted it, another page came up. I clicked it, the website I first asked for appeared. Then it worked as normal. The special page came up once each day. Note while I didn’t have to change any connection settings in the laptop, I have it setup to get things like the IP address and DNS address from the network. While Win 9X can be set to get an address from the network, I don’t think it can be set get the DNS.

The special page was actually a page from LodgeNet, I just found their public website at http://www.lodgenet.com/ I found this page http://www.lodgenet.com/guests/Nov01WebsiteObLGstSupport.htm which pretty much describes it. Of course I don’t know if that is what you will have but this should be close.

My email I handled via a web interface that my ISP provides.

I'll call ahead to the Candlewood Suites in Fairfax to see what kinda service they have. While there, I can check my email via web access with Alltel. I'm trying to make sure I can get to GC.com and the GGA while there.
Thanx, guys

"Give to a pig when it grunts and a child when it cries, and you'll have a fine pig and a bad child." -Proverb

OT - If you're going to be that close in, you've gotta visit Mario's Pizza. Simply the best!

See ya on the hunt!