The first step is to establish a connection to any Skywave WiFi network signal. Once connected, try to surf the Internet. Instead of going to your home page, you will be redirected to Skywave's "Splash" page. You will want to click on the Register button on the left, fill in the form, including the service plan of your choice and credit card information. Once you have established an account with us, you can use this account (email/password) any time you find yourself at a Skywave splash page, across our entire network (visit http://www.skywavebroadband.net/hotspots.php for more information).

Feel free to try any of our "Free" links in the OpenSky section of our web site to judge your network connectivity and speed (click on the top of the main banner). If you feel that the connection speed is good, you can test drive an account for 20 minutes by filling out our survey (main page, left side) or following the instructions in "Use the Network" to sign up for a longer duration.

You should always choose the network that works the best. Unfortunately that might take some experimentation. Wireless Client software often shows many networks with great signals (5 bars, etc.) when they are not usable or sub-par. Try out the networks in your area using our free OpenSKy links and then use the one that works best (be sure to make it first on your list of preferred networks or you may find you connection jumping to another network when you don't want it to).
Always remember to run a "Repair" (Windows: right-click network icon, choose "Repair") on your interface when changing networks so you can get a new IP address (and clear the old information).

To test the best location of the Skywave WiFi Network, first choose an SSID that show a good signal strength (3 or more bars usually). Second, open a DOS window by clicking on "Start"->"Run" and typing "cmd" (no quotes).
When the window comes up, type in: ping -t 66.180.128.1 and move your laptop around until you get a good response time. A good response will be "Time 100ms" or less.

Example:

C:\Documents and Settings>ping -t 66.180.128.1

Pinging 66.180.128.1 with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 66.180.128.1: bytes=32 time=15ms TTL=54
Reply from 66.180.128.1: bytes=32 time=13ms TTL=54
Reply from 66.180.128.1: bytes=32 time=13ms TTL=54
Reply from 66.180.128.1: bytes=32 time=14ms TTL=54
Reply from 66.180.128.1: bytes=32 time=14ms TTL=54
Reply from 66.180.128.1: bytes=32 time=17ms TTL=54
Reply from 66.180.128.1: bytes=32 time=34ms TTL=54

Ping statistics for 66.180.128.1:
Packets: Sent = 7, Received = 7, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 13ms, Maximum = 34ms, Average = 17ms

Open a DOS Window by clicking on "Start"->"Run" then typing "cmd"(no quotes).
When the window opens type: ipconfig /all
This will tell you the status of every network adapter on your laptop. Locate your wireless card (by the manufacturers name) and see if you have an address in the 192.168.x.x range or 10.1.x.x range. Without this address, you cannot access the network.

The gateway checks periodically for activity on your connection. If it does not see any for 30 minutes, it will close the firewall. This is done to free up ip addresses and to prevent someone spoofing your ip and mac address for a free ride.

Many outside factors can interfere with Data Transfer on wireless networks (especially in a vertical town like Waikiki). So, even if the radio signal is strong, there may be too much noise to use it. Think of it like static on a phone call, you are connected but you can't have a conversation.
Also, wireless communication is a 2-way street. SkyWave transmitters are a slightly higher power than most laptops. You my be able to receive our signal but be just too far away to send back (our antennas have very high receive sensetivity but the signal may degrade too much by the time it gets there)

The Gateways work on redirection technology. You should not bookmark the login page as it will try to use a stale Session Token and will also not set a redirection variable (to send your browser to after a successful login). The long and short of this is, do not change anything on your computer. Just opening your browser (after connecting to the network and getting an ip address) will send you to the login page and from there to your home page on the Internet (after login).

In a nutshell, yes. Tinting, wire-mesh, reflective surfaces, and metal doping in windows all kill RF signals. If you can open the window, you can sit by it and probably get on. If you can't, then you will probably not get enough solid signal to move data.

If you are using Windows XP, in your wireless network management window, click on the text link that says "change the order of preferred networks." Find the network that is causing the difficulties and REMOVE from you list of preferred networks.

Try typing "P.O." instead of "PO".

Be sure to use the billing address of your credit card and not your hotel or rental. This is used to authenticate your charge.

Most ISP's these days block mail at their Mail Server that was sent from an "Untrusted" network (one that is not theirs).
You might be able to get around this using the secure ports and username/password authentication or by using a web mail client (over https naturally).
This is always a good idea at a public hotspot anyway, as mail sent over regular port 25 is in plain text and anyone can "sniff" it and read it easily.

For your security and ours, we don't allow email sent over unsecured channels. Due to abuse by spammers and the possibility of identity theft, we have shut down port 25.

You can still send email in many secure and recommended ways:

1) Use your companies of ISP's secure ports to the email server which are encrypted (usually port 465 is secure SMTP)

2) Most email providers have a web client now that you can run over HTTPS. This is securely encrypted with SSL.

3) You can use a third party service like Mail2Web (www.mail2web.com) to tunnel your email through port 443 (be sure to use the SSL connection!)

We are sorry for the inconvenience but this is really for the best as the the results of not being secure can be very damaging.

If you must send unsecured email, you have no other choice, call 440-8758 and special arrangement may be made. This will be heavily monitored, so your privacy, for our own good, will be compromised.

The Signal Strength Indicator shows how strong your signal is back to our Access Point much in the same way that your "Bars" show the strength of the signal from our Access Point to your Laptop.

Since we use High-Powered cards and large, external antennas, your laptop might "see" our Access Point just fine (4-5 Bars) but the antenna on your wireless card may not be strong enough to talk back to the AP.

You can now use the Signal Strength Indicator to see how good the signal is from your laptop to the AP. You can try it on any AP in the area and, since it refreshes every 3 seconds, you can watch it as you move about the room to find the best spot. This is known as a "site-survey".

The recommendations of the Signal Strength Indicator are a bit generic along round numbers. Since different wireless cards have different receive and transmit capabilities, these are just recommendations. You might get it to work just fine in the "Fair" category but proceed knowing that it has a low signal to noise margin.

0 to -69 = Great. Use it
-70 to -79 = Good, should be ok
-80 to -89 = fair. might have issues
-90 and up = Bad. Not recommended

Make sure to notice that these are negative numbers, so the bigger the number, the worse the signal is.

You need to have Java installed to run the test. IE no longer installs Java by default having lost a lawsuit to Sun Microsystems.

Install Java from Sun if you want to use this or download a superior (standards-compliant) browser like Firefox.