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Hotspots are venues that offer Wi-Fi access. The public can use a laptop, WiFi phone, or other suitable portable device to access the Internet. Of the estimated 150 million laptops, 14 million PDAs, and other emerging Wi-Fi devices sold per year for the last few years, most include the Wi-Fi feature. For venues that have broadband service, offering wireless access is as simple as purchasing one AP and connecting the AP with the gateway box. Hotspots are often found at restaurants, train stations, airports, libraries, coffee shops, bookstores, fuel stations, department stores, supermarkets and other public places.

If you already have several computers hooked together on an Ethernet network and want to add a wireless hotspot to the mix, you can purchase a Wireless Access Point and plug it into the Ethernet network.

If you are setting up a network in your home for the first time, or if you are upgrading, you can buy a Wireless Access Point Router. This is a single box that contains: 1) a port to connect to your cable modem or DSL modem 2) a router 3) an Ethernet hub 4) a firewall 5) a wireless access point You can connect the computers in your home to this box either with traditional Ethernet cables or with wireless cards.

Regardless of which setup you use, once you turn your Wireless Access Point on, you will have a WiFi hotspot in your place. this hotspot will provide coverage for about 100 feet (30.5 meters) in all directions, although walls and floors do cut down on the range.

Even so, you should get good coverage throughout. For a large place, you can buy inexpensive signal boosters to increase the range of the Hotspot.

Most wireless access points come with default values built-in. Once you plug them in, they start working with these default values. However, you may want to change things. You normally get to set three things on your access point. 1. The SSID -- Service Set IDentifier is a sequence of charactersthat uniquely names a WLAN. It will normally default to the manufacturer's name (e.g. "Linksys" or "Netgear"). You can set it to any word or phrase you like. 2. The channel – the radio link used by access point/router to communicate to wireless devices.

Normally it will default to channel 6. However, if a nearby neighbor is also using an access point and it is set to channel 6, there can be interference. Choose any other channel between 1 and 11. 3. The WEP key -- The default is to disable WEP. If you want to turn it on, you have to enter a WEP key and turn on 128-bit encryption. WEP can be in text format. Access points come with simple instructions for changing these three values. Normally you do it with a Web browser. Once it is configured properly, you can use your new hotspot to access the Internet Wireless devices can also communicate directly with each other, i.e., it is not required that they communicate with an access point first. Ad Hoc connections can be used to share information directly between devices. This mode is also useful for establishing a network where wireless infrastructure does not exist. Some uses, Synchronize data between devices Retrieve multimedia files from one device and “play” them on another device. Print from a computer to a printer without wires. There are many applications of ad hoc networking in the military and in specialized networks.