As a member of the FON community, this week I’ve received (for free, with a promotional initiative) a La Fonera, a small wireless router that I can use to access Internet and also to share a portion of my bandwidth with other FON members.

From the FON web site:

FON is the largest WiFi community in the world. Our members share their wireless Internet access at home and, in return, enjoy free WiFi wherever they find another Fonero’s Access Point.

Two channels are available:
The first one is encrypted; I’ll use it with my wife for the Internet connection while at home.
The second channel is public, and any other FON member can access it.


The installation experience has been excellent: I’ve just plugged in the router and the two channels were immediately available. Nice!

In FON Maps, you can also see with Google Maps the location of all the FON members who are sharing their WiFi connection, that is, all the FON Access Points in the world.

I’ve just a suggestion for users with an ADSL USB modem:
The quick installation guide tells that La Fonera isn’t compatible with an ADSL USB modem, basically because this kind of modem doesn’t have an Ethernet port.
An easy workaround is to connect a PC or notebook to the ADSL and then connect La Fonera to the LAN Ethernet port of this PC.
All you have to do is share the Internet connection, actually using the PC as a router.
Here you can find detailed instructions for Windows XP.

Technorati Tags: , ,