Free Public WiFi was a phenomenon that emerged in the mid-2000s when WiFi was becoming more popular. It was a network name that appeared almost everywhere, but it did not offer internet access. It was essentially useless, falling somewhere between a joke, a scam, and an accident of history. The author highlights that WiFi networks were a hot topic in the 2000s, with people always searching for a free WiFi network. The author also discusses the complexities of WiFi protocols and the poor quality of wireless configuration utilities provided by hardware vendors. The article concludes that Free Public WiFi eventually disappeared with the introduction of new WLAN frameworks in Windows XP Service Pack 3.
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