A pretty basic understanding of networking fundamentals can help you get around most blocks put in place. For instance, if you're at a cafe or other public Wi-Fi that limits free sessions to 1 hour? Well first of all, fuck that. Second of all, you just need to change your MAC address (yes, this works for PCs) in order to get around the block once you've hit that limit. Just run these commands every hour or half hour or whatever the limit is, and you'll be able to use the internet indefinitely for free.

read more
  1. Open the Terminal application by: searching Spotlight (magnifying glass in top right of your screen) for "Terminal" OR in Finder by going to Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal
  2. (optional) Type the following into the Terminal window that appears: "sudo ifconfig en0 | grep ether", press enter, enter your password, and press enter.
  3. (optional) Note that the line step #2 spits out after pressing enter is your current identifier (called a MAC address), which the WiFi network is using to identify your computer.
  4. To change that identifier, type the following into Terminal: "sudo ifconfig en0 ether 00:11:22:33:44:55" and press enter.
  5. (optional) Run the command from step #2 again to verify that the identifier was changed.
  6. Turn off your WiFi, wait 10 seconds, and then turn it back on and reconnect to the WiFi network.
  7. You should now be able to continue using the Internet without paying!
  8. (optional) Repeat steps #4 and #6 each time your WiFi session expires, but be sure to change a couple numbers at the end of the command in #4 each time.
  9. (optional) Changing your MAC address may cause network issues on some university campuses. To reset everything you've done in the above commands, just reboot your computer.