Coffee Bean Wi-Fi: November 2008 Archives

I brought my newly built OpenBSD 4.4 laptop to Starbucks in Tarzana/Reseda (actually the corner of Victory Boulevard and Tampa Avenue) to see how the free AT&T-powered WiFi would work in OpenBSD, which I've learned from my last OpenBSD laptop isn't a slam-dunk when it comes to getting logged in to Starbucks' not-open-to-the-world WiFi service.

What usually goes awry is that the laptop — in this case a 2002-era Toshiba Satellite 1100-S101 — picks up an IP address with no problem from the AT&T router. (I'm using my trusty, works-with-everything Orinoco WaveLAN Silver PCMCIA wireless card.)

But once I start a browser, I don't often get the login screen that actually tells AT&T's lovely router to start passing packets through my IP address.

I actually did have some luck months ago with the Compaq Armada 7770dmt running OpenBSD 4.2 with the Opera and Dillo Web browsers.

But today with the Toshiba running OpenBSD 4.4, I couldn't get anything going with Firefox or Opera. No Web pages would load. I couldn't get a login screen. Never mind that I forget my password every time I try to use this WiFi (that tends to happen when you do something every four months or so).

This laptop does have Windows XP on it, and I was ready to try it when I quit X and ran the Lynx text-only browser from the console.

I got the AT&T Wifi login page, was able to reset my password and log in to the service. Then I launched Firefox, somehow got to an AT&T WiFi page and changed my password.

One thing I'll be trying next time if I don't get a login screen in the browser is to go to this URL, which seems to be the root of all AT&T WiFi-ness in this corner of the country.

It should've come up automatically this way, but hopefully having this URL in my bookmarks will make all this jockeying a thing of the past.

By the way, I didn't have any of these problems using GNU/Linux (Puppy Linux 2.13, to be more specific) to connect to AT&T's Starbucks WiFi.

Bottom line: If Starbucks Wi-Fi isn't coming up in your browser and you're in California, go to https://secure3.sbc.com/ and try your luck there.
Next I'll be trying the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf free WiFi, which unlike that at Starbucks doesn't require any purchases, registering of any cards, and hopefully not the entry of any logins or passwords.

Yep, I'll expect it to just work. Update forthcoming