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Cable Companies Saying No to WiFi Sharing
blastedtokyo writes: "According to this story from CNet, Time Warner Cable is going after people who share their wireless connections via NYC Wireless or other public share networks. All we need is a warchalking symbol that conveys 'I'm a lawyer who doesn't have time to figure out how to set up a WEP link.'" This might remind you of a story posted the other day about other ways cable ISPs are trying to lock down their networks.
It was about time that the cable companies started trying to lock down their services. Everyone else is. Music, Radio, Phone, now cable. Go figure
"Greed is for amateurs. Disorder, chaos, anarchy: now that's fun!"
If they are worried about people giving bandwidth away. Instead of chasing off potential customers. Why don't they just charge for bandwidth usage like a lot of them are anywaiz. That way, even if someone gives it away using wireless, they get their money and everyone is somewhat happy.
Plus, it doesn't give them the evil ogre look when they just try to make a profit. (At least not as much so.)
~ kjrose
We're paying them for our connection. Why do they care what we do with it after that? They've already got their money. And if you're like the majority of cable modem subscribers, you're capped anyway, so it's not like you're using more bandwidth than you're paying for, regardless of how many people you have sharing it at any given time.
I don't see the problem. Anyone who allows access to his network, competes with the ISPs at a price they cannot match, while they have to pay the increased costs for the extra band width. It's either this, or paying per byte.
I own a small ISP, so I fully agree that it's within ISPs rights to limit the connection to only those who purchase it for consumer grade services. If you're a business or reseller customer, you can purchase a T1 or higher cost/bandwidth circuit and do whatever you want with it. If a ~$50/month residential user ends up giving his access to the whole neighboorhood, there won't be any money to run the services. We all know free Internet doesn't work. So suck it up and pay for your own service so you can have reliable and decent service from your providers.
I do not understand why they are doing this. Are they losing money? Why? After all, their costumer agreement is either one of:
- Guaranteed bandwidth with a fixed charge
- Pay-per-MB, or
- A mixture of both.
Thus they charge for the traffic on their leased links, regardless of wether it is generated by the costumer or Wi-Fi free-riders.Another point is that they lease the link on a particular costumer, and the costumer can do with the link whatever he pleases. If only the costumer can use the link, then that means his family/friends/flatmates cannot?? I think this is absurd.
In the end, it is up to the costumer himself to regulate traffic on his local network. If he gets charged a lot, or his connection is slow because there are a lot of free-riders taking advantage of his open Wi-Fi system, then he can limit access (by allowing only specific MAC addresses to connect). I think this is easy enough.
Also consider this. When a company hires a leased line/ADSL connection, they do not face a limit on the number of terminals they will have connected to their LAN. What does it matter to the provider? They still get compensated for the increased traffic.
I miss my rubber keyboard.(Homepage)
Customers saying "Fuck Off" to Cable Companies
...someone got a bunch of people together in midtown manhattan who had cordless phones and said, "Hey - I have this great idea, why don't we all share our phone lines with each other? It'll be great, and bring wireless phone service to underserved areas." While I think the practicality of this is a bit daunting, just bear with me for the purpose of the analogy.
I admit that I don't know a whole lot about NYC Wireless, but if I'm getting the gist of things from their page, they essentially want to have everyone possible share their 802.11b bandwidth so the internet can be free and wireless for all. As altruistic as this sounds, I have to agree with the ISPs that this presents all sorts of problems as far as network security and is perfectly within their rights to limit.
Read your service agreement with AT&T Broadband, or Road Runner, or Time Warner, or whoever you go through - chances are there's some clause in your contract that tells you not to subcontract the service out to others. If you want to run your own ISP, or offer wireless broadband to all, that's for you to decide - but they're perfectly within their rights to tell you to go scratch and get your own T1 from another provider.
(I should add that I'm a law student, so my fate is sealed as far as the lawyer jokes go.)
That's my purse! I don't know you! -- Bobby Hill
This kind of stupidity, along with the crackdown on "bandwidth hogs", is all due to the shortsightedness of those creating the subscriber contracts and AUPs. If the ISPs would simply provide clear policy on bandwidth usage and set something that both their customers and they could live with, this kind of witch hunt would be unnecessary. We have cable modem providers banning servers regardless of whether they are public or private (for the subscriber's use only). They are banning 802.11 because they think it might cause a bandwidth problem. They block ports for applications ranging from web servers to P2P networks.
If there is a usage limit, spell it out. If you want more money for more usage, publish a price schedule. But quit targeting early adopters who are just using their connections in new and innovative ways.
These companies should not be free to decide who their customers are. And should not be free to decide how their services are used. They are providing a public utility under a public license.
This is not like buying soap or corn flakes. This is like getting electric service and using it for whatever I damn well like. Their are bandwidth issues to be accounted for for sure, but that is it.
These are just a bunch of greedy bastards that want to charge me hundreds of dollars a month for services that have virtually no real operating costs and could be provided for with a minimum of techical knowledge
But apparently we are going back to the days when Ma Bell takes 30 years to implement touch tone service or call waiting or the next great thing and then pat themselves on the back (and charge us an arm and a leg) for a job well done. Jeez... I can't wait to be charged per email or per authorized web page I load into my next generation cell phone that costs me $300 and displays ads from the phone companies in the middle of my 911 call!
Just a few years ago these same companies were arguing that people shouldn't be able to hook up their own phones to the network because of the risks. Now we see that the risk was that people would take it upon themselves to revolutionize communications first with BBS and then with the inter connected internet and email, thus circumventing the big bells.
People easily forget that the phone company didn't want the internet and it was Congress and the Universities that forced it to open it's lines to data traffic. Let's not let them put in tolls at every corner. Keep the air free.
Your roommates names and yours as well are on the lease for the room. You live there and the broadband is a utility that you all use. The old lady is not on the lease and your paying for a utility does not give her the right to use it. That's where you draw the line.
Now someone will respond and say "what if you built a heating duct from your room to the old lady's room and gave her permission to enjoy heating at your expense?"
The difference here is that heating costs in terms of energy and you are paying a fixed amount per kWh or per m^3 of natural gas. This means that the extra heating nessary to heat the old lady's place will increase your bill. On the other hand, WiFi'ing your broadband and giving the old lady access does not increase your bill.
Bandwidth costs money. More bandwidth costs more money. I think that for higher than average users, bandwidth should be paid per quantity used. In this way, it becomes easy to draw the line as to the 'cost' of sharing because no matter how you look at it, bandwidth costs money and more bandwidth costs more money.
If there is a usage limit, spell it out. If you want more money for more usage, publish a price schedule. But quit targeting early adopters who are just using their connections in new and innovative ways.
... like to hear from people who run ISPs to see if this theory makes any sense.
Perhaps the contract is working as designed.
I hear that a small fraction of customers use most of the bandwidth. Turn that around, and it says a large fraction of customers are paying too much money. If billing went metered, competition might eventually drive down the price of broadband for most users to the point where the provider couldn't make any money.
Just speculation
-- p
..changes.
Until you pay rates on the Kilobyte, the providers have every right whatsoever, both legally and morally, to prevent you from sharing your connection.
Right now, most services in the US allow subscribers to buy an unlimited amount of transmission at a fixed rate. For example, you might pay $50 a month for a 768k downstream connection.
Compare this to the electric company, which charges you variable rates -- you use more electricity, you pay more cash. The electrical companies probably don't care if you run a line to your poor neighbor's shack -- other than the risk associated with you frying yourself and knocking out the power grid, the only thing they have to concern themselves with is collecting additional revenues for the added kWh.
ISPs are the exact opposite. They let you transfer as much data as you want, but they limit how quickly you can send and receive it. With unlimited transmission rates, they get the same amount of money from you if you transfer 1M or 10T in a single month. They make loads of money on the 1M, and stand to lose quite a bit on the 10T. ISP's assume you won't have 768K of traffic 24/7 for an entire billing cycle -- and this is how they make money.
Simple logic: if more people use your connection, more data is transferred. The ISP begins to lose lots of money. Eventually, even at the fixed bandwidth rate you're paying for, the ISP loses. If you're paying per K, M, or G, suddenly, the ISPs won't care HOW many people you share your connection with -- they'll receive money proportional to the amount of data you and your leeches transmit.
This isn't a big deal, and I'm surprised that it's taken the ISPs this long to jump on the issue.
I give a fuck, because you're letting someone else get Internet access, who otherwise would have to pay for it. It's pure math. If it costs $100 to wire a neighborhood, and there are 5 people there with Internet access, they each pay $20. Now, one person mooches off your signal, because you're too fucking incompetent to RTFM and secure your access point. There are now 4 people with service, and the price goes up to $25. That sucks. Scale that for a city instead of a neighborhood, and it still sucks.
Incidentally, they're not saying you can't use 802.11. Go read the article.
They're saying you can't use 802.11 and let your neighbor use it. If you have an access point that authenticates somehow (MAC address, password, whatever), they're not going to know, and they're not going to care. But if you have one that lets your neighbor mooch off your signal, they will care.
I mean, my neighbors are nice and all, but I don't want to use my hard earned cash to pay for Internet access, and then have them mooch off me.
You wouldn't run an extension cord to your neighbor's house and let them mooch off your power, would you? Why would do you do the same for Internet access?
There is no sig, there is only Zuul.
"They waived a banner in our faces and said, 'Look what we're doing!'" said Suzanne Giuliani, a spokeswoman for Time Warner Cable of New York City. The company wasn't actively looking for violators, she said, but only reacted when someone pointed out the NYCwireless Web site to them.
I would hardly consider posting a website as "waiving a banner." When you pay for bandwidth, you should be able to use the bandwidth however you choose.
Lets be real here people...they are pissed because they are not getting those 20 other customers. If it really is an issue of "resources" or "bandwidth," perhaps we sould show them the havoc that REAL bandwidth issues can cause...i dunno, perhaps some geographically distributed (within a single provider's network of course) p2p apps running at full throttle.
Last time i checked, no one was sitting on my front stoop DDoS'in.
Oh yeah...and just as a side note, the only reason that I use WiFi is cuz AT&T in over 4 years hasnt been able to get cable to my building! Jerkoffs.
Intelligence is like four wheel drive, having it just means you'll get stuck in more remote places.
In the past, some people have suggested that bandwidth be treated like a utility service. I think that's a great idea. Just like every residence is supposed to have water and electricity service and acceptable levels of reliability, a data connection should be treated the same way. This data connection can be for conventional telephone service, cable television, internet, and whatever permutations and combinations the future brings us. This way, an infrastructure can be established whereby each connection receives metered bandwidth, and the recipient can do as they please with it because they are paying for the bandwidth they use. The power and water companies don't care if you leave the faucet running all day or every light in your house on all day because you're paying them based on your consumption.
This will also have the effect of forcing the consumers to educate themselves to prevent abuse of their bandwidth. If you have a leaking faucet or toilet, it's in your best interest to fix it. If you have an unsecured WAP, then you'll end up paying for whatever bandwidth leaks out of it.
That sounds like a lot of education. How can that be accomplished? Part of it is available in most public schools. It's called "Home Economics". In addition to learning basic sewing, cooking, cleaning, and typing skills, students should also be presented basic information about home networking. The students can then bring this information home and educate their parents. The other part of the education solution lies with the equipment producers. They should provide more information with their products about setting up a secure home network. This is in addition to products already available like personal firewall software and "Idiot's guide to.." publications.
This could also help with adoption of IPv6. Just like every phone line gets a telephone number, every data line will get an IP address.
BLOCK STRUCTURE breathing apparatus required for special maneuvers!!