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EFF Lists Wi-Fi-Friendly ISPs
trifster writes "It appears that *some* ISPs encourage Wi-Fi hotspots from users connections. Cnet News.com has the article here." The list itself is on the EFF's site. Most of the ISPs with policies against wireless NATing seem to turn a blind eye to it most of the time anyhow, though.
I think nerds have a warped sense of what is ones right.
... after they see their name in SlashDot? I would imagine that someone somewhere in most ISPs there is someone on staff that reast SlashDot...
Then again, that could be an advertisable feature... "Join XXX Online, your Wireless Friendly ISP!"*
-Just my thoughts.
RickTheWizKid
*"XXX Online" may be a trademark of America Online, an AOL/Time Warner company. Then again, it may not be. I really can't be bother to look it up.
My provider offers DSL modems with wireless interface. They won't be bothered too much about it.
As long as nobody is spamming or cracking through it of course...
...is a site where people have/want broadband access and a wireless card can register to find other people in their area to share access with (by post/zip code).
It is indeed good news that some ISPs apparently accept reality (since they can't detect NAT on their nodes anyhow).
However - especially here in Europe - many big Telecom companies have paid a huge amount of money (several US-billon $) to the governments to get a UMTS license because they thought it to be the only way of getting mobile Internet access.
Now, when these ISPs actually do not prevent their customers from using their node as a WLAN access point for everybody, these ISPs could quickly become a target of the major telecom companies' law departments. For them, it is much easier to sue ISPs than single "abusers".
And I think, regarding the momentary state of the economy and the possible mis-investment in the UMTS market, this is more than likely to happen.
What do the others think?
Promoting 802.11b hotspots and general connection sharing skews the usage up beyond statistical averages for a single user, but it DOES get more customers - in terms of new connections, or swings from competitors, as well as building community rapport. After all, no one likes being EULA-ed out of getting the best value for money.
I'd be interested in comments from those that have set up a communal wireless area where the connection is priced per byte, rather than a flat rate, where EULAs prevent this sort of thing from maxing out the line.
Aegilops
Certainly not. It is becoming fashinable to link everything about sharing as legitimate. To some extent it is alright, but when people want to interperet freedom as free beer thats when the things go wrong
Moreover if Wi-Fi access is shared, going by the inherent nature of 802.11m you dont really have control over the person who give it to sharing it with other. So you may have exponential growth! This is what the article also warns about.
In reality it is difficult to keep control, so its better to let wireless access inside same home, allowing it would open up a hornets net, and unless the security issued with WiFi are resolved, its better no to open the can
My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
FB : https://www.facebook.com/TanveersPhotography
quoted from the article... "Speakeasy's CEO has gone on the record in support of broadband sharing via wireless, basically saying 'you pay us for the bits you use and are welcome to do whatever you like with them."
Then why shouldn't you be allowed to share the access, since the ISP is getting paid for it anyway.
However if you're just paying a flat rate, then you're taking advantage of that, by letting other people use your access as well. I'd certainly be pissed if someone stole my bandwidth...
In no particular order:
Wi-Fi - IEEE 802.11b compliant products
IEEE - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
EFF - Electronic Frontier Foundation, an organization dedicated to preserving online rights
NAT - Network Address Translation, typically used to provide Internet address for a local area network while using only one external IP address
ISP - Internet Service Provider, an organization who provides access to the Internet
Do you like German cars?
I don't see the logic behind sueing ISPs because the telco's failed to see there was 'another way' and paid a lot for those frequencies.
Besides, voice-communication is still very important, and possibly the killer-app for mobile devices. Since the datacom vendors still haven't created a standard for VoIP, a 802.11b appliance with voice communication enabled has to be
a:) very proprietary and thus will not be likely to be very interoperable.
b:) equipped with a UMTS interface
Besides that, I haven't looked into it recently, but probably the voice quality of VoIP won't be too good either...
So probably mobile appliances will need UMTS too be able to function as a phone.
Are you saying this license excludes any other sort of wireless activity for their downstream users?
In general, it's not that big of a deal.... A friend of mine works at an ISP, and he claims that only a small percentage of people are truly doing this, at least that they can find out. Most people who have wireless in their homes are doing it so they can sit out back by the pool with their laptop while they look at pr0n.
Just my dos centavos.
Insert offensive troll-style sig here. Please mod or respond appropriately.
NAT - Network Address Translation, typically used to provide Internet access for a local area network while using only one external IP address
Perhaps I should stop using CmdrTaco's Spelling and Grammar Checking Agent.
Do you like German cars?
I think it is possible to detect NAT by looking at sequence numbers on the packets going out.
That is probably more advanced than most ISPs can handle (or want to handle) though.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
since they can't detect NAT on their nodes anyhow
I know some cable ISP's *cough*comacast*cough* restrict the access to a single MAC address coming from one IP. If they wanted to sacrifice the resources, they could theoretically detect NAT on thier network.
People who have witty things here blow.
You sure picked a funny place to express those feelings. Next time, try a site not labelled "News for Nerds", if you can muster the brainpower.
yeah, but they don't bother. (thankfully)
we can rebuild this sig. we have the technology
No, AFAIK these licenses do not include some sort of monopoly on mobile internet access.
However, the mentioned ISPs are not among the biggest ISPs (compared to AOL, MSN or the national European telecom companies). The big companies like Deutsche Telekom (in Germany it is the most used ISP) especially prohibit the use of NAT in their EULA (I do not even dare to imagine what they would think of wireless NAT for an entire neighbourhood).
Being pessimistic as I am, I can easily imagine them try to lobby the government to introduce some kind of regulation on these WLAN access-points. After all, frequency rights are still government dependant. And with all this ongoing discussions about tracking people's whereabouts using their mobile phone to detect "possible terrorists", it is IMHO more than likely that this is going to happen
To see if any of the ISPs become a victim of a disgruntled employee, Look out for the marks :-)
You've got mail. Pattern baldness. - Crow
My cable ISP does this too, although they have no problem with using multiple computers through NAT. Because of this, I don't think MAC address is how they would detect NAT. The firewall sends everything out as the same MAC address. In fact, I had to spoof the MAC on the firewall because when I first connected, I used my laptop to test the connection, so it wants that MAC address all the time.
I think there are other ways of detecting NAT, as the firewall has to do some mangling of the headers to help determine where the response should go, but I can't remember the specifics.
GreyPoopon
--
Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
I love my Speakeasy!
(To the tune of "I want my MTV")
erm...as far as I know, a NAT router only has one MAC address. All outgoing traffic goes through the router and thus appears to come from the same MAC. Plus, most good broadband routers will allow you to 'clone' the MAC of a machine on the internal network, so your isp will never even notice. Many isps already restrict access to one MAC *cough*Cogeco*cough* but my router shows the same MAC as my pc.
do not read this line twice.
I'd like to mention that my own provider, RCN, encourages the use of NATs to distribute home cable-modem service to all of the computers in the household. Not only that, but they even offer IP address plans if you want external IP's for the computers. RCN will help fix a problem if there is an issue with the cable modem on an internal network, and even offer a paid home-network setup option that you can add onto a free basic installation to get your home network, Wi-Fi or otherwise, up, running, and secure.
Well, if the ISPs charged customers on what they use, rather than gamble on what they expect them to use then they wouldn't have this problem.
The core problem is false advertising. If every customer took up maximum capacity on their line they'd have something to say about that too -- but why should we be dealt a bad hand just because of their initial dishonesty?
the main problem in Europe is not the ISP, it is the legislation mandating conservation of connection informations. I will not share my wifi access because I'm liable for what anonymous guy do on the net using my access.
Nobody's intending to share their internet connections for free here. Instead, people are going to build citywide (and eventually nationwide) wireless networks.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Since it seems like most of the governmental flames here are generally directed at the American government, I'm sure you'll understand if I take this opportunity to do some good ole'fashioned EuroBashing(tm)!
To bad all I can think to say is "Are you sure you don't live in America?"
Some restaurants get upset even if they do not share, witness Homer Simson.
I'm a partner in the largest WISP in the metro
Omaha area. We do mostly business accounts and
heavy duty telecom type stuff.
We don't have any hotspots yet and I think this
is mostly due to the fact we don't go out a push
for residential type sales, but I wouldn't mind
if a customer wanted to create one.
There isn't an official, written policy yet,
but it'll look something like this:
Hotspots are C00L, but:
1. No skr1pt k1dd13 type stuff allowed. Go use one of the other WISPs in Omaha that doesn't secure their network if this is what you're wanting.
2. go easy on the bandwidth - if you're gonna trade MP3s move to Telechoice cable territory
3. please mail us at hotspot@wispair.net before you install. ISM band is already pretty crufty in some parts of town - we're happy to provide free RF engineering assistance just to keep the noise down to a dull roar.
For ANY broadband connection, your paying for unlimited 24/7 time at a pretty high bandwidth (100-200KB/s). They sell you unlimited access, and that's what they should expect you to do.
All four of these options on how to use one's unlimited access are essentially the same, and users should have the right to do any of them:
1. Stay online 24/7. This may be done by avid file-sharers and/or downloaders. Some Linux people might want to download the latest ISO for every different distro.
2. Though not using the connection 24/7 one's self, allowing other's in one's house-hold to use it when one isn't. If different people work different shifts, this is essentially 24/7 usage.
3. Allow any of your neighbors to come in your home at any time and use your internet connection. Again, essentially the same as 24/7.
4. Set up a WiFi network. Same as #3, but avoids security issues such as one's computer being stolen.
ISP's are selling you unlimited bandwidth, and they should expect you to use it. They advertise 24/7 then whine when people actually do use their connection 24/7. Waaah.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
In fact, it would probably be pretty easy to slap together a few Perl scripts that did that sort of thing automatically, so don't go feeling too safe just yet. ;-)
Free music from Jack Merlot.
Why not set up a WiFi web between various broadband users, even if they use different services. This way, one can potentially get more bandwidth when others are at work or out. It also provides complete annonymity.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
All you probably have to do (this is what I do when I change NICs or PCs) is release the IP address they assigned you, then when you DHCP request another one, it will be assigned to the MAC or that NIC. (In Windows I use ipconfig /release and /renew)
I'll have to read up on NAT. I always thought the router handled what traffic went to which internal address based on the outgoing port number used. That to me would make more sense anyways, since the internal addresses would be entirely invisible.
do not read this line twice.
Timothy, that strikes me as a very irresponsible attitude in matters such as this. Didn't we say that about filesharing a year or two ago? Here at least is a case where we can vote with our patronage to companies that have good policies now, so they'll be around tomorrow when others have stopped turning a blind eye to it.
There are a variety of techniques that make it possible to detect NAT usage, and it looks like certain ISPs (namely Comcast) even have entire departments dedicated to doing just that.
Free music from Jack Merlot.
Likening sharing of bandwidth to either sharing of cable TV or to sharing of electricity is inaccurate.
Consider sharing Cable TV. Once the wire hits my house, it is easy for me to share with my neighbor - I simply put a distribution amp in the line, and he now has signal. There is no additional drain on the cable TV's resources and no (technological) way the cable company can restrict this. As a result, my neighbor has no reason to buy cable, and I have just cost the cable company a customer. In the limit, the cable company has one customer who shares with the rest of the town, and the cable company goes broke.
Now, sharing electricity. The electric company charges by the kW/hr, and aside from a relatively small non-usage related service fee the more joules I use the more I pay. If I run a line over to my neighbor, the electric company WILL make more money since my bill goes up. Thus, from a purely profit driven standpoint they lose nothing by this.
Now, consider Internet connectivity. Few ISPs really charge you based on usage - I have a 384kbps DSL connection, but my ISP probably doesn't plan on me using 100% of that all the time. As such, if I give extra capacity to my neighbor, my neighbor loses any incentive to purchase a connection of his own, and the ISP loses money. Additionally, unlike cable TV, I am increasing the load on my ISP, so the arguement "But I'm not HURTING anybody" really doesn't wash - I am sucking down more bandwidth and loading their system down. But unlike the electric company, it is harder for the ISP to charge on a resources-used basis.
Now, some ISPs actually DO plan on you using 100% of your allotted bandwidth - this is usually the case for business-grade SLAs like those on T-1 type connections. In such a case, you are back to the idea of "You bought it, it's yours" - share all you want, we make money no matter what. In such cases, the ISP is not likely to care about sharing.
In the normal case, however, the ISP is very much going to care, and sharing will be forbidden.
Then, you have the weird cases where the ISP actively promotes wireless sharing because they sell that service too.
www.eFax.com are spammers
A better analogy might be hanging up a POTS telephone outside with a sign that says "unlimited free local calls," because in most cases electricity is metered and local telephone service is not.
(Some might argue that the telephone is different because you can not make a call on a line at the same instant someone else is. The same holds true for a packet switched connection, however, where two packets can not be sent at exactly the same instant. In both cases, your personal ability to use the service is reduced somewhat if you share it with others).
What you are not making clear is that they are selling you a product with certain restrictions that have a purpose. They understand that there are certain people out there that will use their connection 24/7, but they also realize that this is not most people. Their network and business model would not be able to cope if it was. If everyone started Wi-Fing his connection, the bandwidth of the provider would start to be used up more per-customer. The business model of the ISP would no long be viable and either rates would go up for all customers or ISP would have to start charging by the byte or hour. ISPs realize that customers do not want to be charged by the byte (or by the hour since it is a supposed always on connection) so they provide unlimited connections and simply overlook the bandwidth hogs. There is a reason for the restrictions, it allows them to sell their product and not 1) have crappy (read: slow) service 2) go bankrupt 3) raise rates.
1) GREED IS CAPITALISM, THEREFORE GOOD
2) SHARING IS COMMUNISM, THEREOFRE BAD
... it's all communism and must be stopped on every front.
Whether they share Wi-Fi access, files, source, O/S's, information
All this WiFi discussion is showing me just one thing: ISPs will begin to seriously consider to charge data transfer instead of connection speed or time.
Now a days ISPs plans infrastructure as telecom companies, they consider that an average user will use only x% of the bandwidth sold. Considering this they can lower prices and sell more.
With wirelessNAT opened to everybody the average user will consume almost 100% of the bandwidth sold, so the infrastructure avaiable need to be extended, this is cost, and somebody must pay for this.
They want to charge the user for the infrastructure extension, they always do this, but they can't raise prices this way, they need to find sowe other way.
The only way to charge fairly is to charge by data volume instead of connection time or speed. That's why I think that all this WiFi discussion will lead to new charging polices, and I'm pretty sure that this is the future of ISP charging.
-=-=-=-=
I know life isn't fair, but why can't it ever be un-fair in MY favor!?
I am no network expert.
But from my understanding, if you put up a NAT wi-fi router, how could your ISP determine you were sharing? I suppose they could monitor traffic and guess depending on what data was being sent, but come on...
Am I missing something?
~Dalcius
Rome wasn't burnt in a day.
And it rocks, and they let me do whatever the
hell I want with MY bandwidth.
Of course, I am a responsible sysadmin, so they
have no reason not to let me do what I like!
My company's ISP, Continet, is on that list. Sad to say that they've locked the doors and, I hear, asked all employees to turn in their keys. Dial up access has been cut off by the phone company (Qwest), DSL and ISDN appear to be working for the time being. A sign on their door claims that "other arangements are being made". Fat chance.
So you can scratch them off the list. Pity. So ends the long, slow slide in customer service.
I run an 802.11b network at the house so that my roommate, myself, and any hardware equipped guests can share the 'net. Of course, I don't tell AT&T this because I don't want them scrutinizing my account, looking for reasons to drop me for EULA violations. But what I find interesting is that AT&T has partnered with Linksys and is pimping the wired and wireless products on their home networking page. While this is not in direct violation of the EULA, which does allow for a home network to be created, it only allows for a network that is accessed the the account holder, and residents of the immediate household (family, roommates, that Guy on the Couch). I just hope that AT&T realizes that Wi-Fi radiates, and that the range will surpass the walls of most of the houses that it is installed in.
You can also get dedicated wireless service from EarthLink. They're spreading wireless access points all over the place via their partnership with Boingo.
Extraordinary Vacations. Exceptional Prices
Not only does this closed source call-home program get huge amounts of attention making all of us wonder if "Charles DeWeese the information thief" is 1) selling your information to marketeers, 2) pretending he can increase profits by threatening, as reported in some cases, paying customers with BSA actions and lawsuits or 3) trojaning your system for other nefarious activities the nature of which you will never be aware because he provides neither source or debugging symbols, and the binary is stripped. One thing is for sure. Be it here on BetaNews, or on Slashdot, or on download.com.com, there is more than a few people calling into question why FlashFXP does what it does, and what is it doing. I would recommend the use of WinPCAP, WinDUMP, and ethereal, along with the free for personal use application firewall, Kerio Personal Firewall (software with nothing to hide, such as KPF, is often free for personal use, and others, like FreeBSD, OpenBSD, OpenSSL (a technology probably stolen by DeWeese and used illegally in FFXP) and Linux/GNU to name a few. With scary legislation in the US empowering copyright holders to DDOS your P2P networks, "root" your boxes in order to delete copyrighted content, and to make circumventing the mechanism by which an MP3 prevents the playing of an MP3 without a digital signature a felony, you can not trust software which calls home in an undocumented, undesirable way. This is the inroad by which these technology fascists will infect your computer with government sanctioned Trojaning devices. FlashFXP, when purchased legitimately, forces your to divulge HUGE amounts of information about yourself. You cant use cash and anonymously buy "shrink." Not only did I buy FFXP, but I excercised my right to fair use on more than one machine, the closed source binary was never run concurrently on more than one CPU at a time, yet my key got blacklisted. I have always been fond of OpenSource, but this and the EULAs for Windows Media Player, which also does various call home undocumented behavior, make not using OpenSource suicidal if you want a life where the government doesn't control and monitor your every keypress. Best of luck in the brave new world, if we continue to support fascists such as Charles DeWeese in his never-ending pursuit to force you to be tithed for non-Novel software which is built upon the stolen intellectual property of others, and prioritized. This is by no means a call for legislated digital communism, but it certainly calls into question the value of something that is not transferable, the seller has not liability of the actions of, the right to fair use is forfeit, and they law claims they copyright holder can root your computer in order to enforce copyright. Software like this I should be paid to use! Not pay for it! Be careful. He has stolen from the public domain technology to implement this secure technology, SSL, then he uses it to hide from you the true nature of his communications with home-base, as he calls home and Jon.Ashkrofts your information. I'm glad I use SmartFTP and NCFTP and run KPF as a start in the line of defense against a Orwellian cabal of software and I.P.
It appears that their definition of supporting wireless sharing is that they didn't find any obvious prohibition in whatever copy of the TOS they could find on the web, if they could find one.
They didn't look hard enough.
Unfortunately it seems as though most ISPs are downright hostile against their users these days. After all, some of their users have been hostile towards their systems. If the ISP can not take care of it's security, someone will take care of their systems.
I am a network engineer by trade. I am tired of ISPs not doing their job. Most large ISPs these days are acting more like cable TV providers than Internet Service Providers. What is your typical ADSL and cable Internet service good for these days anyway? You get a decent downstream rate, but your upstream rate is horrible, server ports get blocked, and too many "service" providers try to pass their customer a data link layer connection instead of a network layer connection -- there is a big service difference.
NANOG is just not doing it's job these days. NANOG represents the big corporate interests in North America for ISPs, but nobody is there fighting for the users of these services. I think it time for the service providers to be reminded what the Internet is about.
I am paying for the bandwidth. Let me do what I want with it!
Providing an asymmetrical Internet connection is okay, as long as the user has symmetrical options available to them, and they receive a discount for the fact that they are saving bandwidth. Furthermore, providing high download rates to customers has no value to ISPs that entirely serve the residential market. If you do not have business customers in your collocation facilities who are also using the upstream bandwidth, then you are inefficiently allocating bandwidth.
Prohibiting servers is blasphemous. This is the Internet, not cable television.
Bandwidth providers are being like Intel and the clock cycle issue. Stop pushing these higher downstream rates as a marketing ploy when you can not provide any kind of Service Level Agreement (SLA). Having a 1.2Mbps downstream rate is worthless if you can not actually use it. 512Kbps is enough for the vast majority of home users. Oversubscription is a necessary evil, but do not abuse it.
File sharing networks are not bad. People who are sharing copyrighted material and performing illegal acts are bad. Make a clear differentiation between the two. Blocking a service is bad in most cases -- when Code Red worm broke out, that was a good reason. I have no sympathy for customers having their circuits shut down for trading copyrighted material that they do not own -- stop being a voyeur and start being a player on the Internet, or else go back to watching TV.
Start providing real services to your users. If ISPs had provided the NTP option in their DHCP lease messages and provided this information publicly, Microsoft would not have to include a client with their X operating system to synch the time to a clock that could be far too many hops away. Tell your users where your servers and what you offer!
Providing a data link layer connection is typically bad. If you are an ISP and provide only a data link layer connection to your customers (bridged DSL, all cable Internet that I know of, some wireless services) then you are responsible for their entire network, which really sucks for you. This should be provided as an addition service, not the status quo. On Cisco devices, use commands like "spanning-tree rootguard", "port protected", and most importantly, place each customer into their own individual VLAN and terminate their layer two connection at a layer three trunking interface -- this is what most DSL circuits that use Frame Relay or ATM do, they terminate at a trunking interface somewhere.
I feel that ICANN and the NICs (ARIN, RIPE, APNIC) need to hit service providers over the head with a markup percentage cap for IP allocations. Charging me $45 a month for a
And you thought IP addresses were expensive. Nope.
Reference http://www.arin.net/registration/fee_schedule.htm
On that note, not allowing your customers to receive a static IP allocation is horrible. It forces customers away from your service at to someone else for no technical reason. The reasoning is entirely political/social.
I would suggest that ISPs knock off the antics and start providing service to the last mile if they want to stay in business. This is what got them into the debt problem in the first place. Where were the customers going to come from if they do not have any network access? That fat core is doing you nothing now Global Crossing.
I am willing to pay $200 a month for a 512Kbps bidirectional layer three network connection with a first hop latency of less than 40ms, a
I get most of my access by collocating a box in Denver at a friend's house and doing work that I need to do their. I had to send my box to another state just to get the access that I wanted.
Screw you ISPs and the no demand excuse. The customers are demanding better service -- you just aren't providing it.
Good idea. With Linux, I should release / renew just by shutting down the ethernet interface and restarting, right? I haven't even bothered to try this. When I went to attach my firewall and it didn't work, I spent hours trying to figure out why. Once I spat out all the debugging information for the dhcp client, I saw clearly what the problem was, and spoofed the MAC address. I've just left the spoofed address there ever since.
GreyPoopon
--
Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?