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if you care about it, put your own cable modem/router out there.

I'd say that everyone has a good reason use their own modem/router.

• If you don't want to share, you need to disable the ISP's paid wireless.
• If you do want to share, you should run an OpenWireless or Hyperboria node instead of allowing the ISP to profit at your expense.

So if you hate the way the cellular oligopolists are fucking with us, you can stick it to them by running an openwireless.org wifi hotspot.

Been looking for another router for almost a year now, and still haven't been convinced of a better one than my WRT54GL

The WRT54GL is a relic of an ancient time. Most importantly, it's a relic of a time without IPv4 address exhaustion, and without realistic demonstrations of DNS cache poisoning.

DD-WRT has support for 6in4 and 6to4, but not as much support for IPv6 over PPPoE or DHCP-PD or Sixxs.net AYIYA. I prefer OpenWRT, but I also prefer plain-text configuration via the command line, so I'm weird. OpenWRT officially dropped support for the WRT54GL in the last stable release, 12.09 from April 2013, and it didn't really work right in 10.03, either.

I've been generally pleased with routers based on the Atheros AR7161, but those are obsolete (only N300 and N600), and not that easy to find. Probably the most famous from that line is the Netgear WNDR3800, the target model for CeroWRT and the EFF Open Wireless Router. 680MHz MIPS24K, 16MB of flash, and 128MB of RAM are so luxurious after the 200MHz BMIPS3300, 16MB RAM, 4MB flash of the WRT54GL.

The FAQ and info on https://openwireless.org/ doesn't seem to address security and privacy from the "guest user" point of view. They do have a link at the top "Using a network named "openwireless.org"? Check out important information about this network." which provides information for a guest user - but only mentions about being considerate and not abusing the service.

How does a user establish trust with each Open Wireless access point in order to determine it is not a rogue/fake AP? How are potential guest users being educated, besides a mention of HTTPS Everywhere? (Which most potential guest users don't really understand, and can also easily be manipulated into overriding SSL security warnings, such as one that may come up if the guest is being routed through a mitm SSL proxy.)

If this does become more widespread, I could definitely see a lot of money to be made for "Open Wireless VPN proxy" subscription services. But if the point is to "help change the way people and businesses think about Internet service" then shouldn't the guest user security issues be in the forefront with at least as much important as the host?

Security. Properly configured, a router with public-access Wi-Fi should not represent a security risk for those on the router's private and secure network. The technical reasons for this are a bit complicated; read an Open Wireless Movement explanation at openwireless.org.

Service degradation. Those using the slower public portion of a home router typically won't degrade performance on the faster private side. Future routers would speed up public access when the private side isn't being used and give the private network priority if required.

Legal liability. Those who fear being blamed for misuse of their public Wi-Fi signals are said to be protected under a "safe harbor" doctrine akin to that protecting Internet service providers. In other words, they're likely not liable for the mischief of porn purveyors or music pirates.

Freeloading. Fear of freeloaders is misplaced, the Open Wireless Movement believes. "Sharing capacity helps everyone," it says. "If you've ever been without Internet access and needed to check an email, you will remember how useful open networks can be in a pinch."

Do you even know about the networking terms you throw out there? Not all networks even have mDNS and NMB. All of this can be captured mostly by accident (as it was indicated), by merely capturing OPEN TRAFFIC ON AN UNSECURED NETWORK for seconds. MAC addresses are not significant. You can get any router's mac address without any form of spoofing. Oh no! a mac address! what shall we do! People do this shit all the time. Please show proof of something substantial being gained, because all of that is no more significant than having a house address, or wardriving. oh evil, evil wardriving, right? *facepalm*. It doesn't even remotely match the equivalent of access to any devices on the network, which was left open by the individual.

And guess what? that individual with the unsecured network? they should be absolutely free to continue to put their network out without encryption, because open networks are a gigantic benefit to society, and the ones people put out tend to be better than starbucks or any other crappy cafe's wifi puts out.

Again, where's your link of this supposed deadly information they dared to get? Or of them somehow getting more than 5 seconds of traffic as the thing captured data on an open wifi point? Please, go ahead and link it. You are full of shit man, 100% here. What google did was accidental and they turned it off, and the fact that they acknowledged it and weren't even given a slap on the wristis why this is a much, much smaller deal than you or mcgrew make it out to be.

We can start now: https://openwireless.org/