know zero about wifi, need to know more -

[ted leslie]

I am taking delivery of a nokia 9300i cell phone soon,
and I want to use it in wifi mode in the house and around Toronto if there is coverage in the
area i happen to be in.
I nave never used wifi, and have some, probably really basic questions about it.

The nokia 9300i claims to have no manual set-up of wifi mode, just automatic ...
I can kinda guess what that means, but not exactly ...
When you are in a coffee shop that has wifi ... is it protect (or lack of it) just
by the simple proximity which with one can get the connection, or is there some kind of
authentication needed, and info from the provider.
With this talk of companies blanketing toronto with wifi, as a pay service, 
what do you obtain to get on their wifi network, and will any wifi enabled device be able to connect,
again there seems to be this issue of wifi authentication that i don't know about.

Now for the use in home, i'd want to get a wifi router.
Does any wifi router, provided the protocol is matched, work, or do some have authenication issues,
(or lack of)?
Given that the typical wireless home router has plenty of juice for services above what a wifi
pda/phone would need, and given the device itself is the limiting factor on distance issues,
does it make much sence to go after a super high quality (claim to have long range) wifi wireless
router?

anyone with any story/advice regarding hook up of wifi devices phone/pda at home, 
what they used, etc, would be appreciated, and because i also have a sharp linux pda,
and may put some linux computers in the house on wireless, it would be nice to know which 
devices are maximum linux friendly. With a bit of luck too nokia will abandon the symbian OS
on the next generations of nokia 9300 type phones and put in linux.

also does anyone have any experience with a EDGE rogers data feed on their phone and 
can comment about the real effective bandwidth, i know they say 20KB/s, but i am 
reading alot about 10KB max. and then real might be somewhat less, making it rather
"old modem'ish" as apposed to the claims the cell companies make about EDGE.
However, i am primarily getting it for its ssh/vnc ability to manage the data center
at those times i am out of touch with internet, and in a pinch, even a old 33.3K dial up speed
can do what i need, but would be interesting to see if anyone is actaully getting 20KB/s that
is being claimed for EDGE, because that would rock if so! 

-tl
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