Seth's House

One perk (some see it that way?) of living in New Jersey, is that I can take part in some of the new online casinos that have sprung up.  Getting signed up was a breeze, but, actually playing for real money was a real pain in the ass for me.

My home computer is a desktop, wired into the home network, in my basement.  Wireless signals from surrounding houses have no chance of being received down there. When I went to play for the first time, I was disappointed that the geolocation software for Borgata and Tropicana could not figure out that I was in New Jersey — even after enabling it on my mobile phone.   Their support was, for the most part, useless. They told me to call Comcast and get them to fix the location data on my IP address (fat chance of that!)

After talking with support people from the Tropicana and Borgata, it came out that the geolocation software uses data from Google Location data. Google Location data (when enabled on your phone) sends Google data about nearby wireless networks, along with cell tower location.   Support teams said I was not in range of enough Wireless networks to get a good fix… which is a problem that most people who live in standalone houses will have.

How to get around it?

My Router runs TomatoUSB.  I added 3 extra virtual SSID’s to the router, with ridiculously long WPA passwords that I’ll never use.  I fired up Google Maps on my phone, turned off location data, then turned it back on..  waited 24-48 hours, and now the geolocation software works, and I can play online.

If you have similar problems, fire up some extra wireless SSID’s in your house, then get that data to Google, somehow (Google Maps + location data enabled on phone is the easiest).