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)."

Comments

Bad idea.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Bad idea.

[Sigma 7]

Easy to fix. If you want to access someone's WiFi, you log into the proxy server on that network.

This token may be sent via email, SMS, or determined from the comptuer's MAC address. From there, the WiFi host is protected, but they can still track down the person trying to view the Little Lacy Surprise Pageant.

Re:Bad idea.

[icebike]

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.

How ever, once open wifi is the norm, such prosecute the IP address holder techniques would not be possible. Cops would actually have to do some real work of finding the sources rather than going after the sinks.

Re:Bad idea.

[Synerg1y]

They'd make open wifi networks illegal for those very reasons with the way things are going now.

Re:Bad idea.

[dbet]

If that's the case, why isn't every Starbucks shut down for facilitating CP downloads? I think it's a fear that's blown far out of proportion. The most likely negative of sharing wifi is the person maxing out your bandwidth with Netflix downloads.

Re:Bad idea.

[Obfuscant]

Easy to fix. If you want to access someone's WiFi, you log into the proxy server on that network.

What is the practical difference between "closed wifi" and "open wifi with a mandatory log-in"? In both cases you must obtain a credential (and thus implied permission) to use the network. You've just moved the access limit from the radio to the wire side.

In general, though, the reason this movement will fail is the same reason why people want it to work. Selfishness. The same person that says "I would like to have wifi without paying for it when I am somewhere not home" has already said "I don't want to pay for my own 3g/data plan so I can have network access when I am not home". That same attitude would result in "why should I pay for network at home if I can get it free from my neighbor".

In the final result, everyone who wants free wifi wherever they go will be the ones who are least likely to provide free wifi to others, and that means the entire system is a self-fulfilling failure.

If you notice, most of the free wifi you find is not from altruistic people, it is from businesses that want to lure you into their establishment so you'll be likely to buy things from them. Profit motive. The altruist who opens his home network to free wifi for others has no profit motive, and while it is wonderful he exists, there is no incentive other than personal pleasure for him to do it. He can't depend on it being repaid, and he can't depend on it not being abused.

Re:Bad idea.

[mark-t]

All an ISP has to do is require, as part of their ToS, that a subscriber assumes full civil liability for any use of their subscribed IP address. If they don't agree, too bad. No service at all.

Re:Bad idea.

[Nerdfest]

Actually, if a large number of people did this, the number of Tor exists would be far larger than it is now. Since most public access points would be unused most of the time, the throughput would theoretically be quite good. This does of course neglect to take the probable douchbag factor into account.

Re:Bad idea.

[rarumberger]

Maybe so. Let's imagine a scenario:

Cops determine that someone has been downloading CP, and trace it back to your house. They launch an immediate investigation, with you as the obvious prime suspect. They're aware that they can't prosecute on IP alone, so they do their diligence, and after searching your seized devices, they exonerate you. Publicly, even.

You still lose your family and your job, and your life is basically over, because your name once appeared in a report investigating kiddy pr0n. You will be personally threatened, maybe even assaulted, by vigilantes who want to "protect" their children from "monsters" like you. There is literally no amount of public exoneration that will make the average Joe believe you're not a pervert.

Me? I'd rather just keep my wireless secure.

Re:Bad idea.

[number11]

Cops determine that someone has been downloading CP, and trace it back to your house. They launch an immediate investigation, with you as the obvious prime suspect. They're aware that they can't prosecute on IP alone, so they do their diligence, and after searching your seized devices, they exonerate you. Publicly, even.

You still lose your family and your job, and your life is basically over, because your name once appeared in a report investigating kiddy pr0n. You will be personally threatened, maybe even assaulted, by vigilantes who want to "protect" their children from "monsters" like you. There is literally no amount of public exoneration that will make the average Joe believe you're not a pervert.

So you're saying, "there are a lot of abusive asshats out there." That's true. Are you going to let that keep you from doing things?

There's no shame in saying "yes, my neighbors, employer, and family are ignorant bigots and fools and possibly dangerous". But recognize that's what you are saying.

Re:Bad idea.

[Penguinisto]

That's easy, and all in how the media reports it on the local evening news:

1) "Child porn was downloaded repeatedly at a local Starbucks" - Translation? Viewer thinks that some pervert went to a Starbucks and downloaded CP, thus Starbucks is not to blame.

2) "Child porn was downloaded repeatedly at the home of a local resident" - Translation? Viewer thinks that *you*, the homeowner, are the pervert. Enough said, no?

Re:Bad idea.

[PraiseBob]

there is no incentive other than personal pleasure for him to do it

Personal pleasure can also encompass the joys of harvesting passwords, accounts, personal information & private pictures...

Re:Bad idea.

[DarwinSurvivor]

You do know that the ISP's keep logs of WHEN that IP was assigned to which house right? All the MPAA/RIAA/whoever has to do is ask who had the IP at a given time.

Re:Bad idea.

[RealGene]

It's more likely that the cops would ruin your life first, and ask questions later. And don't expect an apology when they finally release you.

Re:Bad idea.

[mark-t]

Right... so running an open wifi on a home consumer subscription Internet connection would be a violation of your ISP's ToS. You get disconnected, and have *NO* internet.

Re:Bad idea.

[Farmer Pete]

There are hybrid approaches. A good hacked router can serve up multiple SSID networks. You could have an internal protected WPA2 network, and then a segmented open network. You should even be able to direct traffic to some website (hosted on the router) with some disclaimers. I don't know if a simple website with an "accept" button would get you off the hook for random people's actions, but common sense says it would. I know, I know, the RIAA and MPAA don't employ people with common sense, but hopefully the Judge has some.

Re:Bad idea.

[Lazere]

Not quite. As far as I know, becoming an exit node is entirely optional. You can take advantage of the network without ever hosting an exit.

Re:Bad idea.

[Sloppy]

I think his point is that if a cop does that in 2013, a judge and/or jury will believe he got the right suspect, since most people don't have (or see) open wifi so it's a hard-to-believe defense (and yes, in real life, criminal justice is based on preponderance and likelihood of evidence, not proof). "The defendant says he has an open AP? Nobody I know does that. Sounds like bullshit."

If open wifis were the norm, then abusive cops might still be hauling people to court, but the "evidence" would be worthless. The judge or everyone on the jury would think "There are ten open APs in my neghborhood too, just like this defendant says his is. The fact that his IP was used, doesn't really suggest anything to me about his guilt." Cop still gets the pleasure from the power trip of harming innocent people, but his conviction rate (i.e. a certain measure of his penis size) is low. Eventually, everyone can tell he's the bad guy. His 2013 equivalent, in contrast, is a shining example of justice-giver.

Re:Bad idea.

[joe_frisch]

Even if they clear you of the child porn charges and expunge the records, they will probably hang onto your computer, and ALL your backup devices (thats standard practice), until they are done investigating - could be a couple of years.

In scanning all your your hardware, they may find that you've illegally downloaded Beatles tunes. Maybe somewhere in your vast legal porn collection they find a picture that is actually child porn (its not like you can distinguish an 17 year old form an 18 year old with perfect accuracy). Law enforcement will try to prosecute so that they don't look like they've wasted all their money investigating for nothing.

I just don't see any motivation to take such a chance .

If everything goes perfectly, then you wind up paying for bandwidth for other people to use.

Re:Bad idea.

[spire3661]

Then dont visit that site in the clear, use another connection, turn on your 3g phone, the choices are legion....its not rocket science.

Re:Bad idea.

[AF_Cheddar_Head]

Actually the average time an individual IP address is assigned to a device using DHCP is much longer that half the lease period. This is because when half the lease period is elapsed the device attempts to renew the lease for the same address. This succeeds the vast majority of the time >90%. In addition if a device disappears from the network and then reappears after lease expiration most DHCP servers will assign the same IP address if available.

Many home users have had the same IP for years because of these quirks, only getting a new IP if for some reason the ISP changes network addressing schemes.

Of course the above does not apply to mobile devices that may be continually changing the network they get service from.

Re:Bad idea.

[Obfuscant]

"Defendant is capable of loading and firing a gun, convict them of manslaughter!"

Every one of your examples is missing the critical part. For example: "Defendant is capable of loading and firing a gun" OWNS A GUN, AND SOMEONE WAS SHOT WITH THAT GUN WHILE THE DEFENDANT WAS IN POSSESSION OF THAT GUN "convict them ...".

Trying to claim that you set up protections to keep people from accessing CP AS A DEFENSE to your access point being used to access CP kind of requires that someone accessed CP using your access point and network. You don't need to try that defense if nobody accesses CP, or if someone stole your NAP and put it on their own network to access CP.

Given your kneejerk insulting attitude, I don't expect this will make sense to you, however.

Re:Bad idea.

[QRDeNameland]

In general, though, the reason this movement will fail is the same reason why people want it to work. Selfishness. The same person that says "I would like to have wifi without paying for it when I am somewhere not home" has already said "I don't want to pay for my own 3g/data plan so I can have network access when I am not home". That same attitude would result in "why should I pay for network at home if I can get it free from my neighbor".

I can't speak for others, but I'd consider providing free access to my wifi under 3 conditions:

1) There is a brain-dead simple way to ensure that my internal network is secure from anyone using it as an open access point,

2) a similarly brain-dead way to limit how much can be downloaded per open access client, and

3) legal assurance that I was in no way liable for anything downloaded from my open access point.

While the Open Wireless Movement (OWS - is that a conicidence?) could probably easily provide the first two, the third is a matter of legislation and thus is the real sticking point. I imagine there are many others like me that don't recoil at the very idea of someone "freeloading" and would be happy to provide a service to the community, but if I'm going to face any chance of liability for doing so, or if it's just a matter of being a PITA to set up, then it's not happening. If it were easy AND there were no potential legal consequences, I think you'd be surprised how many folks would *not* be that selfish.

Re:Bad idea.

[zipn00b]

If enough people did that then the case load would be so oeverwhelming the budget to handle that many raids would dry up pretty fast. Not to mention the overall LEO resources. Which would be a good result in the end as they'd have to stop the absurd raids and be VERY certain they had a viable case before doing so. Of course that would kill the political motivations of most prosecutors......

Re:Bad idea.

[theNAM666]

I like the British Telecomm model in UK.

They provider router and manage. You decide whether you want it open to BT's network.

If you close, you don't get access to the BT network. If you open, you get a user/pass that can be used on every open BT WiFi router in the UK.

Works pretty well. No US company would ever think of doing something so simple and effective.

Open network?

[Dins]

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....

Re:Open network?

[Bigby]

Along with liability, I would be worried about bandwidth starvation and isolation of my internal network from those "passing by". These can all be done today, but if the router an easy menu to set that up easily, it would work.

I would imagine that if it became too popular, the Internet providers will start capping usage to something crazy low.

Re:Open network?

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. So long at the MPAA and RIAA goon squads are searching out "IP violators", I don't intend to get sued. Also, from a moral standpoint, there are some web sites to which I don't want to increase traffic (such as terrorists).

Re:Open network?

[Defenestrar]

You aren't liable and you'll probably get a successful good free lawyer (well free to you) if anyone gives you grief.

Worried about your door kicked in? I'd say it's your civic duty - and if my reasons aren't good enough for you, maybe you'd consider the optional counter-suits like winning the lottery

Re:Open network?

[SuricouRaven]

You've really got two problems to deal with. The civil liability, and the criminal prosecutions. The first gets you in trouble for all the copyright infringement, the latter the downloading of child porn. That's a particular concern, because the usual social approach to child porn is 'Hang the perverted monster.' Even if you can prove beyond all doubt that it was someone else, a hard thing to do, you'll still find that your name is dirt, no company will hire even an accused pedophile, and your neighbours start smashing your windows in an effort to make you leave.

Re:Open network?

[nschubach]

Not to mention having your door knocked down at 3 AM and being raided like the Taliban because your IP was logged on a questionable location.

Re:Open network?

[Chris Mattern]

Frankly, I don't give a damn if no one's been *successfully* prosecuted. Getting involved in a court case--even successfully--is a nightmare timesink, and I won't risk it.

What usually happens is the police bust down your door, confiscate all your computers and you maybe get them back 18 months later after spending a small fortune on legal fees.

Exactly. When you can tell me that won't happen, I might consider it.

Re:Open network?

[mea2214]

I've been running an open wifi for over a year with no problems so far. I have a dual ethernet linux box running iptables with a set of white listed ports allowed through. My wifi routers are mere access points all switched on a single subnet to the linux firewall. Over time I looked at generated traffic and opened up ports various devices use for legitimate services like 993, 587, 443 etc. I block all UDP ports except 123, 4500 and 500. Some services, like iCloud, like to abuse the network using UDP. streams. That along with all unauthorized port traffic gets dropped (using -j DROP) into the bit bucket -- the device deserves no response from the firewall. Bittorrent simply doesn't work in this environment out of the box (although I acknowledge it's possible a determined someone could rig something to make it work but people who know how to do that are rare and it's probably not worth their time because I'll probably eventually catch them). I also detect bad SSL sessions by monitoring the first pushed byte sent over whatever TCP ports I leave open. Tcpdump runs constantly and I have some perl scripts to analyze the traffic and create reports of usage. This allows me to see if some new legitimate service needs a port open or if devices are trying to abuse the network which gets them banned by perl script. Skype doesn't work either and I have found it to be a particularly obnoxious service making it look like Bittorrent. Anyone pounding on Skype to get it to work gets banned by IP address. And all port 80 goes through a Squid proxy. Granted a determined user could get around my bans for awhile but for the most part I have found the real obnoxious actors are bad services like Skype and iCloud. And for the most part people use port 80 for web and 443 for encrypted stuff.

So far things have worked out and I get around 250 unique visitors per month. The vast majority of users just get on, do some stuff like check mail or train schedules and get off. I have been doing this more or less as a "science project" to see how these modern devices communicate. Plus the neighbors get Internet access. I have found the bandwidth used per month is rather trivial. I just recently got a tablet with just wifi and so far have had no problems with anything not working through my iptables with white listed ports.

Re:Open network?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Frankly, I don't give a damn if no one's been *successfully* prosecuted. Getting involved in a court case--even successfully--is a nightmare timesink, and I won't risk it.

Some cops have a saying for that, "you might beat the rap, but you won't beat the ride." It is a despicable way to run a so-called justice system.

Unfortunately, the only way to reduce abuse like that is for enough people either courageous or stupid enough to do exactly what you are afraid to do.

Legal obligations?

[danomac]

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.

Re:Legal obligations?

[Defenestrar]

The laws are already on your side: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/08/open-wifi-and-copyright-liability-setting-record

As the courts have already demonstrated: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/07/judge-copyright-troll-cant-bully-internet-subscriber-bogus-legal-theory

Re:Legal obligations?

[Anonymous Coward]

That does not protect you from searches, equipment confiscations, privacy invading investigations and high legal costs for defending yourself. But yeah, after 2 sleepless years you will be acquitted. great.
There was a time when "presumed innocent" used to mean something. Not anymore.

Re:Legal obligations?

[Joce640k]

Maybe so, but the hassle and expense of mounting a legal defense simply isn't worth it.

Even if a case is quickly dismissed by the judge it'll still cost you time and money to get there.

If you leave your doors unlocked

[kawabago]

your insurance is void.

Re:If you leave your doors unlocked

[Anonymous Coward]

Not sure about home insurance, but I know here in Canada that isn't true of vehicle insurance. My father had his truck stolen with the keys in the ignition. The insurance company tried to convince him that he wasn't covered because of that, but after about 6 or 7 rounds of intimidation from the insurance company they finally relented and admitted that stealing is stealing and it didn't matter how it happened. Now if he wouldn't have been so stubborn they would have won and my dad would have been left without his payout.

In the end, the truck was his property and he did not give permission for it to be taken. That is the crime. It's no less a crime if it's easy or hard to steal. Now if he had put a sign on it "free to a good home" and someone took it then that would be different.

Pay for trunk lines

[JeffSh]

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..

Two issues...

[slasher999]

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.

but my LAN security!

[MyDixieWrecked]

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.

Re:but my LAN security!

[inputdev]

Another guy had 8GB of photos of his kids and family.

You don't sound like you were trying to be malicious, but didn't you consider not snooping on other peoples machines? I still like the idea of having unlocked doors and not needing security systems on houses, etc. I expect other people to have a moral compass and not walk in and go through my stuff. I get your point, but I wish you would elevate your mentality to where you aren't violating peoples privacy and feeling justified because they didn't actively prevent you from doing it.

Re:but my LAN security!

[Iphtashu Fitz]

If I decided to do this, I would need to operate my LAN like every node was bare on the internet.

Just get a second router and set up a DMZ. That's effectively what I did when I switched over to FiOS since Verizon gives you a router to use. My home network is now basically:

(fios conenction) -> (fios router) -> (my router) -> (my LAN)

I give out the wifi on the fios router to family/friends who visit. So they have internet access but they don't have any access to the equipment on my LAN.

Common Good

[crakbone]

" the Movement To Give Away Your Internet For the Good of Humanity" For the Good of humanity? Have they been on the internet?

Too bad it probably violates all current TOS

[Anonymous Coward]

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 ,"

Re:Too bad it probably violates all current TOS

[dpilot]

Mod this up. Comcast is the same as ATT, in this respect.

I'm rather surprised that only one A.C. mentions TOS. I was about to, but I was scanning the comments looking to see if anyone else had. In all of the comments you're the only one. Most of the comments were concerned about the MafiAA, kiddie pr0n, and loss of bandwidth.

But TOS is a civil matter. Share your connection and they're entitled to cut you off.

If you have a smarter router

[Sheetrock]

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.

Did this already, was asked to stop.

[NoahsMyBro]

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.

Re:Did this already, was asked to stop.

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

I agree with the other response - that guy was outsourcing his parenting problems on to you. Does he expect the librarians to limit what books his kids can borrow from the public library too?

On the other hand, he could have made life difficult for you being a neighbor and all. I would have suggested a compromise - block his kid's MAC address. If the kid figures out that he is being blocked by MAC address and is smart enough to change it, then (A) good for him and (b) it is now up to the parent to do some parenting of their own.

Re:Did this already, was asked to stop.

[NoahsMyBro]

I was only providing the freely-accessible network to be neighborly. Turns out my doing so was a problem for my neighbor. So, again, in the interests of being a good neighbor I turned the netwok off.

It didn't hurt me at all to do so. (In fact, I saved on electricity costs, negligible though they may be.)

Over time I've no doubt at all that my neighbors have done far more for me than I've done for them - this wasn't at all a big deal and I was happy to accomodate.

Re:Hypocrite

[lister king of smeg]

Im giving them net access for free the telecoms are being paid for access to the net big deifference.

"Precious Bandwidth"?

[Kurt Granroth]

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.

More challenging than most users are capable of

[macemoneta]

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.

Re:Hypocrite

[MozeeToby]

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.

I love the concept of open Wifi..

[siliconeyes]

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 :-(

DONT DO IT! I have personal experience with this

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Better idea: standard open mesh wifi

[CityZen]

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.