Thank you Nancy for sharing this great WiFi information! I have learned a lot!
Best, Sarah From: ATI [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of nancy Lynn Sent: Thursday, October 19, 2017 8:51 AM To: ATI List <[email protected]> Subject: [ATI] WiFi connection away from home Someone on another list had a question about WiFi connection away from home, and another person provided such a wonderfully detailed explanation of the way WiFi and cell services work that I thought I’d share it with this list so that others may benefit from the knowledge.I have learned a lot! Your device has three radio sets built in. Actually it might have more depending on what it is you have. Of interest are the WiFi radio, the Bluetooth radio and the Cell radio. These are two way radios which means they can receive signals much like an FM or AM radio and they can transmit signals back out to other receivers like for example the cell tower. The Bluetooth radio can talk to Bluetooth devices like headphones, speakers, keyboards, other remote controller devices and has a distance of about 30 feet or about 10 metres. The Cell radio talks with the cellular towers scattered about. These towers have more powerful transmitters and work mostly what is called line-of-sight. Usually the outer limits are about 25 kilometres but usually a bit less. Buildings, hills and other obstructions can interfere with the connection. Your phone will make a connection with a tower and conduct signals with it and as you move outside of the range of a tower that tower will talk to another tower and negotiate a hand-off of your phone connection to one in the vicinity you are entering if there is a tower available. If there is not you cannot use the phone to talk or transmit data.Some companies share towers but not many so for example my Rogers connection disappears just a little beyond the local Tim Horton's just west of town whereas Bell customers have connection west at least as far as Kapuskasing and quite possibly further. I don't know where Rogers picks up again, going south it is well before Timmins.There is nothing south down highway 144 except a little around the Watershed with any carrier. The cell radio is used for regular telephone and data. There are Internet connections to cell towers which convert Internet data to the data your phone can understand and sends it over the air to your phone if you have data as part of your phone plan. The WiFi is a small radio in your home or other homes which receives Internet data usually down a wire, either television like cable or telephone line wire. This is connected to your WiFi router and can be passed along through an Ethernet cable or a WiFi radio to your phone or laptop or what ever. That transmitter is only good for a range of about 40 or 50 metres. All kinds of things get in the way of that radio signal. I can hardly get my WiFi radio more than a couple of metres beyond my front door but I can get it to the bottom of my back yard. On my computer I can see signals from four or five of my neighbours but the radio on my phone can't see or receive signals only from my WiFi.There isn't much antenna in a cell phone.In an apartment building you may be able to see several WiFi radios on your phone and this is why people set them up with passwords, so you can't use someone's signal from the next apartment or the one upstairs and they can't use yours. Clever people can intercept your signals and watch for your credit card information for example or read your e-mails if your WiFi radio isn't protected with a password and sometimes even if it is. Once you carry your phone beyond where it can receive your WiFi radio you no longer can use WiFi. If you know the passwords you can connect to another WiFi radio so, in theory if you know all the passwords of your neighbour's apartments along the corridor and they have their WiFi routers on you could theoretically connect to them in turn as you walk to the elevator. Some cities have WiFi radios on utility poles in the street and if you are a subscriber to that carrier, say Bell then you may be able to have portable WiFi out in the street. I haven't actually looked when in Toronto but I understand that there were plans to have the downtown covered with WiFi, I don't know which carrier. When I visit in England, particular the south I see BT, British Telephone have WiFi points associated with their phone boxes and other locations. So, when you get about 50 feet from your home router you can't receive or send to your WiFi radio and WiFi is gone. There are some places like coffee shops, sometimes bus and train stations which offer free WiFi and others which offer it at a charge like some airport service. Trains and busses now often also carry WiFi which they do through their data systems much like how your Hot Spot works. So now the Hot Spot. This uses your cell radio to send and receive data from a cell tower as it would to say watch television on the phone and it links this to your phone's WiFi radio. It makes your phone a little WiFi router. Using your phone as a Hot Spot you can transmit Internet signals to a notebook computer or other Internet device like an iPad that does not have Cell capability. For example I have used my phone as a Hot Spot in England where I had a data plan to allow my son's iPad have access to the internet through my phone and my phone's cell connection. He did not have a data plan but wanted to use his iPad to arrange rail tickets or something. My phone used my data plan to connect to the cell tower and retransmitted that through my WiFi radio which his iPad could talk to. So, you cannot have WiFi on the move unless you are with a carrier which has radios installed out on the streets which only happens in certain cities and usually in particular parts of those cities or are on a bus which has a WiFi radio built into it and retransmits signals it gets over the cell network. If you want to listen to Spotify as you wander about you will need to stream that using your data plan through the Cell towers. Hope this helps you understand and might be helpful to others. Dale Leavens
_______________________________________________ ATI (Adaptive Technology Inc.) A special interest affiliate of the Missouri Council of the Blind http://moblind.org/membership/affiliates/adaptive_technology
