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This article is a travel topic.

If you're traveling for pleasure, Internet access may be the last thing on your mind. You may even be glad to be free of it for a while. But it can be convenient way to keep in contact with the folks back home (without worrying about time zones or making appointments to talk by phone), it can be essential for business travelers, and there's no doubting the value of accessing Wikitravel.org for information wherever you are in the world.

[edit] Understand

Internet users have a wide variety of expectations and expertise regarding "the net". For some, a simple web browser and advice for where to find one is sufficient; for others, their needs may be more esoteric and technical, and they may be willing and able to jump through elaborate hoops to accomplish them. So in places this article will be simplistic to some, and technobabble to others. Sorry.

[edit] Access types

[edit] Public access computers

The simplest form of access for the broadest range of users are computers made available to the public, usually for a fee or included as a "free" service for patrons of a hotel, restaurant, or cafe. These are spreading quickly to even the most remote regions of the world, often driven by local demand for access to the Internet. In fact, they are often most common in areas where private, individual access to the Internet is least common. However, there can be difficulties:

• Most will be running Microsoft Windows, which is widely familiar, but often plagued by limitations. In particular, they might be running an older version of Windows, which may have limited support (if any) for uploading pictures from a digital camera.

• Other services that are commonly missing: IMAP clients for reading mail, microphones, and Internet-phone software. The only application you can generally count on being functional is a web browser.

• In many places, language is an issue. Even if you know Windows well, using an Arabic or Chinese version will probably pose problems. Usually you can get a web browser to work, but not much else.

• Security is also an issue, as many cafe computers are infested with keyloggers and other nasty forms of spyware. Do not use important passwords on a public computer.

[edit] Modems

If you've brought your laptop with you, you may be able to use the phone socket in a hotel room to connect to the Internet using standard dial-up technology. Some hotels use their own private digital phone switches, which will not work with analog modems. The phones may be hard-wired, or the sockets impossible to get at. (In olden days hackers would get around this using acoustic couplers, but this probably doesn't happen much anymore.) It can be very expensive to use modems on hotel phone lines, especially if it requires a long-distance or international call to access your ISP.

Many countries use nonstandard connectors for telephone lines, and you may need to buy an adapter between the jack on your laptop (the shape of which is called RJ-11) and the jack used where you are staying. Sometimes you can borrow the adapter used on the room telephone, and other times you must provide your own.

If you are staying in private accommodation with phone access, or having an extended stay, it may be possible to get an account with a local ISP. Dialup accounts can be very cheap at around US$10 per month or less. Pre-paid dialup is a good solution, as since you will not provide ongoing billing details there is definitely no risk of ongoing charges. Otherwise some flat-rate ISPs may be no contract, meaning you can cancel at any time; however you need to remember to cancel!

If you are traveling internationally, it is possible to set up a "global roaming" dialup account that has local access numbers in numerous countries. Depending on the location, there is often a choice between local numbers and country-wide toll-free numbers, the toll-free numbers costing more per hour in Internet fees. Before leaving, you will want to make sure the global roaming "dialer" software is loaded on to your computer, and that you can connect successfully from your home. Doing so will also ensure the most recent list of local access numbers gets downloaded onto your laptop.

One provider of international global roaming is http://www.ipass.com, based in Spain, which requires no contract but only offers service on a prepaid basis. A provider like this one has contracts with a network of local Internet service providers in each country, rather than operating a worldwide network itself. With any such provider, hourly rates vary by country and depend on whether you use a local or national access number. Before considering signing up for any type of global dialup roaming, ensure that the service provider offers service in the countries you intend to visit.

Many places do not support "touch tone" dialing. If after your modem dials, you continue to hear the dial tone (which could sound different where you are visiting) instead of getting a connection, change the settings on your computer to use "pulse" dialing.

Many North American computers don't recognize the dial tone in other countries, and will refuse to dial saying there is "no dial tone". If this is the case, you should be able to disable dial tone detection on your laptop.

[edit] Cellular phones

For GSM phones, the worldwide standard pretty much everywhere except Japan and South Korea, GPRS (packet data) roaming is becoming more and more common around the world. There are two basic ways of getting online with your phone:

• Use GPRS to download mail directly to your phone and surf the web. While this can be done on most any modern phone, you will want a Blackberry/Treo/Communicator-type device with a large screen and keyboard to make this practical.

• Use GPRS to connect another device, typically a laptop, to the Internet.

In the USA and Canada, CDMA (the system used by Verizon and TELUS) is widespread, and arguably the most available service outside of metropolitan areas. CDMA phones can frequently be used as a computer modem with the purchase of an adapter cable, or increasingly they can provide Internet access to your laptop via their built-in Bluetooth. While not part of their basic cell phone service package, Verizon's "Quick 2 Connect" service provides 14.4 kbps Internet access at no additional charge to their customers using the phone and cable combination, and their BroadbandAccess and NationalAccess packages with additional laptop tethering add-on can be used to provide Internet access through many of their current phones.

[edit] Wired Ethernet

Businesses, universities, and perhaps private homes will provide standard RJ-45 Ethernet jacks which you can plug your computer into. With a dynamically-assigned IP address, you can be online in seconds. Internet cafes, libraries, etc. may not allow this kind of access, but it is increasingly common to provide it (sometimes even for an extra fee) given the growing popularity of laptops.

[edit] Wireless

Wireless access is increasingly common, but often comes with strings (instead of wires) attached. They fall into five basic types:

• Completely open public access points, essentially permitting any device to access the Internet, as a promotional service. These are common in hotels and restaurants. Free public access points with area-wide coverage are provided by some city councils such as Bristol and Marseille

• Open access points that require you to accept some policy in a browser before letting you connect to the Internet. That is, if you only want to read email with POP3 or some other protocol, you have to start a web browser and access a web page (being redirected to their policy-agreement page instead). This is a problem for hardware Internet phones.

• Community access points. You become a member of a wifi community (usually by donating your own access point) and use the community's access points for free. The most notable wifi community is FON

• Commercial access points. They usually charge a high fee per hour or day and are common in areas where travellers are 'trapped' (airports for example) and in countries with comparatively expensive Internet access (such as Australia)

• Private access points left open by their owners, quite likely not on purpose. In some jurisdictions, using one of these may be illegal under "anti-hacking" laws. Use your discretion and at the very least if using a connection which you suspect is not meant for public use try not to flood their upstream bandwidth with your requests. If in a country with metered bandwidth limits try and keep your usage well under them: don't download music or movies over someone's expensive private connection!

[edit] Lists of wireless accesspoints

• WiFi411 - you can search a distance from city center

• WiFinder

[edit] Accessing email

In many countries it is easier to use email to keep in touch with friends and family back home than it is to call home regularly. Email has advantages over phone calls: it doesn't require you to account for time zone differences before contacting your family, it doesn't cost any more to send e-mail around the world than down the street, and it's possible to contact a lot of people with a single email.

[edit] Webmail

Webmail provides access to your email over a web interface. For most email users this is very convenient, as it means that they can check their email wherever they can get access to a web browser. Webmail interfaces are growing more sophisticated and suitable even for people managing high volumes of email (>50 messages per day).

An increasing number of email providers such as ISPs are setting up webmail interfaces for their users so that they can check their mail on the road. But many people choose to use one of the dedicated webmail providers, many of whom provide a free service. Recommended dedicated webmail providers are:

• Yahoo! Mail - One of the most popular webmail sites, it offers webmail in several languages.
• Gmail - With the more space than any other webmail site (2.5+GB) it is one of the best out there. GMail no longer requires an invintation to sign up.
• Lonely Planet Ekit webmail integrated with phonecard, SMS, Fax targeted at travelers.

A very limited number of web access points will restrict access to sites known to host webmail. Examples include some universities and private businesses who wish to discourage users from checking their personal email during work hours. However, almost all Internet cafes and other access points aimed at the public will allow you to access your webmail: for many of their users, webmail is the reason they are there.

[edit] Shell accounts

A shell account allows you to login to a remote server's command line interface and use a text mail client (such as Pine or Mutt) which runs on the remote server. The advantage of a shell account, if you happen to have one, is that it is a alternative way to access email some your existing addresses that don't have webmail set up. If you have shell access you may not have to set up a special travelling webmail account and maintain two sets of inboxes. Another advantage is its usefulness with very slow Internet connections, an important feature when using a cell phone as a computer modem. It's uncommon for ISPs to provide shell access to your mail account, but if you buy web and/or email hosting through a dedicated provider, you are more likely to have shell access.

There are two normal ways to access a shell account:

• telnet: an unencrypted, uncompressed connection, usually over port 23
• ssh: an encrypted and optionally compressed connection, usually over port 22

Few Internet cafes will have port 22 blocked. Most use Microsoft Windows, so Putty is probably the easiest ssh client to use, assuming the computer's security will permit you to install it. Mac OS X workstations have the standard OpenSSH client available through the Terminal app. Depending on where you are, you may find the bandwidth horribly slow, making ssh almost unusable. Putty has an option to compress the connection, which may improve matters a little.

[edit] Firewalls and content filters

Some Internet cafes and Internet providers may restrict access to certain websites based on content. Common restricted content includes: sexual content, content unsuitable for children, commercial competitors and political content of certain types. The blocks can be wide-ranging, blocking for example, any site that includes the word "breast". They may also block access to certain types of traffic (for example, HTTP/web, POP or IMAP, SSH).

[edit] Political firewalls

Several countries (for example China) have a policy of blocking access to different areas of the 'net at a country level. The description below is based on China's access policy, but applies to several other countries (namely Cuba, Myanmar, Syria, South Korea, North Korea, Iran, Turkmenistan(?), ...)

Typically the following sites may be blocked: human-rights NGOs' sites; opposition sites; universities; news outlets (BBC, CNN, etc); blogging / discussion forums; webmail; search engines; and proxy servers. Often they will duplicate the sites that have been blocked but (not so) subtly modify the content.

[edit] Getting access

In general, if using someone else's connection you will need to be careful about evading their filters. Doing so will almost certainly end your contract to use it if you're discovered evading a firewall through a connection you're paying for, and might upset someone even if you aren't. In some areas evading firewalls may be a criminal offence; this even applies in some Western countries when evading content filters aimed at blocking pornographic content.

[edit] Web access

The most common way to avoid blocks on certain websites is to connect to a proxy server and have that proxy server connect to the blocked site for you. However, the organisations doing the blocking know this, and regularly block access to the proxy servers themselves. www.publicproxyservers.com is a list of public anonymous (or transparent) proxy servers, these can come and go quite rapidly however, and this list may not be up to date. If you are likely to need access to sites which are commonly blocked at your destination, it is most likely that you will be able to get access through an unadvertised proxy server you set up yourself or have a friend set up for you. There is a risk if you search for too many 'naughty' keywords (like 'counter revolution') you'll get the proxy taken down or blocked.

Some gateways (for example, that in China) are much more sophisticated than this: even when using a proxy server many sites are not accessible. The only work around that is reliable is to use an ssh tunnel to connect to a proxy server outside the country via an ssh server, from a local port (eg 4321), then to connect to the proxy server like that.

If you're interested in seeing what might be blocked from inside the firewalls before you leave, it is sometimes possible to surf through a proxy server in the country you're going to be going to.

[edit] Other access

If you're interested in getting access to other kinds of traffic, there are a few possibilities:

• if you control the server to which you want to connect, you can have your processes listen on ports that are unlikely to be blocked. A common technique is to have an SSH daemon listening on port 443, the secure HTTPS port, which is rarely blocked. This must be set up before going to the location with blocks on usual connections.

• if you have SSH access to a third server, connect via SSH to that server, and utilise SSH port forwarding to open up a tunnel connection to the target server

This is a usable article. It touches on all the major areas of the topic. An adventurous person could use this article, but please plunge forward and help it grow!