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hotspot - technical definition

A location where with a sufficiently strong signal from an accessible Wi-Fi wireless LAN (WLAN). Many thousands of public hotspots are available in the United States and many developed countries. Most hotspots are made available through for-profit companies that charge on a daily or monthly basis, although municipalities increasingly deploy free public Wi-Fi networks as a public service. Companies and individuals often unknowingly offer public hotspots by failing to activate Wi-Fi security options provided in 802.11i, more commonly known as Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA). See also 802.11i, Wi-Fi, WLAN, and WPA.

See hotspot in Computer

(1) The geographic boundary covered by a Wi-Fi (802.11) wireless access point. Typically set up for Internet access, anyone entering the hotspot with a Wi-Fi-based laptop, PDA or smartphone can connect to the Internet, providing the access point is configured to advertise its presence (beaconing) and authorization is not necessary. If authorization is required, the user must know the password.

It May Be Hidden
If an access point is invisible by virtue of the fact that it is not advertising its presence (not beaconing), the user must know the name of the network (the SSID) and most likely the password as well (see beaconing and SSID). Following are some of the Web sites that report hotspot locations. Contrast with notspot. See hotspot finder, Wi-Fi, access point, war driving and Muni Wi-Fi.


      www.hotspot-locations.com
      www.jiwire.com
      www.wi-fihotspotlist.com
      www.wififreespot.com
      www.wifinder.com
      www.wi-fi.jiwire.com

(2) An icon or part of a larger image used as a hyperlink to another document or file. When the hotspot is clicked, the linked material is searched for and displayed.

(3) The exact part of an icon or screen pointer that is sensitive to selection. A hotspot may be part of a larger image. For example, an image may have several hotspots, one for each of its components. When clicked, a greater explanation of the component is produced. Where hotspots begin and end determine how easy they are to select.

The screen pointer also has a hotspot, which is a small number of pixels that make contact with the icon's hotspot. For example, the tip of an arrow or finger pointer or the crosspoint of an X-shaped pointer may be the pointer's hotspot.

(4) A network node that is processing at its maximum or is backlogged due to an excessive number of transactions.

(5) The instructions in a program that are executed the most in actual operation. To improve execution performance, the hotspots are the routines that should be refined.

(6) (HotSpot) A Java compiler from Sun that optimizes the parts of the program that are executed most frequently (the hotspots).

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