How Do I Get Free Wifi On My Android Phone

The ultimate guide to Wifi and Android

Everyone with a smartphone knows about Wifi. If nothing else, you know it's what happens when you get your AT&T phone too close to a Starbucks and your Cyberspace gets faster (or slower) considering you were automagically switched from a cell tower connection to a closer — but lower-powered — wireless connection that'south made available for the public.

Of form, there is a lot going on to make that connection happen. While we're not going to dig into anything too technical similar the software stack or the radio interface hardware, we are going to talk about the things you and I, as users, should know.

Don't worry, this'll be fun!

What is Wifi?

Wifi, or WIFI, or Wi-Fi, or even WiFi refers to any local access wireless network that is based on the IEEE (Constitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) 802.eleven standards. Devices on a Wifi network exchange data through the airwaves using either a two.four GHz Ultra high frequency or v GHz Super high frequency (I'm not making these names upwards!) connexion.

A typical Wifi setup consists of an Internet gateway (normally a modem) and an access signal. The modem is connected to the Net, and the access betoken has a defended connection to the modem. What the access point tin can do (at dwelling, your router is your access signal) is filter the things you send and receive from the Cyberspace and distribute them wirelessly to the device that made the asking.

There is a lot of complicated software at work on your access point, and even the administration interface can be a fleck disruptive. All we actually demand to know is that a properly setup WLAN (Wireless Local Expanse Network) lets us connect our telephone or tablet or Chromebook to the Internet through a Wifi connection. Go out the complicated stuff to nerds with lots of messages after their proper name.

Why do I see so many bachelor Wifi connections on my phone?

When y'all open the Wifi settings on your phone, y'all see a list of every admission point y'all've ever connected to, as well equally every access point in range that broadcasts its presence. This can be a bit confusing considering that little hamburger articulation you connected to in Jacksonville will be listed, but you lot're not likely going to be able to connect if you're in Pittsburgh. It gets even more confusing when access points are named ATT488 instead of "AT&T Wifi on First St."

If you give your phone a few seconds, or scroll downwards and tell information technology to search over again if you're the impatient type, this view will let you know which access points are in range (and how strong the signal is based on the little icon) and which ones you have saved just are out of range. You're able to endeavour and connect to whatever admission point that is in range. You lot can also delete old connections that you'll never want to use once more.

Annotation that this may not be every access point in range. When you setup a Wifi network you're able to make up one's mind if the proper name is broadcast and visible or not. If the SSID (don't worry, we're going to comprehend all those acronyms downwards the page a bit) is not circulate, it won't show up in your list and you'll take to setup a connection manually.

Basic Wifi terminology (what do all those messages and numbers mean?)

Like annihilation that can become a little technical, when you're discussing Wifi networks you're going to encounter a lot of letters that stand for something. People that develop this sort of thing hate typing long things similar Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers so they shorten information technology to IEEE. Many of them are also a wee bit sadistic and like to mess with people. When you add those 2 things together, yous'll finish up with a long list of abbreviations and acronyms that normal folks like us demand to await up so nosotros know what the hell is going on. Hither'southward a short listing of the letters and numbers y'all're likely to encounter, and what they mean.

802.eleven a/b/thou/n/ac — 802.11 refers to the IEEE 802.11 specifications for wireless networking on the 2.4 GHz, 3.six GHz, 5 GHz and lx GHz frequencies. Any device that's Wifi certified will follow these standards. The alphabetic character you lot see afterward stands for a specific protocol that determines things like range and speed. By and large speaking (that means every bit far we you, the layman is concerned), the "higher" the alphabetic character, the meliorate the potential range and speed is. If y'all've got a newer telephone, information technology probably supports at least through 802.xi n, and possible 802.11 air-conditioning. Most modern access points will support them, too.
Wifi — A trademarked (really, it's trademarked) term for a piece of wireless LAN equipment that supports the IEEE 802.11 specification. It's a play on Hi-Fi, a term that stands for loftier allegiance and was popular for audio systems hundreds of years ago when Phil and I were teenagers. If you see the word Wifi or WiFi or Wi-Fi on something, that means it meets the standards and will work with other equipment that bears the Wifi trademarked name. Believe it or not, there are counterfeits out at that place that don't meet things like manual power requirements. And you can buy dwelling-made devices that pause a butt-load of laws to extend Wifi way down the street. I might have one. None of these are going to be Wifi certified.
Admission signal — an admission indicate (when talking about Wifi) is a device that allows other Wifi devices to connect to a wireless network. It tin can be a stand lone device, or information technology tin can be arranged into one piece of equipment with a router, or even have a modem added to it similar the one you may have from your cablevision company.
SSID — The service ready identifier. It's a human-readable string that tin be upwardly to 32 bytes long, and used as the network name you see in the list of Wifi access points on your phone.
MAC address — Short for Media Admission Control address, the MAC address is a unique identifier assigned to any networking equipment past the manufacturer. On your phone, that means it's stored in the hardware for the Wifi radio itself. While a MAC address is assigned to the hardware and permanent, it's easy to spoof through software. But we're non going to tell you how to do that, because if you have a legitimate need you already know how or who to inquire.
WPS — Wifi Protected Setup is a security standard designed to help home users have a secure wireless network without needing to adjust everything by paw. You lot need equipment that is compatible, and chances are your Android phone or tablet will piece of work fine.
Wifi Direct — A means of getting one Android device to talk to some other using Wifi, but avoiding having to go through an Access Point.

Secured Wifi vs. unsecured Wifi

No, not insecure which suggests a lack of proper security, only unsecured — a wide open up network that anyone can connect to without any passwords or setup.

When you connect to Wifi at home or at work, or even at a friend's business firm, chances are y'all need to know the password you lot're asked for the very first time you connect from your Android. That's considering you lot are on a secured Wifi network. On the flip side, when you're walking down the street and tin can connect (or get continued automatically) to a Wifi network you take never used before, you lot're using an unsecured network. While the merits of securing your own Wifi network at home are all-time left for some other article, know that having an unsecured Wifi network means I can sit outside your house and use your Internet to exercise things that aren't exactly legal. Or Google will connect when a Street View car drives by and polls the local AP's for location information.

Y'all probably desire to secure your Wifi network at home. If y'all need help setting up your router, jump into the forums and ask. Even though it's not Android-specific, anybody hither at AC wants you to be safe on the Cyberspace.

That means you prepare an encrypted password on your access point, and any and every device that wants to connect has to enter the aforementioned countersign for admission. The security algorithm used for these connections may be WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy), WPA (Wifi Protected Admission) or WPA2 (a 2nd generation and more secure version of WPA). Similar everything else in the IEEE 802.11 specifications, security algorithms get revamped and improved. When security vulnerabilities were found in the WEP protocol, WPA was designed equally a quick patch that all devices able to apply WEP could as well utilize. WPA2 came afterward, and is more secure, but some very old equipment may not support it.

Your phone supports WPA2 (likewise every bit older standards and maybe fifty-fifty things like 802.1xEAP), and that's the suggested way to secure any Wifi network. If you're setting up a Wifi network manually, you'll want to dig a little deeper into all the various security protocols and algorithms available, but generally using WPA2 with a strong AES encrypted key is accepted equally condom.

What about WPS?

WPS stands for Wifi Protected Setup. The goal of WPS is to let users who don't know a lot virtually wireless security to allow their hardware set things up automatically. When it works, it'south very easy and as secure every bit doing information technology by hand. The issue is that different manufacturers have different means of initiating WPS, and information technology's a little clunky.

There are four ways to apply WPS to add a device to a network — the push-button method, the Pivot method, the NFC method and the USB method. NFC and USB are optional ways to set things up, and so your Wifi certified device may not support 1 or both. Android devices typically use the Button Push or PIN method, but in theory could back up NFC and USB equally well.

To use WPS, y'all demand it enabled on the router you want to connect to. Nearly Android users volition and then push a button on their router, then choose WPS Push button Button from the menu if the Wifi settings. Alternatively, you can connect to your routers control console interface and ues the Pivot method. Do note that using a WPS Pivot makes your network vulnerable to a very specific and very difficult to perform animate being-force attack. If you have access, and know how, disabling PIN access for WPS is a adept idea.

Of course, using WPS makes your network vulnerable to any physical intrusion. If I tin can get into your living room, I can push the button on your router or look at the network properties on a Windows computer and get the passphrase. (Never mind the other obvious implications.) And so don't let anyone like me into your living room, g'kay?

If you need to connect to a wireless network that doesn't broadcast it'due south SSID or requires special settings you will need to bring up the window to manually add a connection. There's naught scary or complicated in here, but y'all will need to know a few things about the network you're going to connect to. The person in charge of administering the network will have all the answers you demand.

To connect to a SSID that's subconscious, y'all just enter the proper noun of the network and cull the type of security information technology'southward using. The rest goes the same was equally connecting to a network that's not subconscious.

Under the advanced options setting (check the box and you'll encounter them) you have two new options: Proxy settings and IP settings. On Android, yous will demand to know the Proxy Hostname and port to setup a connectedness that uses ane. You can get that information from whoever setup the network. This merely tells whatever web browser you lot're using to connect to the Internet through a dedicated space that can do things like cake certain sites, or cache data that doesn't often go updated.

The IP settings are a little more complicated, just again the person who prepare upwardly the network has all the answers y'all demand to set a static IP.

The router you're connecting to may accept a DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) server that assigns all the required network info automatically. If it doesn't, you'll need to enter the information by hand.

While you'll rarely ever need to ready your IP address settings by mitt, in that location's nothing wrong with knowing what you're seeing here. Allow'southward pause it downwardly.

IP accost — This is the IP (Net Protocol) address you want your Android to utilize. Information technology has to be in the right network range (private IPv4 networks typically use 10.0.0.X, 172.sixteen.0.X, or 192.168.X.X) and apply an available number. Recollect — your network admin will tell you what to utilize here. Follow his or her instructions or you're not going to have a good time.
Gateway — This is the IP address of a network node that acts can act equally a router or proxy server both on the internal portion of the network as well as connecting it to the Net-at-large. When you type http://www.androidcentral.com into your browser, past default the request goes to the gateway which then directs the IP traffic so that Lloyd appears in your browseer window. Over again, your network admin will give you this address, and if you don't enter it correctly you lot're not going to be able to do much of anything.
Network prefix length — This is the aforementioned thing as the subnet mask — a way to make sure all devices on the network have the same network prefix. A router can exist used to bridge 2 subnets together, but that sort of affair is a bit more avant-garde that what we're going to cover here. For our purposes, unless your network admin tells you something unlike, the Network prefix length field should be 24, which equals a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0.
DNS — Y'all'll probably encounter ii entries hither, labeled 1 and ii. DNS is the Internet'due south telephone book. DNS servers translate a URL that you and I can read, into an IP accost that computers tin can read more easily. At that place are different options you tin can use hither if you like. Google DNS is one, and OpenDNS is another. If you don't know what those are, just use the numbers your network admin gives you.

Once you take everything filled in right, printing the connect button and you'll sign in and be using that Wifi network.

This is one of those things that's going to vary from device to device. Nosotros'll take a wait at the settings and options you're most probable to see here, and break them down and so we all know what they mean.

Wifi notifications — If you want to see a notification telling you there is a Wifi network available (not a crazy idea with information caps in identify), you desire this enabled.
Cyberspace availability — A setting using these words usually means that the Wifi network must have access to the Internet before your Android volition connect to it. If this is disabled, you can connect to Wifi networks that do not have an active Internet connection, like ones provided past Comcast for example. I'm kidding. Put those Xfinity pitchforks abroad.
List sorting — Here you can choose to see your Wifi network listing past availability and signal forcefulness or alphabetically. Choose signal strength.
Keep Wifi on when screen is off — This does exactly what information technology says it does, but the of import part is knowing why y'all would desire information technology enabled or disabled. If you lot set Wifi to shut off when the screen goes off, you'll have to use the cellular connection for any syncing or push button messages. This uses more battery than Wifi. Normally, you desire to keep Wifi on hither. If you have a reason to close Wifi down when your phone is idle, this is where you practice information technology.
Allow Wifi scanning — This lets location services scan for active wireless access points to determine location. Doing then can become your position quicker and draws less power than using GPS solitary, but for the sake of privacy you tin disable information technology here.
Avoid poor connections — This switches you off of a Wifi network once the signal gets very weak. It will either connect you to some other Wifi network or back to 3G / 4G when it stops the connection. Ane drawback is that networks with a weak indicate won't appear in your list of available networks.
Battery saving while on Wifi — This setting really works! What information technology does is slow downwardly or finish your wireless radio'due south network scanning. When your telephone actively scans for available connections, it uses more power. The ability to alter this setting is something that custom ROM builders have done since the G1, but now most vendors include it right in the avant-garde menu settings. If yous disabled Wifi scanning for location, yous might also enable this and maximize every milliampere from your battery.
Your MAC address and IP accost — The MAC address of your Wifi radio is built into the hardware (though it's possible to modify what'due south reported via software), and you may need information technology for things like setting a reserved IP address in a DHCP server. That's where you'll find it. Likewise for your IP address — if you need to know information technology, this is a handy place to find it. Normally, you'll never need to know either of these and then there's no need to write anything down or try to memorize it.

Your phone may have other options that are easy to understand, or the diction may be a picayune different that what we used here. But on most Androids, this is all the information y'all'll demand when things get advanced.

Remember, this isn't meant to exist form material for the TCP/IP portion of the MCSE test. This is just a basic explanation of everything you're likely to encounter at one fourth dimension or another while using Wifi on your Android.

While most of the time you can just enter a password and go exercise Net things, it's e'er a proficient idea to have a little groundwork most everything you're seeing.

Knowledge is power.

Jerry is an apprentice woodworker and struggling shade tree mechanic. At that place'southward nothing he can't take apart, but many things he can't reassemble. You lot'll discover him writing and speaking his loud stance on Android Central and occasionally on Twitter.