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Free Wi-Fi: the Movement To Give Away Your Internet For the Good of Humanity
pigrabbitbear writes "We are strangely territorial when it comes to our wireless networks. The idea of someone siphoning off our precious bandwidth without paying for it is, for most people, completely unacceptable. But the Open Wireless Movement wants to change all that. 'We are trying to create a movement where people are willing to share their network for the common good,' says Adi Kamdar, an activist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. 'It's a neighborly thing to do.' That's right, upstanding citizen of the Internet, you can be a good neighbor just by opening your wireless network to strangers — or so the line goes. The ultimate vision is one of neighborhoods completely void of passwords, where any passerby can quickly jump on your network and use Google Maps to find directions or check their email or do whatever they want to do (or, whatever you decide they can do)."
Someone finds and an open WiFi, DL's some CP, you get the blame. One of the many reasons they can have my Cat 5e when they pry it from my cold dead fingers.
Sure, I'd be more than happy to open my wifi network...if it meant I wasn't going to be liable for what a guest does on it....
and limit the use to 60 seconds.
Until the laws are changed to annul my responsibility for freeloaders on my wifi, I won't have it open. I'm not about to take any legal risk.
While I like the idea, it's not practical to me.
your insurance is void.
Does the plan include removing all ISP capping?
I am not necessarily going to hate on this, but doesn't the idea kind of undermine the subscriber model of service delivery? One reason we can achieve the individual speeds we do is because of over subscription of available bandwidth, it's not as though each residential customer is actually buying the bandwidth they receive, and so that is how the provider pays for infrastructure to provide the global access they do. Isn't the eventual endgame scenario of this to be in effect undermining itself?
The only way it would not be is if:
1. per subscriber rates were to increase
2. some open source movement to supply trunk lines between point of presences... not sure how that will work out..
While you are at it, leave a phone connected to your land line (if you still have one) on your porch for community use.
Fair usage based on your agreement with your provider likely prohibits this meaning you would be in breach of contract and subject to cancellation, at least here in the US, and rightfully so in my opinion. Secondly, sounds like something the child porn perverts would love to see happen to assist them in evading detection while they prey on our children. Sorry, I won't be participating in this. Ever.
... it's LAN security. If I had a very easy way to secure my LAN and still share Wi-Fi, I might just consider it. So far, I don't trust my knowledge enough to do this.
If I decided to do this, I would need to operate my LAN like every node was bare on the internet. I've got fileservers with guest access (for, you know... houseguests), web services, my invoicing system, and a whole slew of other personal services. The thought of open wifi on the LAN kinda scares me from a security perspective.
Given that the majority of people out there aren't security conscious, there are all kinds of implications for keeping default router settings/passwords.
When I was staying in the Oakwoods in Burbank, CA for work (long-term housing, like... for months), I could see every machine on the LAN and all of the windows machines had read-only filesharing on, so I was able to loot up on all kinds of raunchy porn that people downloaded from limewire. One guy even had a bunch of tax documents in a shared folder. This included a PDF of the lease on his lexus, and some credit card statements. Another guy had 8GB of photos of his kids and family.
Shit can be dangerous out there if you're not careful.
...spike
Ewwwwww, coconut...
Its plausible deniability to the a$$hats running our governments. I run an IT consulting business and have machines with all kinds of malware come through, and I also share my internet with all my neighbors. I don't do anything illegal, but all my drives are truecrypt encrypted and anyone who takes my drives would told briskly where to go. I don't care who did what and where. I don't care and refuse to be a policeman. Internet is internet and only the person who sent the bad stuff should be responsible. Me or my internet provider should not be held liable if someone does something bad over a carrier. Phone companies aren't liable for murders planned over the phone. Suck it gov'ment.
Digital is, by definition, imperfect. Analog is the way to go.
" the Movement To Give Away Your Internet For the Good of Humanity" For the Good of humanity? Have they been on the internet?
10 years ago I would have thought this was great idea. But it is not, it's very bad.
Someone will end up hurting or abusing your kindness. You can't avoid the "tragedy of the commons" problem.
I run my own OpenBSD router. I had this setup at one time, but after an upgrade I decided not to set it up again. Basically, it requires a ton of crap. A 3rd network interface, a wireless AP, and a ton of knowledge on how to configure it.
I'm very surprised that someone hasn't came out with a simple already setup wireless AP that segregates the guests from your local network, restricts it to some configurable bandwidth, and is secure enough to not be easily hacked through.
I'd open my network, but I'm afraid to open myself up to risks involved with someone using my connection to email in a bomb threat, harass someone, download legally questionable content, or other things that could cause legal issues. If I knew that everyone could/would be responsible there would be no problem.
I'd imagine that most ISP's specifically prohibit you from redistrubuting the connection. I know AT&T does: ,"
http://www.att.com/shop/internet/att-internet-terms-of-service.html#fbid=ngagtE5P5nh
Section 10a - "a. No Resale. The Service is provided for your use only (unless otherwise specifically stated) and you agree not to, whether for a fee or without charge, reproduce, duplicate, copy, sell, transfer, trade, resell, re-provision, redistribute, or rent the Service, your membership in the Service, any portion of the Service, use of the Service, or access to the Service, including, but not limited to, reselling capabilities enabled or used by a specific application (including, without limitation, Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) via wired, wireless or other means. For example, you agree that the Service is not to be used to trunk or facilitate public internet access (“Hotspots”) or any other public use of the Service
Keep in mind that (with a decent router) you can open your Wi-Fi but route all guest connections through TOR transparently. That might be a fair compromise, along with rate-limiting, capping per-session usage, and setting a hard limit for the month if necessary to prevent yourself from going over your own cap on service.
Open Wi-Fi everywhere actually makes me more nervous for the clients than for the servers. People already don't understand security with Wi-Fi, and need to know that any server they're using can observe their traffic if it isn't encrypted. I guess that's already a concern without open Wi-Fi everywhere, though.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
You so cray...
From TFA
hat's right, upstanding citizen of the Internet, you can be a good neighbor just by opening your wireless network to strangers — or so the line goes. The ultimate vision is one of neighborhoods completely void of passwords, where any passerby can quickly jump on your network and use Google Maps to find directions or check their email or do whatever they want to do (or, whatever you decide they can do)."
Or some script-kiddie could use any unsecured wi-fi to haxor into some server, prompting the government to seize all your assets and you will have to prove your innocence. Since you won't because the script-kiddie has covered his tracks you will be found guilty in a kangaroo court so you will be made an example of for others. The same will happen with the download of child porn and people will use the tired old line "Won't somebody please think of the children" to lock away the "freaks" even if the defendant had never downloaded any porn whatsoever. The government won't care and neither will Joe and Jane Sixpack. All Joe and Jane Sixpack care about getting rid of child pedos and pervs that look at child porn and they will be too fixated on doing just that so they won't give a fuck about if someone is truly guilty or not-guilty. It would be best just to keep a good, strong password on all wi-fi routers. The rest can use their 3g or 4g on their phones to access the internet when needed.
Personally, I don't want people on my wireless network for two reasons: Security/privacy, and I don't want my link slammed by someone using its full capacity.
How about just one? Get communities to pool resources to fund a single link. That's the most communal option, really. It will give you the most bang for your buck, and you don't have a hundred different competing WiFi signals. You don't have to hop networks when one gets bogged down by too many users.
Do a little QoS to make sure nobody abuses the community resource, and let people like myself run a local network behind a NAT for security and privacy. Maybe we could even let people pay more or less for different capacity depending on what performance they feel like they need?
Wait, this sounds familiar...
"My neighbours are stealing my wireless internet access. I could encrypt it or alternately I could have fun."
http://www.ex-parrot.com/pete/upside-down-ternet.html
If my neighbors want an internet connection, they can buy their own, dammit.
In a world where you can be sued for downloading files based on an IP address, or where you can be investigated for things like child pornography ... there's no way in hell I'd be willing to open my network for everybody to use. I know what my wife and I download. That guy down the street? No idea.
And, since my ISP charges me based on my used bandwidth, I'm not subsidizing your internet access.
Sure, it's possible noble and altruistic. But it also carries some legal risks.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
>>
>>use Google Maps to find directions or check their email or do whatever they want to do
>>
Gee, If only I could do that on something I carry around with me all the time.....
Like one individual oops sure he'll survive but he probably had to pay a lawyer to prove his innocence, the problem is the burden of proof is on you at that point. I'd be happy to share it for a select few services however, like Google maps or something, sure have at it! If the hardware kept some kind of record of who connected and when it may go a long way to making it FBI raid friendly.
Good leaders run toward problems, bad leaders hide from them.
Years ago I set up a free wi-fi network from my house, and called it something like 'Free WiFi'. A few weeks later a neighbor asked me to stop.
He regulated his kids' internet usage, and they had been using the free network to get online during those times when they were prohibited from doing so.
So I turned it off.
The reason people lock down their wireless are as follows (preaching to the choir, I know): 1) Bandwidth caps (and/or pay-per-use models) 2) Personal security (I don't want someone having access to my information on my network) 3) Legislation (if I allow someone to access my Wi-Fi, I could be held responsible for any illegal activies that the 'someone' participates in) This is like saying everyone should unlock their doors in New York so I can have access to free running water whenever I need it - nevermind their ability to now steal all my crap and void my insurance. Pie in the sky BS.
I have had my AP open for almost a year in the middle of New York, and there are usually 10-20 mobile and other users connected. And even though I have assigned the highest priority to my own computer, sometimes network slows down considerably. It might be the "wonderful" TimeWarner messing up as usual, but it could also be some torrent usage which I would rather keep off. Sadly, specifically my revision of the linksys router does not run dd-wrt or any other open stacks, so I have no way to do any custom magic without router upgrade. And even if I do buy a new router, I don't think it is easy to filter torrent traffic. Plus I would really love to have an encrypted portion of my network for my own devices, as cookie stealing is fairly common and easy to do.
Any recommendations? Thanks!
Im giving them net access for free the telecoms are being paid for access to the net big deifference.
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
I'm not entirely certain why the article lists "siphoning precious bandwidth" as the reason most people would lock down their Wi-Fi. It seems highly unlikely that that would come into play at all, most of the time, much less be the main reason.
No, there are three reasons why I don't have an open AP:
1. Legal liability for a guest's action is spotty. Technically speaking, I know that I am not liable if a guest performs an illegal act using my AP. What's the likelihood that a police officer or prosecutor would give me the benefit of the doubt while investigating the crime, though? The most likely course of action is that I spend some time in jail or under arrest until my innocence is proven.
2. My ISP TOS expressly forbids sharing the service. As long as they aren't doing deep packet sniffing (and they might be), it's possible I could set up the open AP such that everything is NAT'ed through a known server. The risk of doing so is getting my service cut off, though.
3. Allowing a rogue agent in my network drastically reduces the security of the network. I could create a locked down subnetwork just for the open AP, but that would be a notable amount of work.
So I have risks that involve jail time; termination of service; and/or loss of my personal data. What are the rewards? I feel good about helping my fellow man?
Not worth it at all.
It's pretty easy for me to add an alias AP to my router. I've done it before. I can turn on CBQ and even have some fairness, letting people use my WiFi at full speed as long as nobody on the password protected port needs bandwidth. Takes 5-10 minutes to configure it all.
Now here is why I have not done that, I don't want a SWAT team kicking down my door if someone uses my WiFi to hack, pirate or download child porn. The overly aggressive police force in the US makes me not want to do a neighborly thing. It also does not make me want to report crimes or ever communicate with the police again.
If someone were to break in my home, then shot them in self defense. If it turned out to be an illegal police search rather than an intruder (I fail to see the distinction but the courts insist there is one), I would pretty much be given life in prison.
The safest thing right now is to just let yourself be victimized in small ways, and try not to catch the attention of anyone who can ruin your life long term (like government agencies or drug cartels).
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Net Neutrality has nothing to do with QoS.
Why open your internal network up to every Tom, Dick, and Harry on the street, when you can easily supplement it, and your income as well?
Assuming you don't want to charge others for the access, there's really nothing stopping you from setting up a secondary, open wifi router on the DMZ of your network.
Everybody has a DMZ, right?
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
The proposers appear to have completely missed a few things:
- Ubiquitous 3G, available to all, even those on prepaid plans, makes this completely unnecessary.
- Traffic caps
- Shared bandwidth = less bandwidth for subscriber
- Freeloaders = less people actually paying for infrastructure = more expensive for those paying
- Security issues as partitioning off home network requires a certain amount of expertise
- Liability issues
This proposal may have made sense in 1993, when a high bandwidth connection to the Internet cost hundreds, or maybe thousands, of dollars a month, and Internet over cellular meant using a 300bps modem. But today?
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Because I'm paying a substantial amount of money for a 4096/256 connection. That's kilobit, not kilobytes per second.
Download, yeah, I could live with you leeching some of it, but any and all upload kills the download. Are you part of a botnet? If you start sending shit up, we'll both get choked on download speed; not only because of the upload, but also because of the number of connections. About 50 and my router starts crapping out.
What's that? Buy a better router that handles more connections and can segregate you with your own connection/bandwidth cap? Sure, everything for you! I'm rolling in cash!
So no, you can't have it. I pay for mine, you pay for yours. You're not a friend, you're a foe. I'm not letting you freeload in my house and eat my food, and I'm not letting you use my bandwidth money just because it's a "nice" thing to do. Especially if your activities make the police come to my doorstep, confiscate my computer and all my disks and discs (all of which I may or may not see again in a year or two), and if I get a criminal report attached to my lovely (and unique) name, which will make me lose my job and not ever be able to find a new one, even if I somehow avoid prison. "It wasn't me, judge! I swear!"
No way.
Mr. Kamdar, give people the keys to your house and point them to the fridge, electricity and running water. It's for the good of humanity!
You need a Unifi UAP-PRO, and a switch/firewall capable of VLAN Tagging. My church has a public and a private network, neatly segregated using VLAN tagging. If the traffic comes from the Public VLAN, it goes out the Internet port on the router. If it is from the Private VLAN, then it is allowed on the internal network. Not that hard to setup.
In order to do this without exposing your LAN to security issues, and not create liability issues because of the action of guests, it would require more setup than most end-users are capable of.
The WiFi interface would have to be kept separate (not bridged to the LAN), and the WiFi interface would have to be VPN'd to a (legally) safe termination. If companies want users to be able to use open WiFi, they need to step up to make this a default configuration on routers. Sure, those that use openwrt or dd-wrt can configure this, but there's a vanishingly small percentage of users with that skill set.
Can You Say Linux? I Knew That You Could.
Better make sure pier2pier is blocked along with other porn. try opendns for starters. Else you'll have to prove you weren't the one who downloaded kiddy porn.
I'd definitely share my wifi except that I won't have one if my neighbors open theirs.
A few years ago, when I was changing ISP, I remember reading terms and conditions (for most, if not all the ISPs I looked at) that banned the sharing of your internet connection with third parties. I'm not sure what the terminology was exactly, but they were obviously trying to stop this kind of thing from happening (on paper at least).
We might as well open up the doors to our houses so passersby can help themselves to a cold glass of water while we're at it.
Sure, Net Neutrality is important - except when it comes to _me_.
Fucking Americans.
Where are you from? Texas?
QoS gives packets different priority based on the type of data and net neutrality allows for that. What net neutrality doesn't allow for is differing priority based on the server; specifically, it doesn't allow you to treat packets from your servers preferentially and it doesn't allow you to blackmail other service providers for faster speeds. As for providing a guest with a slower connection than yourself, that is no different than an ISP giving different bandwidth speeds depending on your service level and has nothing to do with QoS or net neutrality.
TFA makes the point that, at least in theory, you can bandwidth-limit your router so that the amount of flow your neighbors generate is negligible. Someone who's driving through your neighborhood and is lost can pull over and look at a map on their handheld device, but the guy in the house next door won't be watching netflix all night on your connection and bogging you down. Another thing to realize is that if you have cable modem service, you're sharing bandwidth with your neighbors anyway.
For me, the big argument against doing this is simply complexity. Running a home wifi network for my wife and kids is already the biggest %*&%^*& pain in the ass ever. The damn system is fragile as hell. I've tried various things advised by slashdotters (buying brands and models of routers known to be reliable, using a surge protector and battery backup to avoid frying electronics), but the plain truth is that I've utterly failed to make a robust system and I experience constant hassles. It's like working on my own plumbing -- I acknowledge that I'm not competent to do anything more complicated than replacing a washer, and I don't want my plumbing to be a system so complex that it requires frequent maintenance. Others' mileage may vary, and many people here are certainly more competent than I am at networking. If so, more power to them. But personally, I don't want to stress my rickety system any more than I have to by having my neighbors on it.
A final issue is simply that wifi tends not to propagate very well. Even within my own house, I have trouble getting decent signal strength from downstairs to upstairs. I've installed repeaters and high-gain antennas, and it still doesn't work well. Our house isn't a mcmansion, but we have hardwood floors, and I think the building materials must really attenuate the signals.
Find free books.
Some of us can't even share our wifi with our tablets for free.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
My wireless network used to be open so others could use it. I had to put a stop to it last Christmas day, seems like a lot of people in the neighborhood must have gotten laptops, tablets and smartphones that day. Wifi freeloaders simply aren't considerate enough about bandwidth usage, so I had to shut them off.
I went to eat some animal crackers and the box said, "Do not eat if seal is broken." I opened the box and sure enough..
I still wouldn't be able to participate in something like this because of the data caps my monopolistic cable provider has. It's one thing for me to pay for my own monthly usage, but having my limit sucked dry in a few days and either paying a great deal for the overages or having my service cut off goes beyond my willingness to help out.
WWJD -- What Would Jimi Do?
(Smash amp, burn guitar, take home the groupies)
one person downloads a tagged file over my system, I can lose my house and retirement. sorry, folks, ain't gonna happen, that port stays locked.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Sounds great.
AT&T currently caps my wired land-line DSL connection, and charges outrageous overage fees if I go over their arbitrary limits. (And as past /. posting have indicated, their measurements are highly in dispute and they will not even say how they come up with your supposed usage.) The little old lady next door has already received shocking bills because she used to watch NetFlix on her AT&T DSL connection. So exactly how do I open my already expensive Internet connection without getting nasty bills in the mail from my information and communications monopoly?
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
I've been running a little Linksys thingy for years with open access and set to 1 Mbps WiFi, which amounts to about 300 kbps in practise. It is enough for people to check their email and so on and doesn't bother me on my 5 Mbps connection.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
With 3G cellular common, and with 4G cellular being sold at a tremendous rate, I'm frequently seeing people with more cellular bandwidth than land line bandwidth. Most people don't need their neighbors to open their WiFi to get high speed Internet.
Have a nice time.
well put. i wish i had some mod points for you.
1) GP's statement has nothing to do with Net Neutrality
2) Even if #1 were not correct, GP did not indicate that he favors Net Neutrality in any sense, so you have no basis to call him a hypocrite. You knew this before you posted, therefoere you are a liar.
3) GP gave no indication that he is an American, so you have no basis to tie his hypocrisy (that you made up in your head) to his nationality. Furthermore, even if he were proven to be an American and a hypocrite, these things are not related to each other. If you yourself are an American, this proves you to be a hypocrite (and also a liar, via the implication that you are not an American yourself). If you are not an American, then this proves you to be a bigot (a class of person who, by definition, is always a liar and hypocrite).
So you have proven, beyond any possibility of doubt, that you are a hypocrite and a liar. You cannot refute this fact, or even disagree with it. You will now inadvertently make your irretractable confession that every point I just outlined is absolutely true.
people are abusive.
Anyway, from time to time I open my network on weekends when I'm not at home.
You want me to do something that may get me in legal trouble--which I may or may not be able to get out of, but will cause me no end of trouble even if I do--can possibly cause my internet connection to collapse under ballooning bandwidth demand unless I do extensive and technical reconfiguration of my network setup, and is in complete violation of my Terms of Service with my Internet provider, so other people don't have to pay their Internet bills?
Ah, no. Good day,sir.
http://www.fon.com/ has been promoting and doing this for years. You can even make some money if you want.
I run mine open to the public with my SSID set to some site I want people to look at, including things running on my local server, so http://192.168../
Especially happy to do this when out in a cafe and tethering
Lots of people are posting about all the risks to the owner of the access point. I think this is ignoring the risks to the end user as well.
Open wifi is one thing in the Coffee shop where you can at least start to expect that its under the control of responsible parties but some wifi you connect to on the street?
Look most users are carrying a device that gets updates maybe semiannually. Do they still have those leaked DigiNotar CA certs in their trust store, does SSL even work properly on them to begin with, does their APP use verify remote hosts correctly?
With tools like sitecloner, and SET out there its shockingly easy to snatch passwords and similar when you control the router or dns. With open wifi for many devices the operator of the wifi will have both! Training the general public that its alright, let alone a good idea to connect to unknown open wifi networks and use them is totally irresponsible! I am really disappointed the EEF would even suggest such a thing.
Yes there are solutions like VPNs and such but practically none will use them.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
What is strange about not allowing my capacity consumed without compensation?
What is strange about not allowing some random person from exceeding my cap for their exclusive benefit?
What is strange about not wanting to be raided by the law because some random person distributed child porn using my Internet service?
What is strange about not exposing inevitably vulnerable network hardware to random people?
There is nothing 'strange' or 'territorial' about this. Obvious, practical considerations underlay the desire to keep Internet service exclusive to subscribers. Invoking territoriality is an insult; an attempt to characterize reasonable behavior as primitive and ignorant.
So fuck you too.
People that use internet while driving or outside their house have a cell phone connection which is probably faster than poor wifi reception outside a house. I don't see the use at all at this point, it would have been useful 5 years ago.
if illegal downloads are done using my access, I'm the one getting penalized by my ISP.
Get rid of the legal principle that ties criminal and civil guilt to an IP address and you've got yourself a deal.
Way back when I first got Internet, I always used to keep my WiFi open for universal access. My thinking was, I found it extremely convenient when I accidentally found an open WiFi while traveling, so why not do the same for others.
:-(
However, now the point is moot, since open WiFi is as good as illegal in my country (India) now. After a spate of related news articles, I had to lock down my wireless. It just isn't worth having cops over for something like this
I was doing just this very thing for about 3 years. I even thought I was protecting myself somewhat because I put a splash page on the WiFi using nocatsplash with DD-WRT to display a page that says "Hey, I'm doing this to be nice. Don't do anything illegal, please." I thought at the worst I'd get a DMCA notice if someone downloaded a movie or something, but it was much worse.
The FBI and ICE (Immigration & Customs Enforcement) knocked down my door, pointed guns at us, confiscated all of my computers, interrogated my fiance and I for a few hours, they told my fiance that I was a pedophile and it nearly cost us our relationship. Seriously - when the FBI tells your fiance that you're a pedophile, it's hard to convince her otherwise. Some jack ass had apparently downloaded child porn using eDonkey/eMule over my wifi network. The FBI ended up returning most of my computers, but not all of them (I probably could have got them back, but I would of had to go to court to do it, and the computers were only worth about a grand). It also took almost a year to get that far. They also eventually told my fiance that I wasn't a pedophile.
It was a rough fucking year.
Don't do it. Keep your wifi locked down with as much encryption as you can. It's not worth it while judges are issuing search warrants based upon nothing more than an IP address.
So long as it is easy for a person to be anonymous, it won't be safe for them to use your wifi.
(If at first you don't succeed, do it different next time!)
Will never work.
The first thing that happens when I open my WIFI AP is that all of my neighbours cancel their own broadband accounts and leach off of mine and then my usage cap is shared with my whole neighbourhood.
> We are strangely territorial when it comes to our wireless networks.
False premise.
I don't particularly care if someone else uses bandwidth that I am not using. The problem is that if those people do illegal things, I am culpable. Whereas, if I have my network locked down and someone finds a way to break in and *then* do illegal things, I do have some recompense.
It's not some silly selfishness that prevents me from sharing my network. It's the way the laws are written. Guarantee that if someone borrows my network to download child porn, I *do not* get prosecuted, then fine. But otherwise, forget it.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
1. Already have had two people on the door asking for free internet in the building. They are just too lazy to buy it themself.
2. I have no idea what they are doing online, so I cannot risk the legal costs.
3. Even if i wasn't liable, I'd prefer not to get snooped at and targeted by $10^256 corporations and their governments
From my memory, ten years ago many of the replies to this type of post on slashdot would have been more positive. Remember "Lans across america?". It seems that either the corporate propaganda has been succesful, private wifi services have become more sensitive, or that the slashdot crowd has become more conservative. It is REALLY remarkable how much the general consensus of slashdot has changed.
A few months ago I tried this out, and all it got me were weird people parking on my curb (esp. at nighttime), sometimes with the radio thumping, sometimes peeling out. One time I opened the blinds to see what was going on and I could swear there was a drug deal happening. Since then, I've stopped the sharing (and gotten stronger motion-sensitive lighting for the sidewalk/driveway area).
I'm not at all concerned about the traffic/usage, just that the people who want the free wifi tend to be people I don't want hanging out in front of my house at odd hours.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
So my neighbor can watch Netflix and destroy my bandwidth? No thanks.
It's now becoming customary that the ISP's provided "box" (the named used in French) doubles as a public Wifi hotspot on a seggregate IP. The catch is you need your own code that your ISP gives you (SFR, Orange, Free) then you can leech from other people's Internet if they have the same provider as you and you're paying your bills and your hotspot is enabled.
It's not a big catch, obviously! These codes circulate freely, in violation of the TOS.
Of course operators are pricks and only give you HTTP, SSL and FTP (so if you're a geek you may need a host with ssh accessible on port 21 somewhere).
But Free.fr doesn't care and is the prefered ISP for leeching. They even let you torrenting!
This is all better than what's in the article. Asking people to wide open their home or small business LAN is asking for disaster : accessing Windows share, even unprotected read/write ones, using up all your network (wireless and internet connection), sitting outside your house and dumping your movies for hours.. and that's the relatively innocuous stuff.
Instead my ISP has worked out the security and QoS already. I even have the hotspot as the only WiFi enabled in my place. It's not like my beige tower needs wireless access.
Rather than have all these individual routers competing for air space with each other, it would be even better if they cooperated with each other to route packets and let clients roam from one to another.
Just like we graduated from lots of individual BBS's to the Internet, we need to make similar progress at the "consumer" end.
The technology is already present; all that's needed is support.
They stream. I have the tcpdump trace right here. Gigibytes of UDP. Non stop for hours. Long story short we have guests in the house and I gave them the password to my wifi as a gesture. I might not do that again.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
This sounds like FON(http://corp.fon.com/us/).
service, just as they provide or contract for trash collection.
Aww, you Americans with your unlimited Internet. You think everywhere is like that! It's so cute!
There's nothing "strangely territorial" about not letting strangers use my Wi-Fi in New Zealand. All our ISPs have monthly transfer caps in the tens-of-gigabytes range (I maxed my 20 GB limit out in three weeks this month). If we use more than the limit, we get charged - around $1 per gigabyte.
If I open my Wi-Fi for strangers to use -- even not taking into account legal liability from our new "Skynet" Three Strikes copyright law -- then I'm basically handing a blank cheque to the world, which I'll have to pay for.
*blink* Why would I do that?
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
My SSID is FreeKiddiePr0n.
You would be surprised at who connects and how insecure their computers are.
While you're giving everyone access to the internet connection you pay for why not leave external electrical outlets available with a sign that says "Free electricity" and let anyone run extension cords to their homes. Don't forget water - let the neighbors water their lawns using your water. Ooo - can't leave out gasoline. Make sure you have a full 5 gallon container available to anyone who wants it.
Screw that noise. I pay for it and I'll use it. If you want broadband pay for your own. Can't afford it? There's a library down the street - go use their computers. Or find a business that has open wi-fi for their customers and leech off that.
Does this make me a bad neighbor? I don't think so. It shows that the sense of entitlement is alive and well out there but I didn't need a reminder. I see it every single day.
this is all about CP, and to a lesser extent, LOIC etc. I'm all for altruism for the benefit of my neighbors, but I'm not going to open myself to this risk.
let's have a conversation! let me know what you think.
That would fall under the category of Plausible Deniability and is a very valid defense if you were taken to court. What you point out is actually a really good reason to keep your network open (but, if you are smart, quite controlled).
Seriously, if someone has open wifi access, why in the world would they pay for internet in the first place? This will result in everyone but one or two people in the neighborhod cancelling their internet plan. And if you're paying for internet, why would you share with cheap people who can but don't want to pay, for internet access? If you can't pay for it, well maybe you have your priorities backward if you have a computer/smartphone/other internet device.
1 - its a violation of your TOS
3 - it eats your bandwidth cap
4 - it invites the feds to come break your door down. Who is 100% squeaky clean AND wants the hassle of jail and proving yourself innocent? ( don't kid yourself, 'innocent until proven guilty' is long gone in this society. Even if your charges are dropped eventually, you are still broke and your life most likely ruined )
Now if we want to talk 'free encrypted mesh' of some sort, perhaps. But not just a simple open wifi for any passer by. The risks are too high.
I don't know that "we" are the ones who are so strangely territorial about our bandwidth. Open wireless networks were a lot more common in the USA before ISPs started shutting people down for it.
It hasn't even been so long since ISPs had a problem with in-home networks of any kind. And it wasn't because they were worried about viruses or CP, either.
The differentiation you're making is important, that the network can discriminate based on what the packet is but not whose it is. I think even then, though, there's the possibility of trouble. If network QoS decides what sorts of uses get what sorts of service it still means the network operator is in the position of making value judgements on the different uses. This is a fundamental departure from what I (admittedly a layman) understand as the central design principle of the Internet: smart endpoints and dumb pipes enabling novel and unforeseen uses.
I understand the idea of QOS is supposed to be just ensuring low latency or jitter for connections where those things matter (steaming, games, VIOP, etc.) at the expense of things where they don't matter much (http, ftp, torrents, etc.), But when there's congestion some things are going to get priority and some are not. Some sorts of protocols may be pretty specific to a certain group/device, so that the QoS decisions on them in effect amount to putting certain users ahead of others. And then there's the question of new, previously unknown uses. If someone devises a new sort of service that requires low latency or jitter but is not recognized by the network, it will presumably be placed below recognized things like VOIP and streaming, and if it competes with existing tech in those spheres it will be de-facto discriminated against.
So, it's certainly bad for the network to discriminate between certain users, but I think it can still be problematic to discriminate between different sorts of communications.
"You call it a new way of thinking; I call it regression to ignorance!" -- Operation Ivy
My wifi has been open for years. I have frequently moved flat in the past and benefited from being able to use my neighbour's wifi for a week or two while I get internet installed. It costs me nothing to 'pay it forward'.
VLC Remote for iPhone and Android
(and also a liar, via the implication that you are not an American yourself)
This is a specious assumption. Being in a group does not mean a person is not willing and able to insult it. This assumption would make the world simpler for you, but the world is not this simple. Anyone with experience dealing with people knows that people do things that don't make logical sense all the time. All the fucking time. Quite often people feel like they are qualified and entitled to insult their own group because they are a part of it. This person is not necessarily a liar (for reasons inferred by your assumption).
Make a secondary Access Point that is locked down in some way.
Optional Text-browsing. Stripping MIME encodings from e-mail protocols.
Limited image browsing on whitelisted sites from the most popular websites lists, with some exceptions blocked for obvious reasons.
Maybe some limited access to other protocols I can't really think of that I don't use.
Extremely limited uploading abilities.
Oh, and change the law to prevent liability. And actually make sure it is a law and not just a guideline, which current laws are. Require actual punishment for abuse. (not that it would matter, the whole megaupload thing was illegal unless SOPA passed, it never so they got mad and went ahead anyway, don't want to waste all that taxpayers money they stole regardless)
Oh, and wreck the ISPs for locking down clients from doing anything with their connections and limiting them when they actually try to use their connections, and also underselling their products to infinity (unlimited connections, which are a complete and total lie), so might as well sue them infinity dollars too.
And I guess an optional thing that they could push would be a custom onion routing system to prevent even this system from being used against their operators.
In the odd-case where someone gets around the above blocks (which they will, other bases and data can be used for encoding binary data too, and links can be shared), you can bet they'd make an example of people, that is just how things are in this world.
This system already died before it started. RIP.
You know what would have been great for this? Gopher. Gopher was a simple text information service.
Expanded to limited media capabilities, basic dynamic stuff (loading new content) and operator customization (logos, basic SVG theme), it would have been great for this.
Then websites could run a "gopher" server and during roaming, a secondary connection ran from an AP could pass on that it is that, and all services would be automatically sent to something like a gopher service.
Mobile services are already different from their main websites anyway. Any good website has a common API between them.
All that would need to be sent would be current offset in a stream of data so it can load the next batch of data from the server.
Having something that was simple like this would solve so many problems. It has extremely low overhead too since syntax definition is numbers and a space, none of this HTML crap, or worse, XML crap. Dear god thank you for WHATWG, XHTML is and always will be an awful idea, HTML is not, nor will it ever be, XML, deal with it, go make your own damn web2 and force all sites on it to use XML.
I can't be arsed to find it, but awhile back there was a story about a guy who had agents mistakenly arrest him at gunpoint.
It turned out his neighbor was using his wifi to download child porn, but they thought it was him.
Until you can guarantee something like that won't happen (as well as removing bandwidth caps), mine will be staying under lock and key.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
We are strangely territorial when it comes to our wireless networks.
Hmm... I'd phrase it as "We are strangely territorial when it comes to the forced penetration of our buttholes while in prison. Since leaving your network open or even running a TOR node has proven to be something you can wind up in jail for if the people you share with are scumbags, it's not a good idea.
Don't talk to strangers, don't let them near you, better yet, don't go outside at all, and, for God's sake, don't open up your wifi to them. Strangers are bad guys. They will kidnap you and download child porn onto your computer and turn your wifi into a terrorist training camp. Just don't do it.
Accessing your neighbor's home office computer = endless hours of entertainment.
This needs to be opened at the ISP or municipal level, not the consumer level IMO.
When I was receiving a bit too much financial aid for school, I opened my Wifi in an attempt to give back something to the local taxpayers. I never found any evidence that anyone else used it, but maybe my name was too political: "Say No to Dems and Reps"
What you're trying to accomplish here is creating a public utility.
You don't want a utility to be powered by random people. You want a utility to be government regulated. You may think regulation and the government are bad and evil and blah blah but the reason you're trying to create a wireless network based on home systems is because the unregulated commercial sector has failed to provide a sane alternative.
Its worse than that though, the commercial sector is actively working to ensure that no such utility is created even when they are fully unwilling to do so when requested as is obvious when various municipalities try to create their own networks.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
The entire idea is ill-advised at best, and sophomoric at worst.
It's ill-advised for all the legal reasons others have mentioned above: regardless of my ability to WIN a lawsuit due to misuse of my connection, I'd really prefer NOT to have my equipment confiscated and picked apart in an FBI forensics lab. Oh, and the "bricks through you windows" possibilities suggested in other comments, also strongly encouraging. Thank you for the offer, but no.
Also, the idea that I have *bandwidth to spare* (?!) because neighborhood network segments are "over subscribed" is drinking the telco and cable companies' kool aid. Not during peak usage times, not even remotely. I'm lucky to squeeze out 1/10 my "subscribed" speed. Add the crazy caps on upstream speeds (at least in the US) and one torrent could saturate the connection. Layer on the fact that a working, reliable home network is a requirement for my job.
It's naive to think that "passersby" will be using the network for a quick Google Maps search. Long-term moochers (read: abusers) who actually live in the neighborhood are much more likely beneficiaries. It's also insanely likely the hypothetical passerby, using a device that can access Google Maps, already has a mobile data plan on that device! (Or should, if they don't know where they are on a regular basis...) At SOME point, there are SOME things you probably just need to grow up and pay for.
(NB, I may be especially jaded because my neighbors won't scape their dogs' crap off the sidewalks, much less respect my digital real estate, so I'm perhaps much less inclined to think this is a good idea than I would otherwise...)
Now, bring me a case of an under-served / low-income / rural area, where broadband penetration is already awful, and you *might* have a chance of convincing me. Although in that scenario, there's a better case for larger-scale intervention, i.e. a partnership between providers and local government, which would probably be a necessity to even get the infrastructure into the area to start with.
Share your wifi so everyone can have access to LOLCats - do it for humanity! Won't someone please think of the children???
What net neutrality doesn't allow for is differing priority based on the server
or origin, or destination, or content. Yeah, if you treat traffic equally without regard to what it contains, where it's going, or where it's coming from, then you're doing pretty good as far as being neutral. QoS to, say, minimize jitter and lag for UDP connections, and maximize average bandwidth for bulk downloads is treating traffic differently based on it's "type". This does break network neutrality, but there is an understandable reason for it. A good reason. Different data has different behaviors it wants. So people don't bitch about this aspect of it. Indeed, some even try to say that it's not part of the network neutrality issue at all.
As for providing a guest with a slower connection than yourself, that is no different than an ISP giving different bandwidth speeds depending on your service level and has nothing to do with QoS or net neutrality.
That is everything to do with QoS. It's ensuring the quality of the service for me, at the expense of all the moochers. And yeah, it breaks network neutrality. The free service I provide out of my router isn't neutral at all. It's knows exactly who paid for it and if I feel like saturating that line, everyone else is shit-outta-luck. If they were paying me for that connection, if I billed myself as an ACTUAL INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDER and not a internet service (when daddy's feels like it) provider, then they would have every right to complain.
I have had a "FreeWiFiGetItHere" SSID broadcasting my open wireless network for years. It has no upstream connectivity though, and all traffic is redirected to a subnet-local website that only serves up "The Goat" jpg. I am much pleased to be part of this ultimate vision.
many wifi routers i've encountered can provide two networks, each of which can have QOS limits on it.
what i haven't seen tho is a router which can make one network lower priority than the other.
ie, i want to have the primary always get 100% when it needs it,
but if the primary is only using up 10%, give the remaining 90% to the secondary.
any equipment recommends ?
In the city of Groningen (pop. 200.000) in The Netherlands the cable company has split each wifi access point of almost all subscribers into two different wifi access points. The subscriber uses one frequency, the other can be used by all subscribers in the country, using their own username and password. It works very well, even if you walk or cycle on the street, your smartphone or tablet will keep the connection as you move from one subscriber to the next. The phone company meanwhile is busy upgrading most of the country to glass fibre.
The idea of someone siphoning off our precious bandwidth without paying for it is, for most people, completely unacceptable.
Giving people free WiFi doesn't bother me much.
But the idea of someone getting an IP address that's inside my NAT is far, far, more unacceptable to me.
The only way I would do this would be to set up a separate wireless router with a separate NAT exclusively for giving away free WiFi.
Nowadays wireless internet access is available anywhere at a reasonable cost, either as part of a smartphone plan or, for laptops, via something like a HSPA dongle. I can't even imagine buying one of these things today without an accompanying internet plan.
Open wifi is a nice idea but it is no longer necessary, and more trouble than it's worth considering the security and legal implications.
I don't mind sharing my bandwidth with strangers. I mind the **AA motherfuckers suing me for someone who doesn't know how to obfuscate downloading a movie or something and getting my broke ass in court. I'll be happy to open my access point when I can't be held accountable for what someone I don't know would do with it.
I'm not being selfish, I'm preserving myself in a world of sharks.
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
The idea of everyone sharing their wifi with everyone else is nothing less than delusional. For all of the legal issues brought up already, and numerous others. Short of state sponsored free wifi for anyone and everyone, it's just not going to happen. And I'm pretty sure that most folks would be highly skeptical of how much data the 'state' was collecting on any such endeavor anyway.
Differences between how you act when some one is watching, and how you act when no one is watching, define who you are
I'm only on my phone about an hour a day. Does everyone else get dibs on the other 23? How about tapping off of my power line? Free water from my garden hose? Sit on my porch and read my newspaper before I go and grab it? Raid my fridge whenever they're hungry? Shit in my toilets when I'm not using them? You pinkos want mobile internet? You pay for it like everyone else does.
The reason not to let someone you don't trust use your WiFi is the same as the reason it's not a good idea to let a bunch of gangbangers you don't know borrow your gun for a few days.
The Homeland Security Act makes it a Federal Felony to provide aid and comfort to terrorists, including giving them access to the Internet.
DHS, when it was created, advised Americans that they would be charged (and indeed did charge some people) for providing Internet access to terrorists via open wifi networks.
So, fuck you, I am keeping mine secured, fuck you very much.
What would help with this is if it were very easy to prioritize and censor traffic on the Guest connection.
Guests may access email, web pages with blocking of domains, etc. Much like Parental Controls.
Guests gets the lowest priority. Bandwidth priority first goes to the official users of a network.
Guests may not have more than X bandwidth and may not download files larger than N. A fairly simple way to kill copyright violation downloads for the most part.
This would let people check their email, do a quick look up on a web page sort of thing but not be abusive of a network.
I provide upside-down-ternet for free!
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
The only reason there can be a serious movement to give away WiFi fo free is because the extra cost to a connection owner of a guest using a little bandwidth is very low. Would it not be more robust to simply sell bandwidth for next to nothing? People would love to sell their unsued bandwidth, trying even to make a profit on having their own connection. A software suite which sorts out all the encryption and payment automatically which is sufficiently easy to use could have a viral effect. All legal/regulatory/payment-processing-fee issues can be side-stepped initially by using Bitcoin. With extra functionality this software could seed effective, fairly cheap, wireless mesh networks!
I've got a different take on this. I'm starting to suspect that the EFF is promoting something that is a de-facto reality.
Not that my experience is vast; my default networking preference is wired and I go out of my way to get it. However I'm often surprised how many WAPs are in range at any given location. I'm talking in situations of low to high density residential and business/commercial. Sure, some of those are secured, but it's also routine to find open WAPs too.
These are not the work of the typical /. reader I suspect. But the average citizen is not the typical /. person.
And personally, I've noticed that it is nice to have access to an open WAP. As long as the data needs are not high and the content accessed is not objectionable, the owner really isn't inconvenienced. Of course there's the rub; how does the owner allow casual open access without abuse?
You will pry wifi from my cold dead fingers. There are bandwidth issues. There are copyright issues. Not on my watch. Solve the underlying problems and we icon talk..
The law makes you responsible for the usage that is done of your Internet connection.
Therefore you cannot just share it with anyone unless you're willing to shoulder any prosecution that might be caused by their Internet usage.
I have to heartily disagree with one point: QoS is exactly what is utilized to engineer traffic shaping methods to provide specific amounts of bandwidth to paying customers because 'traffic shaping' is a component of QoS. In the past, 'traffic shaping' or bandwidth limitations limitations were primarily done by utilizing line cards capable of only specific line rates and therefore you had a relatively physical method of controlling bandwidth but that methodology is only used for guaranteed speeds in business environments for leased lines anymore. Even then we are getting into gigabit capable ethernet customer uplinks that are parceled out into smaller amounts for customers using QoS on an upstream router.
Net Neutrality != QoS as you stated except that it does not allow the use of QoS to selectively police certain types of traffic and apply lower/higher bandwidth or priority to these traffic types. Ultimately, though, this discussion is about in-home WiFi and Net Neutrality doesn't really fit the discussion IMO.
In France, we have this insane HADOPI law that would punish open Wi-Fi networks by a 1500 euros fine. As far as I know, nobody has been fined yet, though?
If we only had municipalities set up neighborhood server nodes that everyone could use. But I guess that would be "Socialism" .Which for some reason is scary, even though I for the life of me can't remember why.
I'd do this, going as far as to purchase a separate router, if there was an easy way to create a secondary network discrete from my home connection, and that had bandwidth shaping to it so that it could never use more than, say, 5-10% of my available bandwidth. I have no qualms with a passerby checking their email or getting google maps directions, but I don't want security issues, and I don't want my own downloading/netflix compromised by their activity. Is there a cheap/easy way of doing this that doesn't require too much hacking?
This is where I get my recommended daily allowance of "Foot in Mouth."
Sometimes the FSF is an unit I can agree with and sometimes well not. It's clear, I have one argument against this idea, legal, legal, legal.
I think that the govt at all levels should be required to give free wifi internet access without any hassles. No log ons no crap pages. Any company or not for profit that gets govt funding or business with govt should also give out free wifi.
-- A computer without Windoze is like a choclate cake without mustard
I am not allowed to share my Internet connection due to contractual obligation with the ISP. I have run an open wifi connection, the only thing accessible was a LAN server... no internet. It is amazing how many people tried to break in to the router on that stand-alone LAN to try and connect it to the Internet (good luck without a cat5 cable to join it to the rest of the Web though).
I opened my internet up as soon as I got a router that supported a guest-zone.
Not because some movement thought it would be good for mankind. Simply because it is the right thing to do. Internet has become such an important part of everyday life, at least in this part of the world, that living without it would make most tasks daunting not to say impossible.
Anyone who tries to hinder access to the internet is an enemy of the state.
That said, don't go open up your router to anyone unless you can keep them separate from your own little worm free haven.
Not every area of the US has even moderate Internet connectivity. I live with ~128Kbps to my house. My EVDO cell phone has a faster connection (but with higher latency). I think most people would be unhappy with my connection so what is the point of sharing it?
In Germany the problem is far worse as there's a whole industry about suing people.
The solution is fairly simple. You install a router which connects the wireless network to a VPN. This VPN is connected to all other routers so you have a VPN between all wireless devices.
This VPN is also connected to a server which routes your traffic to another server in Slovenia, a place with far less lawyers. This server also has the "zap-Skript" which temporarily blocks people apparently doing filesharing.
The routers require no special configuration. They auto configure via the network. The wireless mesh network, as well as the VPN are Layer2 based and are administered via IPv6 link-local addresses. This makes it easy to deploy.
For management there's a nifty system called "Netmon" which you can see, for example here:
http://netmon.freifunk-ol.de/routerlist.php
http://netmon.freifunk-ol.de/map.php
Else my network would be open, no doubt.
That's NOT what Tor is designed for.
CP, you mean?
The idea of someone siphoning off our precious bandwidth without paying for it is, for most people, completely unacceptable.
1. [citation needed], 84% of statistics are made out of thin air.
2. I secure my wifi to limit security breaches and access to my personal data, not because I don't want people to steal my preccccciousssss.
3. my provider has an opt-in feature thanks to which my router acts as two routers, one private for you and one public FON spot for everyone who activated the same feature on his own router to access the internet. Let's just hope they did a good job at securing this and that it doesn't allow people on the public spot to access the private one.
4. Other providers here start to do the same, unfortunately each with its own solution, so I cannot connect to the free spot of my friend with a different provider and I still have to ask him is preccccciousssss WAP password.
One of the major service providers in Israel has created something like this. If you subscribe, they siphon off a small amount of bandwidth to a separate "community network". Whoever contributes gets access to the community network everywhere else.
what if someone attaches his own router to your copper wires outside your home? someone could then put a satellite uplink dish to give free internet connection to al-qaeda members and you get the blame, think about that! i think it would be safest if you shut down your internet connection directly and never again turn on a computer
but don't expect to do it anonymously.
When you connect to my network you will be greeted with the following notice:
Privacy:
As a private citizen I have the right, and in some sense the duty, to monitor and/or record everything that happens on my network in order to protect myself from you. When you connect to my network you agree to relinquish all expectations of privacy and give me full access to your device and everything on it. You also agree that I will monitor and record every detail of your activities while connected to my network with the intention of turning it over to law enforcement. Any suspicious activity will be shared with the proper authorities without exception. This is to protect me, not you. As a private citizen providing a free service to my neighbors it is not imcumbent upon me to make any provisions regarding security or privacy from other users of this network. I do not and will not guarantee in any way, shape, or form that you are safe on this network. It is your responsibility to secure your devices, not mine. In other words, use at your own risk.
Performance:
As a private citizen providing a free service to my neighbors it is not imcumbent upon me to make any provisions regarding performance or availability of this network or the internet and I will not. It is in my interest to have my connection up and running for my personal use and for that reason alone I maintain my connection. I will not and am not required to respond to any requests to enable, disable, or otherwise enhance or modify my network for your use.
Continuing to use this network implies acceptance of these terms and releases me from all liability for your, and my, activities. You are being monitored.
As the courts have already demonstrated: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/07/judge-copyright-troll-cant-bully-internet-subscriber-bogus-legal-theory
The rulings of a lone trial court judge --- not a federal district court of appeals --- is a very slim reed on which to lean.
The Philippines is pretty terrible when it comes down to the internet. ISP's don't care about service, in fact they don't even care if you have internet so long as you pay every month. Most people buy mobile internet (the usb/wifi adapter kind) because it has an unlimited amount of data and it's just as reliable as DSL. Cable is almost as much as rent, and when you get paid just about nothing, it can get pricey. Most people have less than 1mbps with constant interruptions. When you do get a signal inside your concrete 200sqm room, you pray to jebus it's a happy day and get to browse the internet with download speeds of 20kb/s. Now to share that blazing fast speed of 20kb/s is like sharing a potato with a stranger, when all you have to eat is that potato. However if the US wants to build a MASSIVE tower for wifi that can reach the Philippines, by all means. Just don't blame me when cancer rate goes up significantly.
I'll be glad to sure my wifi with you...along with the bill.
So my objections to this are 2 fold. 1. I don't want strangers sitting outside of my house where I have children because it is a free and easy hotspot to get wifi. I can just see a row of cars out front with people lined up to watch youtube and netflix on their phone. We already pay for libraries with our taxes. Why don't they go to the library? Or the coffehouses? Or the growing pool of companies that offer free wifi? 2. I need my bandwidth for what I do for a living and for my entertainment activities. I am already supporting my household's consumption. I don't want to compete with strangers when I need throughput. What makes other people special enough to be able to get away with using a service that I pay for? How is that improving humanity? The service is already provided for free in many areas. Have them download Gooogle's Field Trip app and track library locations.
Short of an unsecured network - how would this be achieved.
I wouldnt use the service - but I'd sure watch others use it and take their credentials.
If I am paying a flat rate, it is the available gear that messes things up. Or possibly, the lack of availability of the proper gear at a reasonable price.
Need a wifi router with the following:
One encrypted SSID link for private use.
One encrypted SSID link for public use where the secret needed to login is the SSID.
Wire connections as usual. (private side of things.)
Ability to set % of bandwidth dedicated to private side.
Ability to set max % of bandwidth public side can ever use.
So when I am not home, I don't care if people sharing my wifi use almost all of my bandwidth. When I start using my own bandwidth though, the public side should be throttled down according to the figures I have set.
all the best,
drew
zotz
PP is a lie. Yes, this happened to *one* person. It wasn't as bad as the PP said. Over and done with.
why the discussion?
in the 1st place. Sharing connections so they become nodes in a wireless connection, gives oneself plausible deniability in regards what one downloads. Well anyway, to the same extent one has by running a web cafe from one's own connection.
You know Wifi was originally designed so everyone was covered by overlapping free/open Wifi, giving everyone covered "multithreaded" internet connections & thus maximum bandwidth via all this parallelism between one's wifi modem & the internet. Of course it's an honour system in regards users adding to this Wifi web / contributing to it by having their own connection at home open to others & thus becoming another node.
I'm sure these groups have laudable goals, but there are two huge roadblocks preventing what they're proposing, and they just seem to ignore them. If you want to advance this cause, you can start by addressing these issues instead of pretending like they don't exist.
First, what if someone does something illegal while using your wifi and you're left taking the rap? And yes, sure you can say that an IP does not equal a person, but to use that defense, it's going to cost you a lot of time and money in court that 99% of the population cannot afford.
Second, every residential ISP I've ever used has language in their TOS that specifically says you are not allowed to share your access with anyone that is not a member of your household, or a guest of a member of your household. This legally prevents you from running an open hotspot for the purpose of providing access to strangers.
Given the above, it's incredibly risky to run an open hotspot. Anyone that does so either doesn't know about the above, or (probably mistakenly) thinks they can beat the legal system when it comes knocking.