Please post your Pioneer Courtouse Square test results here! -- MichaelCodanti

Node Map Info: wiki:NodeId:351


Date: 1/3/2002 @ 6:30pmBR Report from MichaelCodantiBR Signal: Pretty darn goodBR Coverage: Pretty much everywhere (including Starbucks)BR Test Equipment: old Toshiba laptop with a Toshiba WiFi card (Lucent) w/internal antennaBR Speed: ExcellentBR BR Date: 1/4/2002 @ 6:57pmBR Report from AndrewWoods: I'm currently chilling in the Starbucks in the square, getting a good signal, around 22db SNR. i'm using an unmodified lucent silver card. it covers most of the square very well. it's 6:57pm at the moment. it dies inside powell's around 4 steps past the door, which is to be expected, as it is sunken in brick. haven't gotten any questions yet, but a lot of weird looks. thanks a lot, guys! i will be spending a lot of time downtown, now. haha. (note: i'm using win2k, and mozilla (0.9.7) wouldn't pull up the nocatauth page, but IE 5.00.2920 pulled it up no problemo. very cool.) BR Update 01/12/02: I'm currently updating my debian installation to unstable, again from the Starbucks (it's cold outside). I'm getting around 85-90kBps. I had no trouble getting connected. The only difficulty I've had so far is a more general linux problem; for some reason, it doesn't like to use the DNS address provided by DHCP, unless the DNS server's ip is globally resolvable, i.e. not the gateway. So, if you're having connection problems in linux, but you can ping internet IPs, try adding a known nameserver IP to resolv.conf.BR Update 01/21/02: Unoperable today in a variety of environments, dhcp worked, but no browser i tried could connect. they included lynx, mozilla 0.9.7 for linux, konqueror, and opera, IE and mozilla 0.9.7 for windows. couldn't ping outside ips, either. this was between 4:30 and 6:30pm. BR BR Date: 1/17/2002 @ 2:26pmBR Report from DonPark: yes! Im writing this from pioner courthouse square. im using my thinkpad with linux and an orinoco bronze card ( old firmware). i inserted the card, ran 'pump' to get an address and ran 'links yahoo.com'. the portal caught it and i hit submit. then it sent me on to yahoo - although yahoo complained about a weird URL. i think nocat may be mungeing the URL slightly. Im just about out of batt. power.BR BR Date: 1/17/2002 @ 4:26pmBR Report from PeterBakke: hello, this is being mailed from the p.c. square starbucks, and i happen to be running macos x. it appears to be working flawlessly ... airport reports a nearly full strength signal, and authnocat caught my web browser on the first attempt. this system is a dual-usb ibook, with a new airport card, and macos x 10.1BR BR Date: 1/17/2002 @ 4:52pmBR Report from GaryWeaverLi: Hope I am sending this report correctly. I tried last night and had only DHCP and DNS but no traffic. Adam made the update and like everyone else -- now everything ROCKS!! It's sooo fast. One internet throughput test reported 763Kb!! Wow. Of course the second test came back at 1856Kb!!! I love cache... Great job guys.BR BR Date: 1/18/2002 @ 5:08pmBR Report from EliabHelon: all is good i initially had problems obtaining an address but after trying again i got a lease no problem. I think the connection here is most adequately described as kickass speed, averaging 1100k throughput.I'm using a vanilla silver lucent card on my openbsd laptop. Opera had a problem following the nocat redirect to my originally requested page, but everything else is smooth. BR BR Date: 1/20/2002 @ 6:30pmBR Report from AlHooton: Here I sit at the PS Starbucks, with two boxes: BR BR * Stylistic 1000, Win98 first edition, Orinoco Silver card, 5Dbi external antenna, latest firmware/drivers, IE 5.5 BR BR *266MHz laptop, Win2K, Orinoco Silver card, 5Dbi external antenna, latest firmware/drivers, IE 5.5, Netwcape 4.79 BR BR Yeah, yeah, I know... bring a Linux client. All in due time, there are only so many hours... 8^)= BR BR In general, everything is great. The laptop didn't seem to correctly get the DNS servers the first time it hit the DHCP server, but after I dropped the connection and reconnected to renew the lease, everything is fine. Both machines got the NoCatAuth splash page as expected. It's nice and fast, and I have excellent signal levels. If I disconnect the external anntennas, I drop down to about a 12Db SNR, but it's still usable. BR BR Cheers to the crew putting this together!!

Date: 1/22/02 @ ~5:13pm Report from PatrickSullivan Win2k, Lucent Silver, IE 5.0 Found the node, got the NoCat page, logged in, and surfed. All without getting out of my car. :) Cheers!

Date: 1/29/02 @ 9:45-10:30pm Report from Joseph Stein (joes@joescanner.com) Win2k, Lucent Silver, IE 6.0 NoCat in, able to surf and use SSH. Tried to use a PPTP VPN and that failed, but otherwise, it's nice to be able to use the computer downtown. Thanks to everyone who made this possible!

Date: 02/06/2002 12:45pm Report from Dan Parslow (dan@parslow.com) Debian 3.0, D-Link DWL-650, Opera 6.0TP2 Used an argumentless 'pump'. About 20 seconds to get the NoCat page, painless. Deep in the heart of Starbucks, signal strength too widely fluctuating to be meaningful but able to maintain a (claimed) 11Mb/s bit rate. Upon booting Win98SE on the same machine, had to use winipcfg to release then renew the DHCP-allocated address before TCP/IP would do anything, but did not need to go through the NoCatAuth page again: presumably because the MAC address was unchanged. Browsed a bit, unscientific throughput assessment == "seems plenty fast". Great fun.

Date 19.02.2002BR Report from WilCooleyBR Red Hat Linux 7.2, Lucent Bronze, Netscape 4.78BR Changing ESSID allowed me to immediately get an IP address; accessing NoCat no problems. Timed out once even with the pop-up window. Had little problem because the redirected NoCat page was a private address w/o public DNS (and I use a nameserver on localhost). Changed /etc/resolv.conf to use DHCP-supplied nameserver and got to NoCat page w/o problems. Accessed twice during the day; once in morning, once in afternoon.

Problems with log-in screen at both Hostel and downtown PDX

Date: May 6, 2002, 11:35 amBR Posted by Michael ZwirnBR

[originally sent to Nigel Ballard, but now cc:ing the PTP list after the identical weirdness with my log-in has come up in downtown Portland at the Pioneer Courthouse Square location]

I'm at the Taco Del Mar across from the Hawthorne Hostel again. The log-in screen that pops up is giving me a big headache. Everything looks normal (on a PowerBook G3, IE 5.1, etc) but the button that says "login" does not appear to be a link. I click on it and nothing happens, even after I check the little box agreeing to the terms and conditions. When looking at the source code for the page, I get:

</textarea> <form method="POST" action="http://10.11.13.1/"> <br><input type="checkbox" name="textareaName" value="yes">I agree to the terms and conditions of use.

<table border=0 cellpadding=5 cellspacing=0> <tr>

</tr> <input type="hidden" name="redirect" value="http://nyt.com/">

Does that look right to everyone? It acting just a .gif and really not functioning as a redirect link... I can get to the Hostel site, NoCat and a few others without the redirect, [and in downtown], (the various PTP sites) which must be how you and others designed it, but I can't get through anywhere else.

If anyone sees this Tuesday late a.m. May 7, give me a ring at xxx-xxx-xxxx. I will delete my cellphone number from this page later....


(15 minutes later) OK. I figured it out. For some reason, IE 5.1 for the Macintosh does not seem to treat the LOGIN button as a button at all. I switched to Netscape 6.2 for the Mac and it works alright, but I can't figure out why IE gave me this kind of trouble - it had always worked before. Whew!]


Date: 11-24-02 Subject: Can't get NoCat screen problems Report from Bob Pebly Win2K SP3, IE 6.0 SP1 Had a few meetings downtown Wed-Fri and tried to access from Pioneer Square a couple times. I was able to see the access point and get an address and could ping the gateway, but the NoCat page never popped up on my browser and I couldn't get any further.

Ethernet adapter 802.11b Connection:

Any ideas on what the problem may be? Is that DNS server right? I couldn't ping it. I also tried just an IP address in the browser URL to try & avoid potential DNS issues, but still no luck.


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