MiFi: your personal Wi-Fi hotspot
Suppose you’re away from home, for instance at a hotel abroad. You need to go online, but there’s no Wi-Fi hotspot around. In such a situation, MiFi or “mobile Wi-Fi” can offer a solution. What is it and how do you use it?
Mobile Wi-Fi
You could go online with your laptop using your mobile phone. However, this can become quite expensive if don’t have an adequate data bundle. A better solution is to equip your laptop with a MiFi router. It’s about the size of a credit card, 1cm high and has a slot for inserting a SIM card. Insert a prepaid SIM card with a data option into the MiFi router, and your laptop and the router will make contact via Wi-Fi. You’re now online via the 3G network of the mobile phone operator.
The MiFi solution offers extra advantages. For instance, it also serves as a Wi-Fi access point for multiple devices. When you’re travelling around with two laptops, both of them can go online, whilst other devices which are equipped with Wi-Fi but can’t go online themselves via 3G (for instance an iPad without 3G) can go online in this way. Incidentally, you don’t need to use a prepaid SIM card or use MiFi exclusively abroad. You can, for instance, request a second SIM card accompanying your existing data subscription from your mobile phone operator.
Tip. Use a SIM card or subscription with data bundle, and when travelling abroad often, add an international data bundle to your subscription.
A mobile router
Besides a SIM card slot, MiFi mobile routers contain a rechargeable battery. In fact, they are portable and compact routers, like the one you have at home. Switch on the device, connect your computer to the router via Wi-Fi and you can surf the Internet at 3G speeds. The MiFi router is completely configurable: you can give the Wi-Fi network a name, configure the security (so that your neighbours can’t surf on your network) and enter the data of the mobile phone operator’s data network - the so-called APN - and a username and password. The router is configured via the supplied software or via your browser at http://192.168.1.1. This is also where you can inspect your data use.
Most operators don’t offer MiFi routers themselves. In Europe two models are available, including the Huawei E5830 (http://www.huawei.com/europe/en/), which costs about £70, and the Novatel Wireless 2352 (http://www.novatelwireless.com - £200).
Tip. At eBay you will find cheaper devices, for around £60, but make sure they are models without simlock.
Tip. The Huawei contains no Web browser itself, but free alternative firmware (http://goo.gl/rjnA) solves this immediately.
Software
If you have an advanced smartphone, you don’t even need to buy a MiFi router - just install the appropriate tethering software. Tethering uses the data connection of the smartphone and shares it via Wi-Fi so that other devices can use it as well. For the iPhone, there’s MyWi (http://www.rockyourphone.com/index.php/mywi.html - £5.80 after demo), but it only works if your iPhone has been jailbreaked, since Apple prohibits tethering. A Windows Mobile smartphone allows this without any hacking, with the WMWifiRouter (http://www.wmwifirouter.com - £8.70 after demo). For certain Nokia Symbian devices there’s JoikuSpot (http://www.joikushop.com - £8.70 after demo).
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