Comcast Converting 50,000 Houston Home Routers Into Public WiFi Hotspots

New submitter green453 writes: 'As a Houston resident with limited home broadband options, I found the following interesting: Dwight Silverman of the Houston Chronicle reports (warning: paywalled) that Comcast plans to turn 50,000 home routers into public Wi-Fi hotspots without their users providing consent. Comcast plans to eventually convert 150,000 home routers into a city-wide WiFi network. A similar post (with no paywall) by the same author on the SeattlePI Tech Blog explains the change. From the post on SeattlePI: "What's interesting about this move is that, by default, the feature is being turned on without its subscribers' prior consent. It's an opt-out system – you have to take action to not participate. Comcast spokesman Michael Bybee said on Monday that notices about the hotspot feature were mailed to customers a few weeks ago, and email notifications will go out after it's turned on. But it's a good bet that this will take many Comcast customers by surprise."' This follows similar efforts in Chicago and the Twin Cities.

Comments

Liability

[Anonymous Coward]

So does this mean that charges for copyright infringement (or other such activities) will no longer be brought against people based on IP Address evidence alone? Because this certainly gives a lot of people a lot of plausible deniability.

Secondly, how are the clients being compensated for the hotspot service they are now providing?

Re:Liability

[Anonymous Coward]

>compensate the commoners
Oh wait, you're serious?
letmelaughharder.gif

Re:Liability

[rudy_wayne]

Yes, this is a shitty thing to do, but, Comcast is a shitty company, so no surprise there. But there is a simple answer. Turn it off. If you don't know how, do a little research and figure out how. If you can't be bothered to expend a little mental energy, then it must not be much of a problem.

Re:Liability

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, this is a shitty thing to do, but, Comcast is a shitty company, so no surprise there. But there is a simple answer. Turn it off. If you don't know how, do a little research and figure out how. If you can't be bothered to expend a little mental energy, then it must not be much of a problem.

No no, the answer is to sue Comcast.
What they're doing is 100% illegal irrespective of the shit they put in their TOS/Eula.

Re:Liability

[Anonymous Coward]

Not being from the US, could you please explain what makes this illegal?

Re:Liability

[Wycliffe]

Yes, this is a shitty thing to do

Why is this such a bad thing? Everyone already knows that ISPs oversell their bandwidth. As long as you still
get the speed you are paying for why should you care if someone else is using your wifi anymore than you care
if your neighbor is also a comcast subscriber. I doubt it increases your electricity cost and you get the benefit of
using other people's wifi when you are out and about. This seems like a win-win for everyone. I don't see the problem
if it's done correctly especially as you have multiple ways to opt out.

Re:Liability

[ottawanker]

I'm assuming their modems/routers have a way of provisioning a second IP address so that the wifi hotspot doesn't get you in legal trouble (or steal your bandwidth).

Re:Liability

[Anonymous Coward]

Not being from the US, could you please explain what makes this illegal?

His ego.

Re:Liability

[nigelo]

As long as you still get the speed you are paying for... ...if it's done correctly especially as you have multiple ways to opt out.

Three big "ifs" there: if you get the speed you are paying for, if done correctly, (if) you have multiple(?) ways to opt out.

Re:Liability

[Anonymous Coward]

Awesome. Best response I've seen in a while.

Re:Liability

[Anonymous Coward]

The routers will probably use two IP addresses to identify subscriber vs. public traffic. I cannot confirm this, but this isn't hard to do if the modems already support it.

What is really scary is when network evolutionists suggest doing hand-overs of cell traffic to customer WiFi hotspots/pico-cells (see 4G LTE rev 10/11)

Re:Liability

[lister king of smeg]

I'm assuming their modems/routers have a way of provisioning a second IP address so that the wifi hotspot doesn't get you in legal trouble (or steal your bandwidth).

If that is the case does that mean I just have to change my mac address and connect to the public wifi rather than my normal ssid, and I can torrent everything I want and not worry about getting hit by a copyright infringement law suite.

Re:Liability

[tompaulco]

Opting out should never be considered a reasonable mechanism for not being in a subscription group unless you have first opted in.

Re:Liability

[tippe]

No no, the answer is to cancel your own Comcast service and mooch off your neighbours who don't know any better. Unfortunately you'll be hurting your neighbours, but in return you'll be hitting Comcast where it hurts not once, but twice: once for having dropped your service, and once again for using essentially the same service you used to pay for via their new city-wide free WiFi.

Seriously, what idiot thought this would be a good idea? Punish your customers and give moochers, criminals and cheapskates free and anonymous internet. Brilliant...

Re:Liability

[jythie]

Gotta love antenna that can be physically unscrewed and removed.

Re:Liability

[tompaulco]

How does it identify public traffic versus subscriber traffic? Will each router have two SSIDs by default?

Re:Liability

[jythie]

Comcast is a major cable company, they do not 'break' the law, they write it.

Re:Liability

[Anonymous Coward]

They activated this in Nantucket, MA last year. I have tried opting a friends router out of it by going into the router settings and there is no option for it. They never even were told about the wifi hotspot until I pointed it out. Seems like people with certain Wifi routers that comcast provides are offering this around the island while others do not.

Re:Liability

[Jason Levine]

As long as you still get the speed you are paying for why should you care if someone else is using your wifi anymore than you care if your neighbor is also a comcast subscriber.

Because someone might attach to your Wi-fi and share something in a manner that infringes copyright. Then, the MPAA/RIAA will come after you.

Note, I completely agree that targeting people based on IP address is idiotic, but you would be the person who would either need to spend the time/money to fight this lawsuit or would need to settle with them (likely agreeing that you did the crime) to make it go away.

On the upside, it could add more dents into the "this IP address proves it was that person" claims of the MPAA/RIAA, but who would want to volunteer for this expense? Or, more accurately, who would want Comcast to volunteer them for this expense unless they go through technological measures to opt out?

Re:Liability

[un1nsp1red]

It's not *free* wi-fi. You still have to have a Comcast account to connect to any one of them.

Re:Liability

[lart2150]

The public hotspot has a different public ip address from the subscriber's public ip address.

Re:Liability

[jellomizer]

There are legal concerns. Your neighbor using your WiFi do do illegal stuff, piracy, hacking, abusing people.... Means you just might get a knock on your door.
Sure IP address alone doesn't prove your guilt. However it is enough for a search Warrant, at least a knock on your door.

You also have issues of protection. You have people using their PC inside your local network (That is why I use a non-wireless cable modem and use my own Wi-Fi router) So I can control who does and doesn't have access inside my personal network.

Re:Liability

[houghi]

*No, it was just a change in the AUP. That new AUP was on display.
âoeOn display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.â
*Thatâ(TM)s the display department.
âoeWith a flashlight.â
*Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.
âoeSo had the stairs.â
*But look, you found the notice, didnâ(TM)t you?
âoeYes,â said Arthur, âoeyes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying âBeware of the Leopard.â

Re:Liability

[Anonymous Coward]

There are instructions in the article about how to turn it off. But how can you be certain that Comcast will honour your opt-out request?

Re:Liability

[Qzukk]

I didn't bother to read the story, but I'm going to talk out my ass here and assume what comcast wants to do is sell comcast customers an "on the go" service. You go visit Houston and you have 150000 hotspots you can sign into with your comcast account. The bandwidth you use is tied to your account and deducted from your account's cap.

Re:Liability

[houghi]

Secondly, how are the clients being compensated for the hotspot service they are now providing?

Probably with the right to buy it from them so they can use it elsewhere.

Re:Liability

[Anonymous Coward]

Not being from the US, could you please explain what makes this illegal?

His ego.

You think Comcast will be liable if some douche downloads kiddy porn, or a film or your "private" public wifi hotspot ? There is an enormous difference between a private individual putting up a wifi public hotspot with all the legal liabilities that go with it and a company that uses the equipment you lease and that is situated on your private property and opens it to the public. If you can't see the difference may I suggest going to the ophtalmologist ?
Comcast wants public wifi hotspots for its customers ? Put them on public space. Comcast with this move is turning you into an ISP with all the problems that go with it. It can't do that. Hence the illegality. Remember just because a corporation comes up with a fucked up plan does not make it legal.

Re:Liability

[Anonymous Coward]

You did opt-in buting comcast services so...

Re:Liability

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, I have to use comcast, I pay for the highest tier of service, I get 2 Mbps IRL. I know it's not my network, it's all spec'd for gigabit or better, I've gotten local transfers between computers to higher. If they can't provide a customer who has written them and complained the level of service they promise, then how are they going to provide extra bandwidth to the WiFi. Besides, the RF congestion will be a PITA. They are using the 5GHZ portion too? Oh, look that removes a big portion of what makes it good, and you still have to get really close to use it. I would get jack sh*t from letting them use it, other than maybe being in trouble with various governments because I have to vet the things that go on the network, and it would be upstream from the security box(I don't trust them to be aware of hardware they didn't install). And no, I can't get buisness, they don't offer it here, nor does anyone else offer service here, I'm screwed here.

Re:Liability

[Anonymous Coward]

They did opt-in buying comcast services!

Re: Liability

[Anonymous Coward]

+1

This so much.

It is not a "public" wi-fi network, it's a wi-fi network that Comcast subscribers get - for no additional charge - as long as they're within a stone's throw from another Comcast subscriber's house.

And for the people who are moaning about SWAT teams and child porn and copyright infringement, do you REALLY think that Comcast won't be able to tell the difference between two subscribers on their own goddamn network? You DO realise that it's just one big network, right? They obviously have some way to tell which subscriber is accessing it from any particular point, right? Why should their wi-fi network be any different? Just because it's piggybacking on your router.

Sheesh. It's like people think that, just because it's sitting in their office or living room, they own everything that passes through it. No, you don't, and Comcast would probably be pretty unhappy if you somehow hacked their modem to let you see every packet that hit its WAN port.

Re:Liability

[Jane Q. Public]

Unless they have some way to distinguish "free" wifi access via your router from your own traffic, then this scheme is incompatible with usage caps.

I am all for open access points. I have been running one for years. BUT, I do not condone Comcast doing it to people without their prior consent.

I use my own DOCSIS 3 cable adapter, and my own router, with my own private network and an open public network. My ISP has no say in the matter.

Re:Liability

[freeze128]

Here are some facts:

- Public wireless users will be using a different IP address from the LAN/internal wireless users.
- In order to use the "Public" wireless hotspot, you will need to already have a Comcast username and password. It's not OPEN wifi, but open to other Comcast subscribers.
- "Public" wifi bandwidth will not affect the bandwidth of the home router (so says Comcast).

Re:Liability

[farble1670]

Secondly, how are the clients being compensated for the hotspot service they are now providing?

with every day low, low prices on comcast internet service.

Re: Liability

[Anonymous Coward]

If it's anything like the Time Warner service, once you've logged onto the wi-fi network it'll continue working after you're no longer their customer, as long as your device hasn't forgotten the authentication token that it set when it logged in. No idea how long that lasts, but I haven't been a Time Warner customer for about a year now and I had a rather confusing moment when I received an e-mail while driving around town (my device only works on wi-fi, and while I have a hotspot it wasn't turned on at the time).

Re:Liability

[freeze128]

Wrap your router in tin-foil, and then ground the sucker.

Re:Liability

[TWX]

And if not, that's what chicken wire or aluminum foil is for.

Re:Liability

[wbr1]

If the router is smart enough to run 2 different networks, then the modem side of the router can also conceivably make 2 connections. with the customers IP and the public hotspot IP. Also, even if this is not the case, router logs should indicate the MAC address of the infringing client since it is also serving as the access point.

The former would also allow comcast to continue running the public hotspot, even in the event of customer nonpayment and soft (sandboxed bootfile) disconnect.

This is one reason to only use your own router, even if you must use the providers modem. You can control the software/logs/etc. and the only MAC the modem sees is the WiFi router.

Re: Liability

[Anonymous Coward]

No, they won't come after you, they'll come after whomever Comcast said did the infringement. And while it's certainly amusing to imagine that Comcast might not be able to tell whether it was you or someone else using THEIR WI-FI network, I'm sure their lawyers have probably advised them of this risk and they've figured out some way to force people to log in (say, using the e-mail and password associated with their Comcast account) so that they would be able to tell who to blame when something like that happens.

Re:Liability

[pkinetics]

Because most people run Windows computers, and don't have any real security in place.

1. Connect to someone's wifi.
2. Deploy wormy type virus to any unpatched winblowz machine.
3. ???
4. Profit

Re:Liability

[wbr1]

Opting out should never be considered a reasonable mechanism for not being in a subscription group unless you have first opted in.

Why are you poking me?????

Because! You are in my new hourly poke subscription! It is free and fun! If you prefer you can opt-out by simply filling out this paperwork.

Oh... we are sorry to see you go. But rejoice! By opting out of the pok of the hour group you have been automatically subscribed to the 15 minute nipple pinch! (opt out instructions below.)

Re:Liability

[jythie]

Or bolt cutters.

Re:Liability

[nairnr]

As long as you still get the speed you are paying for why should you care if someone else is using your wifi anymore than you care if your neighbor is also a comcast subscriber.

Because someone might attach to your Wi-fi and share something in a manner that infringes copyright. Then, the MPAA/RIAA will come after you.

Note, I completely agree that targeting people based on IP address is idiotic, but you would be the person who would either need to spend the time/money to fight this lawsuit or would need to settle with them (likely agreeing that you did the crime) to make it go away.

On the upside, it could add more dents into the "this IP address proves it was that person" claims of the MPAA/RIAA, but who would want to volunteer for this expense? Or, more accurately, who would want Comcast to volunteer them for this expense unless they go through technological measures to opt out?

You obviously didn't read the article. They are using the wifi and completely segregating traffic. It appears with a distiinct SSID and on a different IP. The capacity is on a different channel, so gain the host user isn't affected.

Re:Liability

[nairnr]

Yes, two SSIDs, separate channel for traffic

Re:Liability

[jedidiah]

It's a broadcast device. EVERYONE around you is effected. This will just add to the electronic clutter of your neighborhood. If it doesn't annoy you directly, it might annoy the guy next door and interfere with his network.

Re:Liability

[Obfuscant]

Because someone might attach to your Wi-fi and share something in a manner that infringes copyright. Then, the MPAA/RIAA will come after you.

That's only if the router is configured to use the same addresses for the Wi-Fi that it issues to your internal network. It is possible that the Wi-Fi side will be different and traceable to someone else, especially if you need to have Comcast credentials to use it. And I have no doubt that the IP will be different just so that the free users won't be accessing your internal network by default. If Comcast really does open private internal networks up to outside access through this, then yes, they are dumb and stupid and evil.

I was ready to see people here lauding a move to make wi-fi more available using existing infrastructure, and I'm a little surprised to see Comcast being blasted as evil for doing this. Many people choose to do this voluntarily, so I'm guessing the main objection is the decision to make this opt-out. However, by making it opt-out many more people who might have chosen to do it by themselves if they knew how will participate.

Of course, I have no dog in this fight since Comcast doesn't have the admin access to my wireless to make it theirs.

Re:Liability

[Anonymous Coward]

As the last three ISP's I've used have all had significant, regular periods where they could not provide even half of the bandwidth I was paying for, I would have serious misgivings about hooking random, extra devices in through my bottlenecked connection. (Comcast was unbearable, but then I had to deal with Frontier, which proved that Comcast was still only a neophyte at the devilry trade. When we couldn't get a workable speed with a single connection over a 5MB line, they talked us into upgrading to a 10Mb line that would supposedly allow them to upgrade a piece of equipment upstream from our house. We never got over about 2 Mb on if it was more than 8 hours after one of their inept repairmen had left our home. We went for a week getting 300 - 800 BAUD speeds on a DSL line. Not MB, not kB, but basically the same speed I had in 1986 on a dial-up modem.

So, no, I don't trust Comcast or any other ISP to be able to balance an unpredictable load when they can't even supply service to their fixed, contracted outlets.

Re:Liability

[Anonymous Coward]

No, they simply switch authentication from being the owner of the wi-fi router to having to enter a pre-supplied username, password and associated account number.

Where I live just now, there is a community supplied wi-fi, but you have to register with your address, name, SSN to get a username/password.

Re:Liability

[jxander]

I'd start with overage charges or throttling..

If some other comcast customer exceeds some preset data limit on my router, do I get billed? Does my bandwidth get restricted?

Re:Liability

[nabsltd]

They are using the wifi and completely segregating traffic. It appears with a distiinct SSID and on a different IP. The capacity is on a different channel, so gain the host user isn't affected.

It's a completely separate segment of the private IP space, but once it heads through the router, every other device on the Internet (including the MPAA/RIAA scanners) will see the exact same public IP as the customer is given.

I'm assuming that Comcast doesn't have 50,000 spare routable IP addresses, but that's not a bad assumption.

Re:Liability

[jxander]

Step 1: Connect to "external SSID"
Step 2: Download illegal music/movies/pr0n/etc
Step 3: Deny responsibility, as the "culprit" was connected to the external SSID and clearly not YOU, connected to the internal SSID.

Add a step for MAC spoofing, if you really want to go that extra mile.

Re:Liability

[Agares]

This is going to open up a lot of private networks. Which is bad since most people don't secure their computers very well due to lack of know how. Also with this I could easily get on someone’s WiFi and snoop around. This is very very bad in my opinion.

Re:Liability

[Anonymous Coward]

Add a step for MAC spoofing, if you really want to go that extra mile.

I use LINUX you insensitive clod!

Re:Liability

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you meant "Bewâre the Leopârd"

Re: Liability

[Bengie]

The same way the bank owns your house of you have a mortgage, so the bank can stop over and let people into your house without warning, right?

Re:Liability

[Kalriath]

Oh, so you've seen how the system works then? I can almost guarantee that it backhauls the traffic over a separate VLAN or something using non-routable address space until it hits a CGNAT router at their CO.

Re:Liability

[darkestsoul]

You also have issues of protection. You have people using their PC inside your local network (That is why I use a non-wireless cable modem and use my own Wi-Fi router) So I can control who does and doesn't have access inside my personal network.

From the article: "Comcast says the hotspot – which appears as “xfinitywifi” to those searching for a Wi-Fi connection – is completely separate from the home network. Someone accessing the Net through the hotspot can’t get to the computers, printers, mobile devices, streaming boxes and more sitting on the host network."

Re:Liability

[Anonymous Coward]

"It appears with a distiinct SSID and on a different IP."

You obviously don't understand how wireless routers work.

It being a different SSID is irrelevant, the router is still plugged into a single phone line at your house and uses the same external IP.

Re:Liability

[Anonymous Coward]

" Public wireless users will be using a different IP address from the LAN/internal wireless users. "

Bullshit.

Re:Liability

[Anonymous Coward]

Secondly, how are the clients being compensated for the hotspot service they are now providing?

Anyone with half a brain will simply cancel their Comcast Internet plan. Don't worry about having an Internet connection, because the city will have free public Wi-Fi to use when it's done.

Re:Liability

[Anonymous Coward]

"Public" wifi bandwidth will not affect the bandwidth of the home router (so says Comcast).

And yet the speeds available to the "Public" wifi connection are dependent upon the speed tier of the individual Comcast accounts the routers are attached to. Color me skeptical.

Re:Liability

[Zebai]

The hotspot is only broadcast from the rented wireless gateway router/modem combo devices and it supports multiple IP addresses so the public hotspot is off a 2nd, isolated IP to prevent any problem with copyright etc.. It also doesn't count against your bandwidth or usage so you can still use your full speed your signed up for. Personally though I'd rather not have it my home either but I went out of my way to get a regular EMTA modem instead of the gateway for other reasons (the device itself is rather crappy)

Re:Liability

[Zebai]

Those modems are ip6 enabled so they should have plenty

Re:Liability

[Zebai]

You still have to sign in to a comcast ID to use the public hotspots the ones broadcasting your home does not have a free time period.

Re:Liability

[nigelo]

It's an a Comcast account setting, not a setting in the router.

Re:Liability

[TWX]

I was more referring to the kind that lack external antennas actually. I don't know what Comcast's gear looks like, but at my house i have a cablemodem that's a block-shape with no protrusions and also with no wifi. It hands off to my NAT router.

Re:Liability

[asmkm22]

I'm more curious about how they plan to separate the external IP addresses, considering how many lawsuits seem to hinge entirely on those.

Re:Liability

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup...that's what they claim. Considering this current action (and past actions), do you believe them?

Re: Liability

[Zordak]

That's not true at all, and is a bad analogy. You own your house. If the bank has a mortgage, then they have a lien on the house. If they want to take possession of it, they have to go through a foreclosure proceeding. They can't just walk into your living room and start watching TV. Your house is real property, which has lots of strong protections. Comcast, on the other hand, does own the router that they lease to you, which is a chattel and therefore subject to a different set of rights. No, they can't walk in and just take it (that would violate your real property rights). But they do own the network, and if their contract with you is written in a way that permits them to reconfigure a leased router to grant somebody else access to their network over wireless signals that you're leaking out into the air anyway, then yeah, they can do that.

Re: Liability

[Anonymous Coward]

do you REALLY think that Comcast won't be able to tell the difference between two subscribers on their own goddamn network?

This would never have happened if no one had negligently thrown around the word "public".

Re:Liability

[Zordak]

Comcast will be just as liable as they are now. This is not Comcast giving people access to your private network. For this to be even technologically feasible, it's going to have to be configured so that every router broadcasts the same SSID. That means it's going to be a separate virtual network from your home network. So some random guy is not going to be able to log onto your shared folders and print to your printer. If somebody downloads porn, it's going to show that it was some user (with a username and login) that logged into the public Comcast network, and happened to do it from your router. (But more than usual, see my .sig)

Re:Liability

[Zordak]

How does it make any sense for Comcast to charge your for extra bandwidth that somebody used on their public WiFi network, not logged in as you? This may be a terrible idea, but not for that reason. Comcast is just using existing equipment to do something other than sit idle. This doesn't seem that nefarious to me. (I'm sure they'll try to prove me wrong later, but for now anyway).

Re:Liability

[Zordak]

You forgot step 1.5 : Login with your username and password that can be easily traced to the traffic, regardless of which physical device you were connected to.

Re:Liability

[scott9693]

Does it? There is no technical reason it can't have a second IP address, or use a VPN to tunnel the traffic.

Re:Liability

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm in an apartment and there's already 20 some WiFi networks around me. Everyone with a Comcast account is already using their own wireless. We don't need more base stations congesting the airwaves.

Re:Liability

[Anonymous Coward]

Comcast getting your electricity for free.

Re:Liability

[Anonymous Coward]

Routers must be rentals, or loans for this to happen safely for Comcast. That leaves the additional electricity consumption. Comcast just have to isolate the networks and give out different IPs for the virtual lans.

Re:Liability

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot step 1.5 : Login with the username and password of some moron who shared it on the internet so that thousands of people can go untraceable, regardless of which physical device you were connected to.

***Fixed that for you.

Re:Liability

[Anonymous Coward]

So how do you propose to keep someone malicious from bridging that connection once they have access to the device? These things are notorious for having backdoors, and vulnerabilities. It's always been a bad idea to make your network publicly available. Especially when you're responsible for the traffic that comes from your network.

Re:Liability

[Anonymous Coward]

Hello, I am interested in the nipple pinch offer.

Re:Liability

[fgouget]

It's a broadcast device. EVERYONE around you is effected. This will just add to the electronic clutter of your neighborhood. If it doesn't annoy you directly, it might annoy the guy next door and interfere with his network.

99.9% of the users would have had the WiFi on anyway so it does not make any difference.

Re:Liability

[Anonymous Coward]

It is possible to configure a router to assign IP leases to the users machines on the network. They could identify which machine it was that access said "pirated" materials. Because the ports used for Torrent traffic can be recorded. This means that if such an event happened and you challenged it. They would be able to see which IP address downloaded the materials and how often it was leased to that specific machine. So, if it was only intermittent connections to your network with large gaps in activity, then you could have a solid defence for it being an outsider. But if it's almost a 24/7 connected machine, then you'd be screwed. And they would most likely press for a the harshest sentencing because you made them work for it.

(leasing means that even if that computer leaves the network and returns within a grace period, it's given the same IP. Default Grace period for most systems is 8 days)

Re:Liability

[Anonymous Coward]

Edit "Which IP address downloaded the materials" should read "Which locally assigned IP address on your network... downloaded the materials"

Re: Liability

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, no. It is connected to your Comcast Cable, it has the common Xfinity IP address, and it doesn't go through your personal network. I wondered where the Xfinity Wifi was coming from and it turned out to be from my Comcast modem/router.
Incidentally, you can connect this device to your personal home router via ethernet and not even affect your network in any way.

Re: Liability

[Anonymous Coward]

Users have to login as a customer to use the "public wifi" so liability would be addressed to the associated account even if someone else is using it. Rather than compensate, they'll probably ease prices and offer a small discount if you leave sharing in.

Re: Liability

[Anonymous Coward]

Until someone starts broadcasting that standard SSID with a fake login page.

Re: Liability

[JourneymanMereel]

Until someone starts broadcasting that standard SSID with a fake login page.

And if you're stupid enough to log in without being on an SSL, you deserve whatever happens.

Re: Liability

[Anonymous Coward]

You gave up your SSN for free WiFi? Wow, what town do you live in, Suckerville USA?

Re: Liability

[Anonymous Coward]

And for dweebs like me who own their own router (because I don't like shit like this)?

Re:Liability

[Comen]

This does not mean by simply having WIFI turned on like this is might not make it easier for someone to hack in to your local network via a weakness in the modem, or for that matter be able to simple overwhelm the cable modem cpu with traffic, even if bandwidth is kept separate it still adds to the node bandwidth on the neighborhood that you are on.

Re: Liability

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't own the modem. If your modem isn't a router, then they obviously can't do this.

Re:Liability

[Anonymous Coward]

does that mean I just have to change my mac address and connect to the public wifi rather than my normal ssid, and I can torrent everything I want and not worry about getting hit by a copyright infringement law suite.

No, and I'll tell you why: if there's a "public" wi-fi network using Comcast bandwidth, Comcast isn't giving that away for free. The idea is that Comcast customers can get internet access anywhere someone else has Comcast internet. If that wasn't the case, I'd just cancel my service and use my neighbor's public network. Bad business move. You'll definitely have to log in, and they'll definitely know you're the one doing all the pirating.

Re: Liability

[Anonymous Coward]

Cut the cable, drop the box outside, tell them it's there for them to pick up as you don't want their crap polluting your own internal wifi-network with real security built in.

Re:Liability

[NoKaOi]

- "Public" wifi bandwidth will not affect the bandwidth of the home router (so says Comcast).

Comcast also tells customers it delivers X Mbps of bandwidth. While some lucky customers in certain areas do get that, a vast majority don't. So, it might not affect what they call the maximum bandwidth, but for a majority of users it will affect their actual bandwidth.

Re: Liability

[Anonymous Coward]

I do own my modem ... And router. Everyone shoul rather than paying more than the purchase price every year for outdated equipment.

Re: Liability

[Zen]

This really is no big deal. I'm a Chicago customer and was initially a bit peeved when I heard about this. But then I read the actual letter. I'll paraphrase it, but as I recall it had a few specifics in it that all these fear mongering web articles are skipping.
1) It creates a new ssid on the router. That means anyone connecting is connecting outside my network.
2) They went to great pains to state that it was extremely unlikely to disrupt the service that I pay for. For instance, I have the option to pay for something like 100Mbps, but I choose a lower tier. Comcast obviously has additional bandwidth they can provide for this service. It doesn't impact the customer.
3) It also said I had the abity to disable it if I wanted to. This is the part that nobody gets. You can turn it off! Problem solved!

I left mine alone in the end. If it doesn't impact me because it's going to use untapped bandwidth that I don't pay for, and they connect through a separate ssid, then I simply don't care.

Re: Liability

[green453]

OP here, I'll take responsibility for the use of the word public. I should have specified that these hotspots will be available to Comcast subscribers rather than the general public. Thank you for clarifying. You are right; the two are not the same and I should have been more careful with my wording.

Re:Liability

[rtb61]

Apparently this is what you should really do http://forums.comcast.com/t5/B.... Stop paying the rental fee for a modem and put in a proper modem router firewall and ensure remote management has been disabled and use a good password.

Re:Liability

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, sure, otherwise everybody would turn in their routers, stop paying Comcast, and log onto the free wifi from whoever was left.

Re: Liability

[Anonymous Coward]

They're forcing their customers subsidize the cost of infrastructure, electricity, and are essentially getting free leasing out of it. The fact that it is opt-out means they're hoping people will either not care, not understand why this is bad, or not notice (read: many families that are tech-illiterate, or senior citizens, etc). It's predatory, regardless of whether it's in the contract.

Re: Liability

[Anonymous Coward]

And under FCC laws you can purchase the equipment yourself if your paying a "rental" fee. So unless Concast starts using those fees as a means to force unaware customers into buying the equipment your more then free to go out and buy it yourself. Of course that only their shitty routers ect, trying to get the receiver equipment is next to impossible.

Direct TV equipment is readily available to purchase from other electronic distributors,but I would expect that to change now that another monopoizing company bought them out.

Re: Liability

[Anonymous Coward]

They may own the device, but they do not own the electricity they will be leeching from your home to power their private radio station.

Taken cumulatively city wide, that's a lot of vampire watts paid for by everybody but Comcast.

And depending on the terms of service, could be considered breach of contract or outright theft of $1 per month or whatever these devices cost to power themselves.

Re:Liability

[Anonymous Coward]

you seem to be posting from beta.

have a look from classic, your post is nearly unreadable.

have a nice day,
The Vogons

Re: Liability

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, hacking their modem or router would be a neat trick, considering both parts are my property.

Re:Liability

[Zack]

What's to stop you from connecting to it as a "hotspot" to do your torrenting and then back to "normal" for the rest of your traffic?

Re: Liability

[BrianRaker]

Welp, good thing I own my own router. Oh wait, there's probably Counsel here that could explain that even that device can be 'compelled' to provide the WiFi service too >.>

Re: Liability

[Anonymous Coward]

No. These ISP provided hotspots operate the open wifi through a VPN directly into their core network, where users authenticate against the customer radius server.

Traffic via the open wifi is accounted separately against the credentials used to sign into the portal, and not the provider customer's IP address.

In general, the tunnel runs at minimum qos and has heavily throttled bandwidth so should impact the provider customer minimally.

Re:Liability

[AK Marc]

So you know that the IP scheme will be NAT'd from behind the residential device, despite the statements in TFA indicating otherwise? They will have AAA on the Xfinity users to make sure they are Comcast subscribers, and thus will be tracking the separately from the "inside" users at the address.

Re: Liability

[Anonymous Coward]

Lol..you're understanding of networking needs work.

Re:Liability

[crimson tsunami]

What's to stop you from connecting to it as a "hotspot" to do your torrenting and then back to "normal" for the rest of your traffic?

I'm going to go with common sense.
After the first time you try this and it asks for your login details, and you now know that they can tell exactly who you are and that you aren't hiding in any way. You would probably decide not to bother the next time. (It would probably also be a slower connection anyway.)

Re:Liability

[ygslash]

Seriously, what idiot thought this would be a good idea? Punish your customers and give moochers, criminals and cheapskates free and anonymous internet.

Only people who provide the service from their own wifi will be able to use it from others. It's actually an attractive idea. The OP is framing it as a problem only because Comcast is doing it as "opt-out", enabling it remotely without people explicitly giving their permission. I suppose that's true. But in practice, it's not much different than "opt-in". Our local provider is doing it as "opt-in", but almost everyone signs up for it. You get sent to the opt-in screen automatically as part of the installation procedure whenever you put in a new modem. And why not? It costs you essentially nothing, and it's really convenient.

Landline telephone providers are doing this all over world, and pushing it very aggressively. Here's why: landline providers are quickly losing their market share. Mobile providers are eating their lunch. Many young people are not ever signing up for a landline phone anymore, and some people who already have a landline are getting rid of it to save money. Share-alike free wifi service not only gives you convenient wifi access almost wherever you are; it also ties you to your landline. And makes it less attractive to shell out as much money for mobile data plans.

Re:Liability

[galloog1]

My question is if my service is already slow, why is my router not performing at max performance to begin with?

Re: Liability

[Anonymous Coward]

It is not only electricity but rent for physical space that they avoid paying as well.

Re:Liability

[fgouget]

I'm assuming that Comcast doesn't have 50,000 spare routable IP addresses, but that's not a bad assumption.

Yes, it's a ridiculous assumption. It's essentially the same as saying Comcast will never be able to gain 50000 new customers because they don't have enough routable IP addresses. Besides it further assumes that they are not using Carrier Grade NAT which is exactly how Free, a French ISP that has been doing the same thing for years, is handling this.

Re:Liability

[fgouget]

If that is the case does that mean I just have to change my mac address and connect to the public wifi rather than my normal ssid, and I can torrent everything I want and not worry about getting hit by a copyright infringement law suite.

To use the Comcast hotspot you have to provide your Comcast credentials on the gateway web page. So no, that won't work.

Re:Liability

[nabsltd]

Besides it further assumes that they are not using Carrier Grade NAT which is exactly how Free, a French ISP that has been doing the same thing for years, is handling this.

Even better, as now all the WiFi users appear to come from a single IP as far as the MPAA/RIAA is concerned, which means the only way they can get more info is if Comcast keeps insanely detailed records about every one of these connections. Keeping normal accounting information won't be enough to identify a copyright infringer...Comcast would also have to keep the IP/port connection logs from the NAT device.

Re:Liability

[rochrist]

I'm amused that Comcast has a lower customer satisfaction rating than the IRS. How is that even possible?

Re:Liability

[NotDrWho]

So does this mean that charges for copyright infringement (or other such activities) will no longer be brought against people based on IP Address evidence alone? Because this certainly gives a lot of people a lot of plausible deniability.

That's the first thing that occured to me too. Is Comcast going to provide legal aid when the FBI kicks my door down because some asshole on my street downloaded some bomb plans on my connection?

Re: Liability

[NotDrWho]

And for the people who are moaning about SWAT teams and child porn and copyright infringement, do you REALLY think that Comcast won't be able to tell the difference between two subscribers on their own goddamn network?

Yeah, and I'm sure it won't be hacked in about 5 minutes. At least with my existing home network, I can set it up so that it requires a physical wired connection to access.

Re:Liability

[fgouget]

Even better, as now all the WiFi users appear to come from a single IP as far as the MPAA/RIAA is concerned,

Which totally protects the home owner where the cable box actually is.

which means the only way they can get more info is if Comcast keeps insanely detailed records about every one of these connections.

If you consider an IP address, a port number, a timestamp and an account number to be insanely detailed then I can't wait to see what you're going to say when you discover all the information Facebook, Google and others keep about you!

Re:Liability

[kilodelta]

You make an extremely important point about infringement. In essence proof goes out the window when any Tom, Dick and Harry can use your access point.

And this is sort of a bad move on the part of Comcast. If my provider, Cox were to do that I'd promptly get toss their router and put my own in with full up protection.

Re:Liability

[Anonymous Coward]

not to mention bandwidth they are paying for?

Re: Liability

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if someone will bill them for the energy use. They may be able to offer access to the network, but if you're paying for the electricity to run that thing, they're getting something for free.

Re: Liability

[EvilJoker]

Given the scenario we're discussing, I would put real money on the SSL issue not stopping the vast majority of people.

Note: I am not in a Comcast area. I don't have first-hand experience with them, so this is all speculation.

That being said, I'm pretty sure this will be run on a captive portal (same as most hotels/coffee shops/etc), where the first UNENCRYPTED HTTP address will be redirected to a login page. The user will then have to supply whatever credentials that Comcast requires.

The attack is simple - instead of redirecting to the legitimate Comcast site (we'll even assume that site would be SSL, and can't be spoofed), it redirects to an unencrypted site that looks the same. People are used to this (many captive portals don't use SSL, so it's not something most people would look for).
It would even have a Comcast address (via DNS poisoning), so most people, even some that observe the lack of SSL, will just assume that Comcast cheaped out/screwed up, and didn't implement SSL for this.

Re:Liability

[EvilJoker]

Serious question - have you ever had a "customer service" issue with the IRS? Billing error, lost check, etc?

I've never had one at the federal level, but when I've contacted several municipalities' tax offices, they've always been prompt, courteous, and helpful. I've heard the IRS is the same. Not thrilled that they exist exclusively to get my money, but they handled it professionally.

Contrast that to any telecom.

Re:Liability

[EvilJoker]

I don't think it's as simple as that.

Unless each login is given a unique public IP (unlikely), they will be behind some form of NAT. When the lawsuit comes in, it will name the public IP. In the past, this was easy enough to just say that it belongs to John Smith, at 123 Fake St, since that is who controls the NAT gateway in question. It did not matter which device behind the NAT was responsible, since they all presumably belonged to John Smith.

However, this is not a new issue for Comcast. It applies to anyone running a semi-public hotspot, such as many hotels. To reliably point to a specific user, it would require a ridiculous amount of logging. I doubt that Comcast will do that.

Re:Liability

[jamstar7]

So does this mean that charges for copyright infringement (or other such activities) will no longer be brought against people based on IP Address evidence alone? Because this certainly gives a lot of people a lot of plausible deniability.

Secondly, how are the clients being compensated for the hotspot service they are now providing?

It almost makes me want to move to Houston and slurp down a shitpile of free wifi. I've got a few terabytes of porn I need to download...

Re: Liability

[Bengie]

And you electricity, for free! They also increase the amount of interference going on and they are getting a service for free that was not agreed upon. They are getting access to not only your electricity, but also your location.

Imagine if your cell phone company enable wifi hotspot for free on your cell phone for whomever was near by and had an account with your cell company. What if Microsoft started implementing CDN services into Windows to reduce load for Windows Update? Hey, Microsoft owns the OS, so no problem, right?

What if your car dealership allowed other people to use your leased car while you were at work? Hey, you're not using it and you don't own it.

Re:Liability

[Anonymous Coward]

Now that's funny right there! I dont care who you are.
HA!

Re:Liability

[Anonymous Coward]

1st - There will be two different gateways used.
So I'm sure Comcast will be able to tell the difference where something was downloaded whether it's from the private home gateway or the public hotspot.
2nd - I'm sure there will be a lot of blocked sites. Like Torrent sites.
3rd - This is a GOOD thing for Comcast customers who are out and about. Data cost and limits on phones and tablets are ridiculous! This could allow some to save money on their wireless data plans.
I'm FOR IT!
I say if you want to opt out.... then you're also opting out of taking advantage using it when you're away from home.

IF EVERYONE shared their home and business DATA as Hotspot (securely and limited of course) ... we could ALMOST do away with our wireless data plans. AND get fast wireless service. Think about it.

Re:Liability

[fgouget]

Unless each login is given a unique public IP (unlikely), they will be behind some form of NAT.

Yes, it's called Carrier Grade NAT and is what Free has been doing in France for years for its community WiFi.

To reliably point to a specific user, it would require a ridiculous amount of logging. I doubt that Comcast will do that.

If you consider an IP address, a port number, a timestamp and an account number to be insanely detailed then I can't wait to see what you're going to say when you discover all the information Facebook, Google and others keep about you!

Re:Liability

[Duggeek]

Indeed. The Xfinity Wifi service is not like a public hotspot, it's app-enabled and otherwise walled off.

The app asks you to log-in with Xfinity HSI credentials, connects to a geographic database and shows 'coverage' on a small map. When you want to connect to a hotspot, the app coordinates the security automatically, kinda like a pushbutton feature on a router.

If you don't have the app, these hotspots look like any other secured private WAPs.

Despite all that, it's an arrogant and draconian move to just switch-on customer equipment to provide a service. I believe Zordak made the point that the gateway/router devices are leased to customers, but essentially Comcast property. To me, that means they can take control to provide enhanced services, like advance port forwarding, traffic balancing and delivering QoS metrics back to their root network. All that makes sense, right?

What doesn't make sense is basically hijacking the device to provide a subscription-based service for other customers. If I have one of these routers, then I expect it to serve the purpose of fulfilling my service subscription, not someone else's. Providing such a service should be at the option of the subscriber, not the default stance with an opt-out procedure. Organizing the majority of subscribers to opt-out of this service clause will surely pressure Xfinity to re-think their strategy, but good luck getting the attention of all 50,000 households. (or even half of them)

A responsible, progressive and fair-minded company would provide incentives for becoming part of their service infrastructure. Monthly service discounts would be a good start, and might even improve Xfinity's reputation in the process. Let's say, the more isolated your WAP is on the Xfinity map (thereby filling in a wide gap in coverage) the more of a discount the homeowner gets.

In this day and age, it takes a level competitor to enact change in the marketplace; so we're looking at you FIOS, DSL and Google Fiber. Do it better!

Re:Liability

[wolja]

Yes, this is a shitty thing to do

Why is this such a bad thing? Everyone already knows that ISPs oversell their bandwidth. As long as you still
get the speed you are paying for why should you care if someone else is using your wifi anymore than you care
if your neighbor is also a comcast subscriber. I doubt it increases your electricity cost and you get the benefit of
using other people's wifi when you are out and about. This seems like a win-win for everyone. I don't see the problem
if it's done correctly especially as you have multiple ways to opt out.

If Comcast is as unscrupulous as Aussie IP's, fair bet, you can guarantee they'll charge more for wireless access and limit the home access rather than limit the higher grossing wireless access.

Letting any company abrogate rights without consent is asking for trouble.

Re: Liability

[toddestan]

That's an interesting idea.

1. Spoof the Comcast SSID & login page.
2. Wait for people to 'log in' to your router with their Comcast credentials. You could even grant them access to the internet after gathering their login information so they wouldn't even suspect anything is amiss.
3. Now you have access to free wifi anywhere Comcast is.
4. ???
5. Profit!

Re:Liability

[Anonymous Coward]

My experience with xfinitywifi is that it'll let me onto the network but usually not give me an IP address. When it does, pinging the router gets about 40% packet loss and latency in the hundreds of milliseconds range, and pinging anything outside the LAN gets multiple seconds of latency. Putting wifi in passive mode suggests that the router was completely bogged down by the load of 1 simultaneous user.

Re:Liability

[Anonymous Coward]

Crap like this is the whole reason why I always purchase my own routers and I don't even have Comcast, but lets address the elephant in the room here. Is this going to be a Guest like connection that is going to allow them access to your router? But by allowing the guest account to broadcast will in some routers also make your home network broadcast as well. I religiously never set my routers to broadcast making it almost impossible for someone to possibly hack into my home network. I have always thought Comcast was the worst providers of both internet and cable, but this? Never going to happen. I'll start my own ISP before I pay for everyone else's internet access. This is going to be messy.. Comcast is basically signing their own death warrant if they fully implement such a scam on their customers..

Re:Liability

[Anonymous Coward]

My guess is they are going to start farming MAC addresses and tie them to peoples social media pages. They'er talking about Texas after all.

Re:Liability

[Anonymous Coward]

You can turn it off, but for full time thwarting of Comcast's nefarious plan, build a small aluminum foil reflector and position it near the antenna, between the antenna and the outside world.

NR

Re:Liability

[EvilJoker]

Check your firewall logs. That data grows quickly. There's probably a separate entry for every single element of every single page you visit. That's just for HTTP. Throw in BitTorrent (etc) and it quickly becomes unlikely to be logged.

Re:Liability

[fgouget]

There's probably a separate entry for every single element of every single page you visit.

Of course not. All comcast needs to log are the authentication events of which there are under one per day per customer on average. Once logged in that IP is yours to use until it is handed to someone else in another authentication event (obviously there's no explicit disconnection).

Re:Liability

[Anonymous Coward]

What happens is they split your router in two. The public access side is on a different mac address and ip from your private/home side.

Re:Liability

[Anonymous Coward]

Insanely detailed? You have to login with your subscriber account information to a seperate wifi that has a seperate ip and mac address from the home router. If anything it is incredibly easy to track you which is why they offer this in the first place. It gives them more information to sell.

Re: Liability

[Sciath]

I don't have a Comcast issued wireless router or cable modem, I own my own. Does that mean I can charge Comcast for the use of my wireless equipment?

Re:Liability

[oldmac31310]

My experience. Federal: Generally helpful and courteous but they did make a mistake with a payment plan I arranged with them recently. NY State: pure evil gouging bastards.

Re: Liability

[Anonymous Coward]

And who pays for the electrical bill?

Guess that must be in the contract somewhere, stating that you must pay the bill, regardless of the usage?

Re:Liability

[nabsltd]

If you consider an IP address, a port number, a timestamp and an account number to be insanely detailed then I can't wait to see what you're going to say when you discover all the information Facebook, Google and others keep about you!

Google, et.al., keep their data because they can monetize it. Comcast will have to keep this data despite the fact that it not only won't make them money, but will cost them money since they will have to have people to search it for the legal requests.

Plus, I can generate thousands of connections per second and Comcast will have to log them all. If my both my neighbor and I have Comcast, I might just set up a box to do nothing but flood his WiFi with connections, just to cost Comcast money.

Re:Liability

[fgouget]

Comcast will have to keep this data despite the fact that it not only won't make them money, but will cost them money since they will have to have people to search it for the legal requests.

There's a ton of things that cost Comcast money. They're all called the cost of doing business. Also note that Comcast already has to do this logging for any of their customer who does not have a fixed IP address and I have not heard that they're not doing that part of their job.

Plus, I can generate thousands of connections per second and Comcast will have to log them all.

You do that. Of course since Comcast does not have to log failed connection attempts you'll have to use your own credentials. This will most likely break some Comcast's terms of service and ensure you get their attention. They can then simply suspend your account, probably including your cable Internet access, and even sue you if you really irked them. Sounds like a great plan you have there!

Re:Liability

[fgouget]

If you consider an IP address, a port number, a timestamp and an account number to be insanely detailed then I can't wait to see what you're going to say when you discover all the information Facebook, Google and others keep about you!

I should probably clarify this because it's not really that obvious.

The naive solution would be to assign a random public IP+port for each connection. That would require creating a new log entry for each connection a customer makes which would be a lot of volume indeed.

I think the solution is to instead give out leases to public IP+port combinations to the customer and associate those to his session. When establishing a new connection, check if there's an unused public IP+port in the session pool and if so extend and reuse it. If not, allocate a new IP address+port lease and add it to the session pool. With long enough leases and given that most users will only make a handful of concurrent connections (and it's a context where it's pretty ok to limit the number of concurrent connections anyway), that would limit the logging requirements to just a few entries per session per customer which is pretty tractable.

Note also that if I'm not mistaken a lot of mobile phone operators already use Carrier Grade NAT for 3G/4G and thus have already faced these issues. Yet they presumably found a solution otherwise everyone would know that the 'safe' place to pirate is from a smartphone.

Re:Liability

[zwarte piet]

Tried that, didn't block the signal.

Re:Liability

[zwarte piet]

I'm not too worried about a guy with a cellphone checking his mail using my public wifi. Doesn't happen all day, especially because that guy would have to be in a 100m radius from my house.

Re:Liability

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a broadcast device. EVERYONE around you is effected. This will just add to the electronic clutter of your neighborhood. If it doesn't annoy you directly, it might annoy the guy next door and interfere with his network.

99.9% of the users would have had the WiFi on anyway so it does not make any difference.

And wifi has unlimited bandwidth, no matter how many people are using it so speeds for the person who is actually paying for it won't be impacted at all. Surely the person using the hosts connection will also beam over some extra power to offset the increased electric use. If you did this to a company you are committing a felony http://business.time.com/2013/01/14/mit-orders-review-of-aaron-swartz-suicide-as-soul-searching-begins/ They should not be allowed to do it to you without similar charges.

Who owns them?

[Anonymous Coward]

TFS talks about "users" providing consent, not owners. So I assume this is Comcast's equipment.
But does this mean no more data cap? And if a subscriber cancels service, does the public hotspot shut down?

Re:Who owns them?

[Burdell]

It is my understanding that this will be done only on Comcast-owned equipment, and using a separate logical connection (like a VLAN) from the local subscriber data. This won't affect any subscriber data cap one way or the other. If a subscriber cancels, they probably unplug the Comcast equipment (so the wifi goes down) because they are supposed to return it to Comcast (or get billed).

Re:Who owns them?

[Imagix]

no more data cap

Why? The cable modem will be able to figure out what traffic is coming from the home vs. coming via the public wifi, and can count those separately. (And can do different speed shaping and prioritization).

subscriber cancels service

Same question. If the cable modem is plugged in, they just need to block the ethernet and "personal" SSID, leaving the "public" SSID operational.

Re:Who owns them?

[Anonymous Coward]

this is why i supply my own modem for my comcast...then onto my network were i am the only one controlling the wifi equipment.

Simple but like most things the sheeple out there will be victimized.....

Re:Who owns them?

[cogeek]

Yeah, and both the subscriber and the freeloader will get the same amount of bandwidth I pay for every month from Comcast? Do they magically double the connection speed? Because I'm already at the highest level Internet they offer.

Re:Who owns them?

[lgw]

Yes, they magically double the connection speed, because the highest bandwidth available for home Comcast internet is typically a small percentage of what the line can carry.

The problem here, as I see it, is that the caps are low to begin with only because Comcast oversubscribes its backend hardware significantly. I'm betting the recently upgraded the back end, but rather than backing off caps they offer this new service instead.

Re:Who owns them?

[gstoddart]

It is my understanding that this will be done only on Comcast-owned equipment, and using a separate logical connection (like a VLAN) from the local subscriber data.

That's the theory. I'll be curious to see it in practice.

Because I have far far less confidence in their ability to competently do this than you seem to.

Re:Who owns them?

[LiENUS]

Looking at comcast's website the highest speed internet they offer is 105Mbps while the slowest docsis 3 modems are capable of 171mbps. Most isps are pushing 8 channel modems now which can pull over 300mbps. Comcast could offer at least 60mbps without affecting your speed in any meaningful way.

Re:Who owns them?

[cdrudge]

Why? The cable modem will be able to figure out what traffic is coming from the home vs. coming via the public wifi, and can count those separately. (And can do different speed shaping and prioritization).

As proven time and time again, cable companies seem to have a very difficult time accurately computing actual data usage. I wouldn't have a lot of faith that they can accurately keep track of data usage of two networks from the same cable modem.

Re:Who owns them?

[botfap]

Probably just like other major ISP's around the world who do the same thing the following will happen: Home router has 2 networks, 1 for subscriber, 1 for public hotspot. these 2 networks CAN NOT talk to each other and traffic measured for the 2 networks is not combined. subscriber only gets billed for their own traffic. Also in most implementations like this the public wifi only has access to a small amount of the total bandwidth available, normally around 10% of the actual throughput for the line. If you are a BT broadband customer in Europe for example on an Infinity Connection you would get ~75mb downstream and ~19mb upstream with unlimited downloads (not sure how unlimited but i put through 650-900gb per month and have never been capped) for £26 per month. If you opt in to allow your home router to be used as a hotspot then ~7.5mb down / ~2mb up is made available to hotspot users. You can still use this extra capacity if nobody is using the hotspot. In addition you get free country wide access to a wifi network with 94% uk coverage and lots of mainland europe coverage. This wifi access is unlimited too and can be used by multiple devices simultaneously even when using your broadband at home. TL;DR - as long as the wifi hotspot is being implemented the same way as the other major providers are doing it then no need to be alarmed, if you travel at all it will be a huge bonus.

Re:Who owns them?

[TobinLathrop]

There are no 'freeloaders' in the sense that it is a totally open hotspot. You have to have an account with Comcrap and sign in with that. So it is still paying customers only.

Re:Who owns them?

[cogeek]

Maximum transmission speed on a single coax cable last I heard was 100mbps. Since I have a 40 mbps connection rate and 5 televisions all hooked up with HD channels, how exactly could they double that without cutting into my bandwidth?

Re:Who owns them?

[Thruen]

I think you're confusing advertised speeds with actual. My city is not as densely populated as any of those this is being tested in, and the connection here slows to a crawl on weekends and weekday nights. If they really can offer this without it affecting the connection of the home, then their own claims of network congestion causing slowdowns must be completely false, or else further saturating any connection must cause an additional loss of speed. If they can simply offer more speed to a home to make up for it, there must not be any real cause for the slowdown we already experience at peak times.

Re:Who owns them?

[Bengie]

While it's possible that your local link to the node is fine, a node can have upwards of 5,000 customers all sharing a single or teamed 10gb uplink. With 100mb internet becoming common, that's 500,000mb of customer bandwidth being forced into a 10gb-20gb uplink. The last thing you need is a bunch of freeloaders putting more stress on those poor nodes.

If Comcast was doing the Google Fiber setup, it would be more like 4tb of customer bandwidth sharing 4tb of "node" bandwidth.

Re: Who owns them?

[maccodemonkey]

I have a 105mbps connection that frequently tests higher than that, so that doesn't sound right.

Re:Who owns them?

[lgw]

Basic math?

Also, Comcast currently offers 150 down for business customers, and I'm sure there's headroom in that.

Re:Who owns them?

[lgw]

Yes, that's the real scandal here: your line have plenty of headroom, but they're going to further saturate their backend at everyone's expense.

If Comcast is your only broadband choice, at least switch to Comcast business service - it's worlds better (not good, mind you, but still vastly better than the foul pit of Comcast residential).

Re:Who owns them?

[LiENUS]

In which case he's going to be having problems whether they turn on the wifi hotspot or not. So how is it relevant?

Re:Who owns them?

[Jason Levine]

Exactly. How long until a Grandpa Random User is charged a huge overage fee because "they" downloaded a fifty HD movies via torrents - when the downloads were actually Public WiFi users? Or, more insidious, Joe User is charged a small overage fee for just barely going over the cap when the real reason for the overage was one or two Public WiFi downloads being marked under the subscriber's account?

Re:Who owns them?

[Anonymous Coward]

The cable modem will be able to figure out what traffic is coming from the home vs. coming via the public wifi,

How, exactly? Do I have to MAC-lock the stuff that belongs in my house? Does Jane Subscriber have any idea how to do that? What about new devices or visitors to whom you grant access?

Re:Who owns them?

[Anonymous Coward]

Some people can't, it is literally not offered at any price where I am, they have no competition in the area. The only reason we get semi-rel-able service is because we kick a fit to the regulatory board, in ways not on offer to anyone who doesn't work with them on a regular basis.

Re:Who owns them?

[Tharkkun]

Why? The cable modem will be able to figure out what traffic is coming from the home vs. coming via the public wifi, and can count those separately. (And can do different speed shaping and prioritization).

As proven time and time again, cable companies seem to have a very difficult time accurately computing actual data usage. I wouldn't have a lot of faith that they can accurately keep track of data usage of two networks from the same cable modem.

It's really not that difficult since they will be assigned different subnet's in order to keep the vlan separate. This is networking 101. Most people complaining about internet usage not being accurate don't have a clue how to track it themselves. If you upgrade to blast, your quota is removed anyways.

Re:Who owns them?

[Tharkkun]

Exactly. How long until a Grandpa Random User is charged a huge overage fee because "they" downloaded a fifty HD movies via torrents - when the downloads were actually Public WiFi users? Or, more insidious, Joe User is charged a small overage fee for just barely going over the cap when the real reason for the overage was one or two Public WiFi downloads being marked under the subscriber's account?

Subnetting 101. They already do it on a per subscriber basis. What makes you think they can't do it here?

Re:Who owns them?

[Firethorn]

A quick google search says 10Gbps, if anything it's 100 mbps per channel. With coax data transmission is much like you having your own set of spectrum to play with, as opposed to having to contend with others over the air.

if you need to transmit more, just use more spectrum. This does eventualy cut into availability of that spectrum for other uses such as TV though, since there are limits in regards to keeping frequencies from interfering with each other and cost of the circuits to generate and read the radio-type signals.

Re:Who owns them?

[Daemonik]

DOCSIS 3.0 modems can carry gigabit data over coax. DOCSIS 3.1 is expected to be capable of multi-gigabit service. The cable ISP loves their tiers though, so they artifically limit your connection speed and tie that to a billing level. It has fairly little to do with what the hardware is capable of.

Re:Who owns them?

[Bengie]

But you share that 1gb with up to 500 other customers and your 1gb COAX connection shares a 10gb uplink with up to 5,000 customers. With COAX, there is a lot of sharing going on. This is another way to increase the over-subscription even more.

Re:Who owns them?

[Anonymous Coward]

Please reference DOCSIS. You may be thinking of upstream rather than downstream, and current limits may already be greatly increased with DOCSIS 3.1 (provided your ISP wants sell you a better package in the first place).

(philip.paradis posted AC because I don't log in on this machine)

Re:Who owns them?

[Bengie]

All DOCSIS networks are like this, they just hope that most users don't actually make use of their connection. Adding the hot spot increases the number of customers making use of a given node, causing more spikes of traffic.

Re:Who owns them?

[cdrudge]

Most people complaining about internet usage not being accurate don't have a clue how to track it themselves.

Go over to DSLReports.com and search for usage monitors. There are countless threads from all sorts of ISPs where the ISP's total is drastically different. People who have downloaded hundreds of GB of data but the ISP says only a few GB. And vice versa, the homeowner has been on vacation or otherwise has no reason to have a extreme amount of usage but the ISP says they have.

If it indeed is not that difficult, why have so many ISPs, even major ones that have the budgets and experience to do it properly, had issues?

Re:Who owns them?

[Cantankerous Cur]

And contract to sell my soul? Are you insane? If you cancel, that's 75% of the remaining contract that goes right into Comcast's pocket.

Re:Who owns them?

[lgw]

Sure, but if you have no other options, what are the odds that you will cancel?

Re:Who owns them?

[Burdell]

Ehh, Comcast's business practices tend to suck, but their technical people do a good job. I think they were the first large-scale residential provider in the US with DNSSEC and IPv6 for example.

In any case, they are already doing separate channels for separate services (I believe that's how they implement voice service for example), so this will just be turning up another channel.

Re:Who owns them?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever heard of VLAN hopping? Yeah. That's a good idea. lol

Re:Who owns them?

[LiENUS]

All networks period are like this, theres always a bottle neck. My point was that his cable modem can indeed handle more bandwidth than his purchased connection speed.

Re:Who owns them?

[LiENUS]

If Comcast was doing the Google Fiber setup, it would be more like 4tb of customer bandwidth sharing 4tb of "node" bandwidth.

Also to clear this up google fiber is more like 256GB of customer bandwidth sharing 40gb of "node" bandwidth. Google fiber is GPON and not actual dedicated ethernet links.

Re:Who owns them?

[Neil Boekend]

The "more GB downloaded than reported" I can not answer. It might be a bug in the reporting software.
The "I was on vacation and the ISP claims that I downloaded X GB which is unlikely" is most probably an insecure network component that has been accessed. Some people still do not know that you should use encryption, preferably WPA or better. The ISP should have provided a router that was preconfigured with WPA (and a long password, generated for that device, printed on a sticker on the back) but the user is also to blame.

Re:Who owns them?

[Anonymous Coward]

5000 customers is actually pretty conservative, that's only half the capacity of an Arris C4 (~10k modems), and a quarter of the capacity of a Cisco UBR10k (~20k modems), which are the two CMTS platforms that Comcast deploys. They only employ a pair of 10 gig links (equally costed, so both are in use). It's important to note that the sub limitations aren't due to bandwidth restrictions, those are the points where if you range anymore modems up on the box, it begins to suffer impairment from managing that many devices.

You'd actually be surprised how little the northbound router links are stressed. Fully loaded boxes only average about 5gigs of throughput at prime time. Even with 100mb cable internet, not everyone uses all of that bandwidth all the time. Comcast actually does a pretty good job of capacity management on a per CMTS basis.

The new Arris E6000 platforms that are replacing the Arris C4's do actually have 4 10 gig links to the northbound router instead of 2, but that's because Comcast will be running linear video and VOD through those boxes in the future, not just Internet, so they're building the boxes out with that future growth in mind.

Posting as AC because I have direct operational knowledge of the Comcast network, and I'm not sure my bosses would appreciate me talking about it in public.

As far as the article goes.... Houston is not the only (or even the first) market where Comcast is doing this.

Re:Who owns them?

[Drakonblayde]

This is accurate. How fast your speeds can go depend on three things -

1. How many channels are turned up on the CMTS side. Each DOCSIS 3.0 downstream supports ~42mbit/s and each upstream supports ~30mbit/s

2. How many channels your modem can bond. For example, if your cable modem can bond 8 downstreams, and 4 upstreams (which is pretty common with modern cable modems), you can have a theoretical maximum of 383 Mbit down and 122 Mbit up. Your modem will bond to as many channels as it can (ie, however many the CMTS offers, or the maximum amount it can bond to if the CMTS offers more than that)

3. The modems bootfile. This is where the rate limiting comes in. If you're bonding 8 down and 4 up, but you only purchased 30 down and 4 up as part of your plan, this is where they enforce that - the bootfile will have the QoS settings that the modem enforces.

There's a 4th factor that those who purchase top tier internet quickly find out - their router (assuming they haven't leased a cable modem that's also acting as a gateway). The shitty little Linksys you bought ten years ago is *not* going to be able to handle 100mbs of downstream, since the packets are all forwarded in software, and they didn't exactly put powerful procs in those things.

Re:Who owns them?

[Drakonblayde]

Ehh, Comcast's business practices tend to suck, but their technical people do a good job. I think they were the first large-scale residential provider in the US with DNSSEC and IPv6 for example.

In any case, they are already doing separate channels for separate services (I believe that's how they implement voice service for example), so this will just be turning up another channel.

Nope. Comcast Digital Voice is straight IP, straight VoIP. It's not another service channel, the modem just has a priority queue for VOIP traffic.

There are separate RF channels for different products in the sense of video and VOD, but that's because they travel over different infrastructure at the hubsite/headend (it's not combined until it heads down to the customer facing nodes).

The one exception to that is the new X1 boxes. The channel guide is delivered through the CMTS rather than through a small freq OOB channel like it's been traditionally done (this is why if you reboot an X1 box, you don't have to wait for hours for the channel guide to repopulate). But even this isn't coming in via your internet cable modem - the X1 boxes simply have another cable modem inside of them that ranges up just for that information.

Re:Who owns them?

[Drakonblayde]

That's actually easy to answer - QoS markings. They're not just for traffic prioritization. It's pretty easy to use them for access control and accounting as well. Pubic WiFi traffic is marked one way, subscriber traffic another. Setting your own QoS markings won't get around that either - the modem will just strip them and set the proper ones.

Evil strikes again

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet another reason to provide your own cable modem and router to not get charged by that evil company

Public WiFi?

[TechyImmigrant]

What makes me think this is not Public WiFi? You're going to have to pay to use it.

Re:Public WiFi?

[alen]

not if you're a comcast customer

Re:Public WiFi?

[khellendros1984]

In that case, you're paying to use it, you're just not paying extra to use it.

Re:Public WiFi?

[TechyImmigrant]

My point exactly. It's 'Subscriber WiFi', not 'Public WiFi' as TFA suggests.

Re:Public WiFi?

[Enry]

This. It's not Public Wifi. It's Wifi for Comcast customers.

Re:Public WiFi?

[dcooper_db9]

Pretty much. Visitors can use it for two 60-minute sessions per month. http://wifi.comcast.com/faqs.h...

Re:Public WiFi?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you for this. I was thinking to myself how dense some of these people are to think that there would be a free completely open WiFi for the city provided by Comcast...

Re:Public WiFi?

[Anonymous Coward]

Non-subscribers may use the "public" WiFi for two one-hour sessions per month, if they are not a residential Internet customer of Comcast's.

Re:Public WiFi?

[TechyImmigrant]

If they advertise an open-system auth policy on 802.11 and then put an IP level web page log in behind it, they are breaking the internet. If they blanket a city in that sort of crap, they are breaking the internet badly.

Re:Public WiFi?

[Anonymous Coward]

That does depend on the security implementation.

They already do this.

[timrod]

Where I live, in central Connecticut, all three of the major ISPs (Comcast, Cox, AT&T) have Wi-Fi that rides off the back of routers. I haven't actually tried to use it, since I think they charge some ridiculous fee to connect to it. If it was free, I'd probably give it a go.

Re:They already do this.

[Ralph Wiggam]

Existing Comcast customers would get free access to these hotspots.

Re:They already do this.

[Unknown1337]

If this Public WiFi is free for Comcast subscribers without additional fees (and assuming the speeds are acceptable). Every Comcast customer should drop to the cheapest package and connect using the public connection SSID to receive all the free bandwidth they could want. I feel like there are some details that are being overlooked. The public connections will likely require a login of the comcast user and the wifi bandwidth used will come off the connected user's cap instead of the owner of the router being used.

Re:They already do this.

[Neil Boekend]

You can bet that the data you download is subtracted from your download cap. You have to login with your Comcast account so they know who you are.

Oh I get it...

[Karmashock]

This is about making some congressman or senator happy. They must have agreed somewhere to offer free wifi or something for cities in return for maintaining their monopolies. And this is how they're delivering.

On the backs of their stupid customers.

Seriously... if you have comcast... cancel them now.

Re:Oh I get it...

[Karmashock]

There is usually at least one alternative... and anything is better then comcast.

Re:Oh I get it...

[Enry]

By many you mean 0 or 1, right?

Re:Oh I get it...

[Jason Levine]

In my area, I have Time Warner Cable (soon to be Comcast) and that's it. No FIOS or any other high speed, wired broadband. So if I don't like what TWC/Comcast does, what are my options beyond going without Internet service (not an option given that I'm a web developer).

Re:Oh I get it...

[Karmashock]

I hear you.

Re:Oh I get it...

[danlip]

No, in my neighborhood the alternative is Century Link, a.k.a. Qwest. And as much as I despise Comcast they don't come anywhere near the level of awful of Century Link.

Re:Oh I get it...

[Anonymous Coward]

There is usually at least one alternative... and anything is better then comcast.

Yeah, no.

Shitty service with a low-GB cap that's actually enforced from AT&T... is not better than Comcast.

Re:Oh I get it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless it's AT&T or Verizon - they've all massed just shy of becoming a black hole, I see the event horizons forming.

Re:Oh I get it...

[Karmashock]

Explain. I was considering them as an alternative to comcast. Why is century link worse?

Re:Oh I get it...

[Anonymous Coward]

CenturyLink kicks ass.

I call their loyalty department once a year to upgrade my connection and usually get a good discount.

Last year it was $15 for a 20Mbps down 896kbps up connection, this year it is $20 for 40Mbps down 5Mbps up. Takes a five minute call once a year.

I haven't spent more than $25 a month for internet in years

No throttling, no data caps, just a fast smooth connection 24/7 that is super cheap.

I tested it once, about a year ago. I had my desktop, laptop and a cell phone connected to my wireless run Netflix nearly 24/7 for an entire month. I also downloaded a few DVD sized linux distros daily. Not a peep out of CL, and no throttling.

TW, Comcast, etc can not match that.

Maybe you should get a clue before dismissing something you have no experience with.

Re:Oh I get it...

[fgouget]

This is about making some congressman or senator happy.

So funny. ISPs abroad (Netherlands, France) have been doing this for years. But yes, Comcast couldn't possibly have recognised that as a truly good idea and decided to implement it. It has to be some conspiracy instead, no matter how nonsensical.

Re:Oh I get it...

[Karmashock]

You're right its totally reasonable to charge individuals for the right to access a network with specified bandwidth limitations and then set the router up to broadcast that connection to any fool walking down the street or other person in your apartment complex that now gets the benefit of your internet connection without paying anything for it.

Totally reasonable.

Here is what I'd need to be okay with this idea.

The my personal bandwidth and signal quality to the the network would have be totally distinct from the public portion of the router. If my signal quality, bandwidth, etc is totally unchanged and all this thing is doing is stealing some of my electricity... then I'm okay with that. I'm happy to donate the electricity to what I'd see as laudable public service. However, I am not willing to donate my bandwidth or signal quality. I'm paying 50-70 dollars a month for that and some jackass next door is not going to clog my internet up by downloading horse porn.

Re:Oh I get it...

[danlip]

Just to give one example of many: they gave me an 8 hour window for their installer to show up - Comcast will at least narrow it down to 4 hours the day before, but Qwest won't. So I wait at home the whole day, and they never show up. They don't call to apologize or tell me they are running behind and when I call them they aren't even sure where the guy is. It turns out they just massively overbooked they guy. The tone of the phone flunky just made it sound like this was business as usual. The service, once they finally managed to hook it up, was unreliable and slow.

Re:Oh I get it...

[Karmashock]

Yeah but that's only an issue when you need something set up. Once you're set up how are they?

I don't mind dealing with some crap to get it working if once its working I am happy with the service.

I've gone through similar nonsense with many ISPs in the past and I just expect it at this point. What I find unacceptable is if I have to keep doing it because they keep breaking things. I've had that issue with Adelphia and then TWC where in they would "fix" our neighborhood's internet when it wasn't broken before... and cause everyone in the neighborhood to lose access for a week.

THAT I don't like.

Also other issues that bother me are signal quality issues. Sometimes you get a lot of dropped packets because rats are having sex in their switching station or something.

I had one location that would have dropped packets every summer during the hottest part of the day... every hot day... all year around... no exceptions. Obviously they had some bit of equipment that was not properly ventilated or cooled that was overheating and spitting out errors or something. happened every summer like clockwork.

That is the sort of thing I don't like. A late repair man when I'm getting it set up? Pifft... that's nothing.

Re:Oh I get it...

[fgouget]

You're right its totally reasonable to charge individuals for the right to access a network with specified bandwidth limitations and then set the router up to broadcast that connection to any fool walking down the street or other person in your apartment complex that now gets the benefit of your internet connection without paying anything for it.

This is not an open WiFi hotspot. Only other paying Comcast customers can use it. What you get in exchange is that you too can use any other Comcast WiFi connection. Free actually makes it a tip-for-tat thing: if you allow your FreeBox to act as a hotspot you can connect to the FreeWiFi hotspot of other customers. If you disable your hotspot you cannot use the other customers hotspots.

The my personal bandwidth and signal quality to the the network would have be totally distinct from the public portion of the router.

Easy to do by giving a lower priority to the HotSpot traffic. I know Free is doing it, I don't know if Comcast does.

If my signal quality, bandwidth, etc is totally unchanged and all this thing is doing is stealing some of my electricity... then I'm okay with that.

The change in electricity consumption is going to be so low I don't think you'd even be able to mesure it.

Re:Oh I get it...

[danlip]

Well, he wasn't just late, he never showed up.

Re:Oh I get it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why did you need someone to show up and setup your modem?

Are you retarded or something?

The silver lining

[Anonymous Coward]

At least this probably means there won't be bandwidth limits....yet.

Credential phising

[psergiu]

How long before someone releases a tool that would have a Linux-running computer or device with a WiFi card masquerading as an official Comcast WiFi hotspot an collecting the usernames & passwords of the users trying to connect ?

Re:Credential phising

[alen]

that would be an awesome way to get free ESPN, Disney Jr and other streamed TV access

Re:Credential phising

[Joe_Dragon]

maybe even CC number and other info to do identity freud as well.

Re:Credential phising

[SuneSpeg]

I am more worried that they will screw up like the Danish provider YouSee did, they HAD a similar hot-spot system. Atleast until someone found a security flaw in the modem/router, permitting access from the guest network to the customers netowkr. This is a disaster waiting to happen again. The hotspot service is still closed, despite it happened in march.

Re:Credential phising

[sinij]

>>> to do identity freud as well.
 
Lets not anally fixate on this point.

Re:Credential phising

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell me about your mother's maiden name...

*puffs cigar*

Re:Credential phising

[Anonymous Coward]

Talk about a literal freudian slip.

Re:Credential phising

[Anonymous Coward]

DING DING DING..... and the winner is.... YOU. My thoughts exactly. Wifi pineapple with a captive portal that looks just like the login page and you are good to go.....

Re:Credential phising

[fgouget]

How long before someone releases a tool that would have a Linux-running computer or device with a WiFi card masquerading as an official Comcast WiFi hotspot an collecting the usernames & passwords of the users trying to connect ?

That was possible before and it's still possible now. And not just with Comcast but also with Boingo, AT&T Portal, etc. Only solution: ban all WiFi hotspots!

Re:Credential phising

[Xyrus]

Would you like a couchDB to lie on?

Re:Credential phising

[Anonymous Coward]

Even better AT&T iPhone AUTOMATICALLY and by default connects to open wifi called "attwifi" And if you want to disable this first you need to connect to attwifi.

WiFi?

[Mister Liberty]

NoFi.

So buy your own damn router.

[wiredog]

The real problem here is people logging on to "comcast wifi" or whatever it's called using the same credentials they use to log on to their ISP account. How hard will it be for nogoodniks to set up hotspots called "comcast wifi" (or whatever) and scoop up all the credentials?

Here in NoVa Cox is doing the same thing.

Re:So buy your own damn router.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

How hard will it be for nogoodniks to set up hotspots called "comcast wifi" (or whatever) and scoop up all the credentials?

What makes you think they have not already done it? BTW nogoodniks is not how you spell NSA.

Re:So buy your own damn router.

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be damned trivial to set up a hotspot called xfinitywifi and present a login screen that just snarfs up subscriber information. I could get that running inside of 15 minutes with a Raspberry Pi and a WiFi adapter. I could even emulate the login screen with ease. I'm not sure if they are using https or not, but with a convincing enough looking sign in page, will people even notice?

Monthly quota?

[ArcadeMan]

Either Comcast will make their users pay because strangers will use their monthly quotas, or they have zero ability to calculate quotas in which case any current or past monthly quota overcharges are frauds.

Re:Monthly quota?

[sandytaru]

Yeah, I'm thinking if they start using the equipment they charged you for already, and the service they charged you for already, to provide public wifi for people who are not you, they should refund you the equipment cost and completely lift your monthly cap. Otherwise, If they require your username and password to access the network, then ding the person who is utilizing the network for the data, not the person whose network just got hijacked.

Re:Monthly quota?

[backbyter]

The usage is tied to the visitor's account, not necessarily the home owner. Does lead to interesting questions though. Is a subscriber usage limited (capped) when using other peoples wifi, if not, what happens when the home owner logs into their own router as a visitor?

Re:Monthly quota?

[gstoddart]

Either Comcast will make their users pay because strangers will use their monthly quotas, or they have zero ability to calculate quotas in which case any current or past monthly quota overcharges are frauds.

And, if their security is incompetently implemented (which it likely will be), who bears liability?

If the police show up with a warrant saying you downloaded movies, or kiddie porn, or participated in a terrorist chatroom -- you're pretty much screwed, and all because Comcast decided to re-sell what you've bought.

And, really, if all of these routers are going to become public hotspots (which apparently has a limited interpretation to be "for other Comcast subscribers"), why wouldn't I just use someone else's hotspot?

I suspect this will cause more problems than it fixes, except for Comcast who will make out like bandits. As you say, billing for overages should be pretty lucrative -- "sorry sir, it says here you've used a massive amount of bandwidth, so here's your bill, no, we can't prove you did it, but it was on your hotspot so good enough for us."

I fail to understand how these companies keep saying "ZOMG, teh bandwidth it too expensive to give you" and then combine it with "and we'll now try to get 50% more subscribers on our already overloaded network". At least, I fail to see how they can be honest about that instead of just saying "of course we're screwing you over and selling more than we have, and of course our monthly charges are wrong".

Re:Monthly quota?

[Ralph Wiggam]

There have been significant advances in networking since 2002. You should read up.

Re:Monthly quota?

[khellendros1984]

Well, that, or they'll track have the wifi access over a different VLAN, like similar schemes in other areas do. I can imagine someone that's about to go over their quota switching to the public hotspot's ssid to avoid charges, though. I'm not sure what comcast plans to do about that situation.

Re:Monthly quota?

[beltsbear]

Or swaps logins with another comcast customer, so they each use each others logins on their own routers.

Re:Monthly quota?

[suutar]

They'll probably just attach all traffic associated with your login to your account, whether it's on your cablemodem or on the wifi (if the wifi is comcast-customer-only, they'll have to have some way to authenticate that you're a comcast customer). Which will suck if/when someone gets your credentials (either by sniffing the radio or setting up a fake hotspot).

Re:Monthly quota?

[gstoddart]

There's also been significant advances in incompetence, and corporate greed.

And those two are things you should be really worried about.

Re:Monthly quota?

[Jason Levine]

At least, I fail to see how they can be honest about that

The problem lies in thinking they'd be honest about anything. The cable ISPs are monopolies or duopolies in most areas so they know they have the power to do whatever they want to do. Add in their size and lobbying muscle, and you have a group of companies who feel they can do anything they want with no repercussions.

Re:Monthly quota?

[Ralph Wiggam]

No. Actually incompetence and corporate greed have been pretty constant for a few hundred years.

Maybe they seem new to you because you just started paying attention. Some of us actually read our History textbooks when they covered Standard Oil and the Dutch East India Company.

Re:Monthly quota?

[farble1670]

why is this so complicated? comcast knows when you are at home, and when you are "roaming" on to other customers' wifi hotspots (because they make you login to them). wherever you are, your cap is applied to your account.

no, i don't have any special knowledge here, it just HAS to work that way or it's ripe for abuse.

Re:Monthly quota?

[gstoddart]

No, while the individual greed and douchebaggery of corporations has more or less remained constant, with the advent of the interwebs it can be done much more efficiently, on a larger scale, and usually involving acquisitions, outsourcing, and H1B visas.

The overall effectiveness of being a greedy, incompetent bastard has been vastly improved in its output. CEOs now can direct the suck from a centralized location in real time while viewing dashboard metrics, thereby vastly improving productivity.

I'd give you a smiley face to say I'm joking, except I'm not entirely sure I am.

Re:Monthly quota?

[ArcadeMan]

If they require a Comcast customer login, then it's not a public wi-fi hotspot at all.

Re:Monthly quota?

[farble1670]

Comcast will begin activating a feature in its Arris Touchstone Telephony Wireless Gateway Modems that sets up a public Wi-Fi hotspot alongside a residential Internet customer’s private home network. Other Comcast customers will be able to log in to the hotspots for free ...

there you go.

Re:Monthly quota?

[Ralph Wiggam]

How many CEOs today have a standing army that report directly to them, which can murder people with impunity?

Because that used to be a thing.

Re:Monthly quota?

[Anonymous Coward]

You act as if our top 500 CEOs couldn't afford a "security unit" of 500 armed? Pay these security folk enough and just recruit from the military as they get out. You'll have the best trained soldiers for hire. Big enough companies essentially can murder people with impunity.

Just because it isn't happening today doesn't mean it can't start happening tomorrow.

Re:Monthly quota?

[Anonymous Coward]

BT in the UK did this with over 2 million customers. It's a complete nightmare to opt out from, you get channeled into an Indian call centre that basically lie to you over and over. The online opt out functionality doesn't work either. If you are very persistent you may be able to get them to turn it off after 6 weeks.

Your bandwidth does drop, and you router will not go into sleep mode. BT's HomeHub router (required for their "super speed" connection) also has two WIFI circuits, so even if you forward everything from their router to your own and turn off their WIFI, you'll still have two APs active on their device.

To add insult to injury, BT have linked up with FON (French company) and advertise massive WIFI coverage and sell access to this network.

The vast majority of BT customers are not even aware BT are double selling their internet connections, simply because BT didn't tell anyone, and it's only those that pay attention to tech news or what's going on in their gear that word got out.

Re:Monthly quota?

[fgouget]

If they require a Comcast customer login, then it's not a public wi-fi hotspot at all.

They do require Comcast credentials. It is indeed not a public / open / free WiFi hotspot.

Re:Monthly quota?

[Ralph Wiggam]

The British East India Company had a standing army of 280,000 men.

Please cite examples of a big company murdering people with impunity in the last 20 years.

Re:Monthly quota?

[gstoddart]

How many CEOs today have a standing army that report directly to them, which can murder people with impunity?

Well ... let's see, there's Blackwater (nor apparently called Academi).

There's Halliburton, which had some pretty shady dealings.

And, here's a list of more of them.

Various oil companies have used varying degrees of 'private contractors' to intimidate, harass, murder, and otherwise mistreat the locals if they got in the way of exploration.

The US government hired some of these 'contractors' to do various things in Iraq, much of which sounds like it wasn't entirely above board.

Re:Monthly quota?

[Ralph Wiggam]

Various oil companies have used varying degrees of 'private contractors' to intimidate, harass, murder, and otherwise mistreat the locals if they got in the way of exploration

Citation on the murder part?

It's a separate connection

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't impact your usage or bandwidth. It's already in many locations.

Re:It's a separate connection

[cogeek]

There's only one cable coming from the pole to my home, so how is it a different connection? Of course it will use your bandwidth, just as every other Comcast customer in my area affects my bandwidth.

Re:It's a separate connection

[Richy_T]

Yep. Heard reports of it in these parts (Tennessee) a few days ago. I have Comcast but I also have my own modem and router.

Re:It's a separate connection

[Anonymous Coward]

That cable coming into your home has this thing called "bandwidth". Cable modems talk across this cable using a system known as DOCSIS. DOCSIS has a concept called "channels". The more of these "channels" you have, the faster your connection, but you still have more "bandwidth" than you are using in "channels".

With me so far? Good.

So what the cable company do is throw an extra "channel" or two onto your cable, but here's the clever bit, they keep them separate from the channels you're already using! That way, the traffic between the two is completely separate; like, they've magically put two logical connections onto a single cable! That's some crazy Harry Potter shit right there, I know, but it's true.

Then, they just have the WiFi on their router announce a second network, with it's own SSID, it's own RADIUS authentication and RADIUS accounting. It even hands out different IP addresses!

These guys have invented some dark magic shit, I'm telling you.

The level of complete and utter ignorance displayed by almost every single poster in this entire thread is shocking. Slashdot is just full of people who think they know what they're talking about and haven't got a fucking clue. It's pathetic.

Stealing electricity

[Anonymous Coward]

How is this legal?

Re:Stealing electricity

[uncqual]

Anything that isn't illegal is legal -- that's how the system works in the US.

What about this is illegal? If you can't answer that, you have your answer.

Re:Stealing Electricity

[iggymanz]

they are stealing more than that, all their customers are leasing equipment for their exclusive use, not to form a public charity.

the ultimate mesh network

[alen]

thousands of wifi routers providing free service. i might have to go back to a dumb phone and just carry around a small tablet everywhere i go. why pay extortion prices for cell data when wifi will be literally everywhere

Re:the ultimate mesh network

[gstoddart]

thousands of wifi routers providing free service.

Except, there is no 'free'. You have to be a Comcast subscriber to use this.

So, they're offering a 'free' service to people who are paying an additional fee on top of their existing service to access this 'free' service.

And they're using the gear in people's houses (and possibly some of their available bandwidth) to do it.

Re:the ultimate mesh network

[Anonymous Coward]

Or, you turn on a router with the same name, wait until people log into it, scoop up their credentials, and then your golden.

Re:the ultimate mesh network

[Njovich]

We have this stuff here in Netherlands at one of the biggest providers (Ziggo). It seemed great to me at first, but turned out pretty much useless.

The problem is, these are home routers inside homes, this means they are low powered, not at ideal locations (not many homes in the mall, highway, train, etc), and also inside usually thick walls that stop a lot of the signal. It's just a frustrating experience, with your phone often falling in and out of connection and such. The 4G network gives a much better experience.

Re:the ultimate mesh network

[Richy_T]

I was wondering about this also. It depends if the authentication is via the WIFI connection or a guardian webpage.

Re:the ultimate mesh network

[Anonymous Coward]

wget authentication_page.html > /var/www/html/authentication_page.html

Then you just set up whatever the hostname is in your AP's DNS. Probably wouldn't catch everyone, but catching even one person would be enough.

APK would be safe though.

Re:the ultimate mesh network

[jythie]

Last I logged on to the local comcast wifi it was still using a webpage based authentication, so it probably would not be all that hard to fool the average consumer into signing onto a fake Comcast login page, esp since the malicious router could do its own DNS stuff.

Re:the ultimate mesh network

[kalpol]

I have relatives in the Netherlands and the houses over there are built much more sturdily than the usual stick-built home in the US which doesn't have much structure to block wi-fi signals. However even in my thin-walled house the signal from my router barely reaches to the end of my back garden, so I expect anyone who would want to use it would have to stand on the street directly in front of my house.

Re:the ultimate mesh network

[Anonymous Coward]

Around here most people's routers are in their basement. You can't even get signal to your front lawn. Forget a mesh under those conditions.

Re:the ultimate mesh network

[Anonymous Coward]

I imagine people in apartment buildings and townhouses would "benefit" the most from this. But then... what's the point.

From my townhouse I have strong signal to like 3 other nearby units. So I guess people walking on the sidewalk in front of my "row" can have their choice of connection.

From my parents' suburban house with nice yard... I can MAYBE get 1 bar on one of my neighbor's WiFi networks. So it would do practically nothing in their neighborhood.

Re:the ultimate mesh network

[Anonymous Coward]

From what I've seen in various parts of Europe, US houses don't block WiFi signals as much since they're wood and drywall compared to masonry houses in Europe, but we surround ourselves with a much larger perimeter of grass which negates that benefit. Granted, this is in Houston so it may not be applicable in the suburbs, but now you're looking at a 3D RF interference map with concrete walls, steel frames, and often first floor storefronts.

Re:the ultimate mesh network

[Richy_T]

Yeah. Sounds fairly easy. Could even be done with a mobile hotspot making it very hard to catch.

Re:the ultimate mesh network

[fgouget]

The Free French ISP has provided a similar service for years and while it's true that range can make things tricky, it still works well enough to be quite handy. It works particularly well if you visit someone who's with this ISP: no need to ask for the key to their private network. Same if it's an appartment building and one of the neighbors is a Free customer. And with over 4 million hotspots, in dense locations you can quite easily find one that's in range.

Re:the ultimate mesh network

[Anonymous Coward]

We have this stuff here in Netherlands at one of the biggest providers (Ziggo). It seemed great to me at first, but turned out pretty much useless.

The problem is, these are home routers inside homes, this means they are low powered, not at ideal locations (not many homes in the mall, highway, train, etc), and also inside usually thick walls that stop a lot of the signal. It's just a frustrating experience, with your phone often falling in and out of connection and such. The 4G network gives a much better experience.

But at least you can log into your account via the wifi at a friends house without having the awkward "umm, may I have your 25 digit wifi security key? And could you add my phone to your routers mac whitelist?". Sounds good to me.

Re:the ultimate mesh network

[david_thornley]

My house is stucco, meaning that it's covered with wire mesh that the actual stucco is attached to. I can't get wireless on my front porch unless I'm right in front of the living-room window.

Liability

[Anonymous Coward]

My guess is that you'll be compensated by having access to a city-wide wifi hotspot.

Isn't negative option billing illegal ?

[Anonymous Coward]

This sounds an aweful lot like what a certain large cable TV provider tried to do in Canada a while back.
They offered new channels on a "Free Preview" ... then said people had to "opt-out" of the new channels .. in order to not get billed.

Grandparents of politicians got billed and did not know what for. That practice very quickly became out-lawed.
Fancy how quickly laws get passed when you piss off the grandparents of the politicians making the laws.

Sham on you Comcast -- take a lesson from North of the border.

Re:Isn't negative option billing illegal ?

[alen]

in the USA the big cable companies provide FREE wifi service to their customers

Re:Isn't negative option billing illegal ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Comcast isn't billing anyone for this.

Many will not notice additional "Xfinity" network

[Trachman]

As always, such initiatives rely on the fact that most of the population are ignorant and passive. Aluminum foil times x 50,000 would solve this issue, but they know this is not happening.

Oh I get it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously... if you have comcast... cancel them now.

Great idea. Everyone should immediately switch to one of the other many alternatives.

Or just don't rent your modem...

[TobinLathrop]

I can buy one every year and it still comes out cheaper than renting from Comcast. Also the modem does not have wifi built in, it connects to my router and that takes care of things.
In a way I can see where this is nice but then I can see where it can lead to oh IP used ad house X was downloading Ke$ha music (or worse) and you have no

Re:Or just don't rent your modem...

[TobinLathrop]

In a way I can see where this is nice but then I can see where it can lead to oh IP used ad house X was downloading Ke$ha music (or worse) and you have no

gah, nice loss of train of though there self.
you have no way to know if the resident or some free loader did it.

Re:make some congressman happy, the MPAA ...

[Anonymous Coward]

and the RIAA will have a duck fit - 'because here I come with my roaming torrent server'.

And we know who really has the FCC ear don't we...

Monthly quota?

[Anonymous Coward]

Third option - they have the ability to calculate quotas but will no longer make the users pay for going over quota.

Nice

[Kuberz]

As it stands now, many locations still have only one option when it comes to high speed internet (excluding satellite, but that's not really high speed). Comcast is now trying to merge with Time Warner. Talk about one hell of a monopoly.

Now they argue they don't compete in enough markets, but think about it, it's the internet. With a combined merger, they will have a much easier time charging content providers for bandwidth to costumers.

So now you, the customer, are going to be higher premiums for any online services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime, etc. Because when these companies have to start shelling out to internet providers, they have to raise their prices in order to stay profitable.

So having these huge open wifi networks seems like a good deal for a consumer, it's actually just a way for these companies to get increased revenue, using the bandwidth you've purchased from them, extending it "freely" to other people, and using this as a way to entice companies such as Netflix to pay them a higher streaming premium.

Basically, and in essence, this is a way for Comcast to extend it's user base without extending it's customer base, to leverage higher bandwidth fees from content providers.

Re:Nice

[Jason Levine]

So now you, the customer, are going to be higher premiums for any online services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime, etc.

Not to mention that you, the user, will get capped by Comcast and the other monopoly ISPs so that using any online video service will cost you overage fees. This will effectively make online video services more expensive and thus drive people to Comcast's own video offerings.

Re:Converting Turning?

[Anonymous Coward]

Missed the original, but a combination of the two might have been very appropriate. After all, they are converting the families' routers and turning them out onto the streets to any paying customer they can connect with.

Xfinity sounds like a name a pimped out 80s pimp might choose.

Custom routers

[Akaihiryuu]

This is why I don't use ISP provided equipment. I have my own cable modem (which is just a "basic" model without router functionality), and my "router" is a custom built Linux box (it handles the wifi as well with hostapd).

Re:Custom routers

[silas_moeckel]

In my parts comcast charged 6 bucks a month, when I can go down to staples and buy a fairly good cable modem for 60 bucks that will last for years. Frankly trusting your cable co to be in charge of your wifi and firewall seems like a bad idea. It gets worse they ship these garbage routers to business setups and will insist they can not just bridge until pressed hard.

Re:Custom routers

[Akaihiryuu]

Yep. I actually don't have Comcast...I had Insight, which was then bought out by Time Warner (service has improved dramatically since TW took over by the way). The modem that was originally provided me was garbage and didn't support any of the higher speeds. Although, when it was Insight, it didn't matter, because they neglected the network for years until TW took over (the fastest speed available was 10mbit until the TW takeover, it took them a year but it's 50mbit now). I just went and bought a Motorola SB6141, not only do I save the $6/month, I have a much better device, so when the 50mbit service was made available all they had to do was upgrade my service.

Re:Custom routers

[Jason Levine]

I set up my wife's grandmother's router. Then, she had the ISP come to "fix" their cable modem. They removed her router from the setup, claiming that it wasn't needed, and hooked her Windows computer right up to the Internet (through their cable modem). Needless to say, she encountered "problems" and I had to set it up again. I can't help but think that having your own cable modem would mean that a tech wouldn't touch it and wouldn't wind up mucking a home setup.

It's hard enough keeping our family members running a secure setup. We don't need cable ISP techs who "know what they are doing" telling our relatives that these security precautions aren't needed.

Re:Custom routers

[silas_moeckel]

I just moved into Optimum territory, slightly cheaper than Comcast a bit faster inbound and night and day out (50/10 to 75/25). The free wifi with them is also better since it memorizes mac address so you never have to sign in again.

Re:Custom routers

[Arker]

Eh, sorry, the cable guy is right.

His mandate is simply to get her computer attached to the modem and demonstrate that their service is working then get on to the next call. He is not there to support her home network.

Re:Custom routers

[DMUTPeregrine]

I just moved into a new apartment, and Comcast was the only broadband ISP (DSL wouldn't be broadband in this location). I bought my own modem, they wanted $8/month to rent theirs. $96/yr for a $70 device. You'd have to be stupid to be of legal age to subscribe to their service and yet unable to do the math to save the money.

Re:Custom routers

[Anonymous Coward]

In the UK, where there is something very similar, the ISPs don't allow you to use anything but their equipment. Their crappy, crappy, crappy equipment.

You gotta love their style...

[Thruen]

First, they charged me for the connection to my house at a certain speed. Then, they throttled everything I'd want that speed for. Then, they charged Netflix for the connection to my house. Now, they're offering the connection to my house to other customers when it already can't keep up with my needs or come close to their advertised speeds. What am I even paying for? The joy of twice monthly hour long phone calls to resolve outages?

I bet they'll count this as "upgrading their infrastructure," just another fine example of the innovation they claim will come to an end if ISPs are better regulated.

Re:You gotta love their style...

[Anonymous Coward]

What am I even paying for?

Scraps.

Re:You gotta love their style...

[mr_mischief]

If you're not getting the speed you pay for, try another modem. I get more bandwidth than I pay for most of the time. Comcast is aware of this and says they don't care because they have plenty of backhaul built in my area. I switched out the cheap Ubee for $8/month for a Zoom Telephonics modem rated at 343 Mbps. I pay for 50 Mbps and often download from services like Steam or Origin at around 8 MBps average for 200 or 300 MB at a time.

Nutz

[Charliemopps]

Ok, I'm generally on the side of the ISPs (I work for one) but this is nuts.

On another note, I totally want this. It immunizes you from DMCA letters.
"Sorry Comcast, I'm not pirating movies. It could have been anyone!"

Re:Nutz

[gstoddart]

It's not the DMCA letters you need to worry about.

It's the copyright trolls and law enforcement people.

Because when you get served with a copyright infringement suit for downloading thousands of videos, or get hauled off to jail because your location was used for something illegal ... that's where the real problems begin.

Unless we're meant to believe that this will in no way trace back to the home-owner, and be a completely air-gapped and firewalled thing. And, I must say, I'm skeptical of that.

Because, really, as people have pointed out ... set up a honey pot, collect a few login credentials, and then you can go anywhere in the city and download anything with complete impunity, because it all traces back to some other sucker.

And law enforcement is going to need to come after someone.

Re:Nutz

[ArhcAngel]

Ok, I'm generally on the side of the ISPs (I work for one) but this is nuts.

On another note, I totally want this. It immunizes you from DMCA letters. "Sorry Comcast, I'm not pirating movies. It could have been anyone!"

You missed the part where you have to log in using your Comcast account to access them.

Re:Nutz

[giesen]

No it doesn't. This will use a separate SSID and external IP address from your home connection (as well a separate channel). While I don't agree with this practice, misstating how it works helps no one.

Re:Nutz

[Charliemopps]

No I didn't. Who said I'd use MY account?
You basically have a giant brute force target sitting there city wide.

Re:Nutz

[uncqual]

If Comcast assigns a different IP address to wireless users than to the hosting wired user, there wouldn't be any confusion over if the wired user or a wireless user downloaded evil files.

Unless Comcast assigns a unique IP address to each wireless user (which I suspect they won't on IPV4) sorting out which, of possibly many, wireless users connected at the time of the download may require more tracking -- which I suspect Comcast will do.

Re:Nutz

[unixisc]

So Comcast gives out dual SSID routers out to everyone? In that case, it's not a case of Comcast stealing customer bandwidth to provide to their other customers, if the customer uses SSID0 and the public uses SSID1

Re:Nutz

[Anonymous Coward]

Bingo

Re: Nutz

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes.

A $35 router at Best Buy supports multiple SSIDs these days...

Re:Nutz

[fgouget]

Unless Comcast assigns a unique IP address to each wireless user (which I suspect they won't on IPV4) sorting out which, of possibly many, wireless users connected at the time of the download may require more tracking -- which I suspect Comcast will do.

Comcast most likely uses Carrier Grade NAT for the hotspot clients, just like Free has been doing in France for years for its community WiFi. That means hotspot users get a totally different IP address than the router 'owner' and that the NAT already tracks which customer is using a given IPv4 at any given time.

Copyright Trolls Delight

[sehlat]

And, of course, the CT will inevitably find these hotspots being used for so-called "infringing downloads" and proceed to hold the people the routers are assigned to responsible for them.

Malibu Media is going to LOVE this!

Re:Copyright Trolls Delight

[Anonymous Coward]

And since anyone using these hotspots will be authenticated and tunneled, Comcast will know exactly who performed the infringement. They also don't go out the subscribers IP....

So...

[suprcvic]

So other comcast customers can stroll through and leech my bandwidth, that I pay for? Good thing I don't use a comcast wifi router.

It's a separate upstream channel.

[mveloso]

From what little I understand, the public WiFi stuff is on a separate upstream channel.

It's not using your bandwidth, but it is using bandwidth that Comcast doesn't want to make available to you, which isn't quite the same thing.

Peachy

[rlp]

As a relatively pleased Time-Warner customer I am sooooo looking forward to Comcast acquiring TW.

Re: Peachy

[Anonymous Coward]

TWC already does this.

Re: Peachy

[PRMan]

They do this on my router that I own personally that doesn't have WiFi capability at all?

Wow! They're better than I thought!

Sue them for increased electricity costs

[eminencja]

An idle router will surely use less electricity.

Re:Sue them for increased electricity costs

[Stan92057]

and licensing fees running a business from your home.

Paris

[Anonymous Coward]

Well...it works well in Pairs...but this isn't Paris...

Where do I send the electricity bill?

[psyque]

How long until someone presents them with a bill for the electricity use? It ain't free you know.

Re:Where do I send the electricity bill?

[uncqual]

Opt out (and, presumably, that also opts you out of accessing the Comcast WiFi 'network').

Re:Where do I send the electricity bill?

[dcooper_db9]

They could be using using power-over-ethernet. Some of their business class devices support POE but I couldn't find anything that said they're using it for the XFinity WiFi network.

Re:Where do I send the electricity bill?

[Jason Levine]

Don't worry, electricity costs will be paid back. If you find the proper website address and submit the proper proof of expenses incurred in their patented obscure format.

In unrelated news, a $3.25 per month "Router Electricity Payback Tax" will be added to all bills as is a $2.57 per month "Obscure Format Development Tax."

Re:Where do I send the electricity bill?

[Ksevio]

Power over coax to ethernet? I don't think Comcast runs plain ethernet to anyone since the signal would degrade pretty fast.

Re:Where do I send the electricity bill?

[dcooper_db9]

I was thinking of POE over coax, which does exist. Cable companies do run low voltage power through their lines and it can be used to run low voltage electronics. I don't know if there's a standard for POE over coax but here's an example of a device: http://www.comnet.net/comnet-p...

Maybe I Was Wrong about Comcast

[Anonymous Coward]

This is awesome. Now I can drop my expensive Comcast service and use their free WiFi!

Dwight's blog entry is not paywalled

[SpiceWare]

while it may not have the exact same content as the paywalled link, it does provide information about it http://blog.chron.com/techblog...

oS, I suppose) or by time of day.

[Applehu Akbar]

I would rather have a system in which the public bandwidth comes out of the bandwidth I contract for, with my being compensated for the bandwidth the public uses and my being able to limit the public usage fraction either by bandwidth (personal QoS, I suppose) or by time of day. The marketing people could call this service your "Internet solar roof."

Re:oS, I suppose) or by time of day.

[Ferrofluid]

1. Sign up for "internet solar roof"
2. Connect to your own router as an anonymous public device
3. ????
4. Profit! (Or at least never having to pay a dime for your internet bill)

Re:oS, I suppose) or by time of day.

[Applehu Akbar]

Even assuming there were no check for connecting to your own router, all you would be doing is paying Comcast out of your public WiFi pocket instead of your home service pocket. And wanna bet that that the public hotspot usage rate would be higher, to incentivize people to continue having their own routers connected to Comcast as a lower-cost option?

Avoid comcast data cap.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think a lot of subscribers will start using the "free" wifi network to stream their shows, somehow the thought of using comcast's own technology to bypass a comcast imposed data cap brings a smile to my face.

Re:Avoid comcast data cap.

[uncqual]

I would assume only Comcast ISP subscribers would be able to access the 'public' WiFi network. Why wouldn't whatever a WiFi user consumes be 'charged' against the data cap on their wired connection?

..and it breaks stuff for end users...

[Anonymous Coward]

Here in the mid-atlantic states, when one of our employees no longer can connect to the workplace VPN, we know that Comcast has rolled out their wifi hotspot system to that person's house. Their configuration is apparently horribly broken, so you get weird, unsolvable problems.

We always end up moving the people affected to Verizon FIOS, because Comcast refuses to acknowledge that it's their fault. 100% of the time this problem is concurrent with Comcast rolling out the hotspot nonsense, but that's not data to them! Great job, Comcast, you might eventually put yourself out of business!

Good idea in theory

[Anonymous Coward]

HORRIFIC idea in practice new to many reasons:
security
responsibility
bandwidth limits

Combining it with mesh networking would also make it considerably better.
But until those things above are addressed, and some more, it is just bad.
The law will have a field-day with this. The law regarding those points above with regards to public APs are horrendous at best. (especially in the US!)

Re:make some congressman happy, the MPAA ...

[Applehu Akbar]

Now I can start streaming TV episodes I missed once again, just as I did in the golden age of two years ago, even when my cable provider isn't one of the three tiny companies in the network apps "Verify My Cable Carrier" list.

FON

[ArhcAngel]

Sounds like what FON has been doing for years except on an opt-in basis.

Re:FON

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't believe this hasn't been modded up, or that there are no other comments mentioning Fon...

Doubt it will work well

[geeper]

I gave the CC built in WiFi a shot but it's horrible coverage and firmware (features) turned me away. I did a live chat and had them turn the WiFi off and they did it immediately, that way I could just use my own. It comes back on automatically about every 6 months (I'm assuming because of some upgrade) and I just live chat with them and have them turn it off. It has a big bright light when it's on so it's easy to tell. If this happens to me (near Houston), I'll just contact them again.

Re:Doubt it will work well

[jimmifett]

I do they same thing. Craptastic router only has 4megs ram for the wifi and shit range. Can't play BF4 in the other room without lagging every 5 seconds. Turned off the wifi and installed a Dark Knight. I don't see how these puny routers could possibly be usable for city wide wifi

Xfinitywifi hotspots

[Anonymous Coward]

Have been popping up everywhere down here in south FL in the last few months..

As a Houston resident and comcast subscriber

[kick6]

I'm glad I have my own modem. The idea that I now have to share the bandwidth that I'm paying for (and not getting) with anyone that happens to drive by, is infuriating.

I have an idea

[slashmydots]

So I guess wrapping your modem in tin foil isn't so stupid after all.

Re:I have an idea

[PRMan]

Not if you have a wired connection to your WiFi router it's not.

Re:Converting Turning?

[Jmc23]

You don't get to be a slashdot ed. by being able to control your addictions!

still eats up CPU and Wifi Spectrum and cable node

[Joe_Dragon]

still eats up CPU and Wifi Spectrum and cable node space.

Their router, not yours

[EmagGeek]

You are leasing your router from them. They own it, as well as the network. As long as they provide you with the service level you are paying for (which is some certain speed with absolutely no guarantees of speed or uptime), you really have no right to complain.

As long as these people are allowed to bundle the router with the service and force you to use it, oh well too bad so sad.

Re:Their router, not yours

[iggymanz]

and when the cops kick in your door for the child porn going down your leased pipe that's fine with you?

or the entertainment cartel makes you their poster child from the infringing content going in?

Re:Their router, not yours

[Neil Boekend]

Why would they kick down your door when the child pron is downloaded on the secondary WIFI network with a separate ISP and with the credentials of the actual downloader? They can just kick the actual downloader's door in.

(note: I do not know how good the security is. It may be easy to set up a honeypot and get some credentials. In that case the door of the one who's credentials the actual downloader is using gets kicked in.)

Slashdot Beta

[Anonymous Coward]

I must have done it a hundred times so far, clicked on the link to "return to classic slashdot", why do I have to keep doing this? I obviously DON'T LIKE BETA.

Re:Slashdot Beta

[unixisc]

Change your URL to http://slashdot.org/?nobeta=1

ISP Managing my LAN

[thygate]

Cable broadband provider Telenet in Belgium did the same thing. When my old DOCSIS 2 modem died, they gave me (without any options) one of their all-in-one fancy new 'modems', with built in router with private + public wifi. To manage my modem settings i had to go to their webpage to change MY modem/router/lan/wifi settings, which would then be pushed to my modem locally. So if they're site is down (which happens quite regularly imo, for 'maintenance'), i can't manage my own LAN ! Heaven forbid if someone ever finds an exploit in those modems, all of their customers' LAN's will be compromised. I re-disabled the public wifi several times, after it got mysteriously re-enabled. Forget about calling support, you always get brain dead morons that won't deviate from their silly 'please reboot your modem' flowchart even though you can provide perfect logical reasoning to locate the problem. Power users are a nuisance to them. Repeated calls to support to ask for a normal modem as a consumer were all fruitless. I later played my cards different with the business support desk (as a business owner) and with some social engineering was able to get someone to give permission(!) for me to get a normal modem at my local telenet supplier. I have since installed this modem with behind it a router running custom firmware, where I control my LAN & WIFI. Speeds even more than doubled too ! As of last year Liberty Global own a 57.8% stake in Telenet. A USA telecommunications and television company that is buying up broadband providers worldwide. With recent revelations this is also worrisome, but we don't have another choice for cable provider. Stay vigilant people, and demand what you have the rights to !

Re:ISP Managing my LAN

[Ksevio]

That's probably a side effect of having a modem/router/wifi hybrid since DOCSIS(?) certification requires they prevent the user from tampering with settings, so in order for it to be configurable, you need to tell the ISP what settings you want and the ISP can set them with SNMP

Re:ISP Managing my LAN

[jon3k]

Buy lead box. Place over router.

Re:ISP Managing my LAN

[thygate]

The point is that as a non-business client you don't get an option, you have to use that specific telenet-branded box that contains a docsis modem and router which is only remotely manageable. And the public hotspot functionality gets mysteriously re-enabled every now and then. Even as a business-client i had to jump through hoops to get a modem without built-in router, managed by them. I don't care about actual cable-modem specific settings, those should be administered by the cable company, but I do care about the WAN/LAN/Wifi settings. The provider has absolutely no business managing my LAN. It also seems like a huge security risk to have this exact same device for all your customers.

Re:ISP Managing my LAN

[thygate]

yes, tinfoil-hat jokes aside, a data leak at the provider will reveal everyone's wifi password. Three letter agency access to the provider's network essentially opens up access to all household and small business LANs.

Several questions

[Registered Coward v2]

1. So how does that figure into bandwidth caps that Comcast seems to like to impose? If it's a public hotspot it could significantly increase usage.

2. When the inevitable request for an IP address is made who is on the hook to be the named John / Jane Doe? Sure, the router assigns IP addresses but how do you cough up the name? Just give the router owner's name?

3. Does logging into a hotspot imply consent to capture data streams? Probably not, but the person with access to the router could do some snooping if they were so inclined.

Re:Several questions

[Anonymous Coward]

1) it isn't a public hotspot it is for comcast customers only. you have to log in with your own comcast credentials, comcast will very well know who is using the bandwidth. (unless someone else got ahold of your username and password)

2) see 1.

3) this is always a problem if you don't have full control of the hardware. how do you think the NSA is able to snoop so much traffic? your control ends at the point the cable leaves your house, anywhere between that and the server (and including the server) could have malicious hardware or software that is snooping on your traffic. for that matter unless you build the router yourself how do you know that it isn't running malicious software? there were stories recently about the NSA intercepting shipments of high end cisco equipment that were being shipped abroad and then installing malicious hardware in them and repackaging them to go on to their destination.

For a site for nerds

[Jmc23]

there sure is a lot of paranoid stupidity about how tech works.

Re:For a site for nerds

[Anonymous Coward]

Care to elaborate?

Re:For a site for nerds

[NoKaOi]

there sure is a lot of paranoid stupidity about how tech works.

I assume you're implying that it's stupid to assume that this will degrade service. If, currently, I can barely stream Netflix (stops/spins frequently, lowers quality, sometimes to the point of being unwatchable), then when somebody else hops on my connection and starts downloading porn or watching silly cat videos, what do you think is going to happen? I haven't seen anything about Comcast upgrading their other infrastructure to compensate for this and give me double the current actual bandwidth, which would still be a fraction of what I'm paying for as the "up to" speed.

*This was my experience when I had cable when I lived in a suburban ticky tacky neighborhood. I moved a bit further out and happen to be pretty close to the telco now. I have DSL which is rated at 1/3 of what my cable was, but I have no problem streaming Netflix & Hulu to 3 different TVs/computers at a time with no noticeable degradation. I realize that in some limited areas cable gives much better actual speeds, so please realize that if you have plenty of speed on your cable connection, consider yourself lucky because most people don't.

Will they pay for the cost of electricity

[Anonymous Coward]

For those new public wifi hotspots?

Seattle, WA

[Talinom]

I live in south King County and logged into my Comcast account to see what all the fuss was about. Because I have a separate router running DD-WRT and it is connected to my Arris cable modem I do not have the Xfinity WiFi option; or perhaps it is because my Arris cable modem does not have WiFi available when checking it's IP address of 192.168.100.1. Using their online Xfinity WiFi finder, one person near me has Xfinity WiFi and one person near where my dad lives does as well.

Re:Seattle, WA

[Arker]

I would keep an eye on that Arris, most of those are not cable modems but 'wireless gateways' - you can put them in bridge mode and get them to pretend they are a modem but the router is still in there. They dont always stay in bridge mode very well, and it's also very easy for the ISP to factory default them whenever they want, either way you could see an xfinity wifi hotspot appear in your home without notice at any time.

Very old story in Europe

[Anonymous Coward]

Here in France we've had that kind of service for years. I think that Iliad has introduced it (under the brand called "Free", one of the big four). It's great for all, local traffic is always prioritary so you always get what you pay for, and you can catch Wifi for free in many places of the country. Especially with a capable antenna (look for Ubiquity Network products), it works great. I think it's better to allow users to opt out, because it builds the real critical mass of hotspots.

What's annoying is whatever your provider, you have only access to a quarter of the available hotspots, so it can get frustrating at times.

I'm not aware of any user masquerading as a fake service and collecting data.

cool story bro

[larry bagina]

my cable modem doesn't do wifi and isn't the cable co's property. Next time don't rent a POS modem from the cable co? The NSA and cable cos would prefer otherwise, of course.

Re:cool story bro

[style7711]

Till they ban bring your own modem. What your current modem works just fine and you have to pay for a new one. Already happening.

consumer cost at 750.000$ a year

[Anonymous Coward]

That comes up to 5 dollar per household for power assuming the transmitter and usage takes an extra 5 watts. This will be especially true for costumers in a crowded area. It's a cost saving of 750.000$ a year for the city of houston. http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%28price+of+electricity+in+houston%29*150000*5watt*1year

Telus already does this

[Anonymous Coward]

If you have a Telus ADSL connection, you'll probably notice that there's always a TELUS_XXXX wifi network nearby. The ADSL modem / Wireless router combo that Telus provides creates a Telus hotspot that cannot be disabled. If you don't want to pay Telus for the privilege of hosting their other customers traffic without compensation, you have to remove the antennas from the ADSL modem. Call Telus and ask them WTF, and they will be sure they don't know what you're talking about.

Whether or not there is impact to the bandwidth...

[Anonymous Coward]

...why should anyone give Comcast free use of their land (and electricity) as a site for as a public hotspot?

Stealing Electricity

[Anonymous Coward]

Comcast is stealing the homeowner's electricity! This stealing is the basis for criminal prosecution of people who install spy cameras in homes and businesses -- stealing electricity to run the camera and transmitter. Even though Comcast owns the device, it does not own the electricity that powers it -- the home owner does. A User License Agreement does not give Comcast a License to Steal Electricity for their use.

Are these Hotspots Public?

[Anonymous Coward]

You are permitted 2 one hour free uses every month or so.
    But otherwise, you have to have some sort of subscription.

That sounds like a private, as in members only, hotspot.
      The current Comcast customers are members.
      But they can get additional revenue from other folks who which to play.

Comcast figured out how to roll out another revenue generating service without buying more infrastructure.
    Clever, but there has to be a cost in a higher oversubscription ratio for their current internet service.
          In terms of fair sharing, does the house owner get first dibs on the B/W supported by his electricity?
    We really need some rules on what an isp provides when he sells Internet service.
      Peak B/W is not enough.
      Monthly byte caps do not meter are not related to significant actual cost.
      Minimum busy hour B/W would be nice if you could define B/W to where.
          The current Verizon/Netflix finger pointing shows that 'where' is a tricky concept.

Opt out of everything

[Anonymous Coward]

Customers who choose to opt out of sharing their wifi should also be locked out of others wifi when out and about.

Greed Arrogance Privacy Stomping

[Anonymous Coward]

Hopefully, in the end, another corporation bites the dust.

It's Comcast's equipment

[Anonymous Coward]

If I'm reading this right, it's Comcast's equipment, therefore they can do whatever they want with it. The "owner" is simply renting a certain amount of bandwidth from them.

Also, the actual cables can handle much more bandwidth than you pay for, so theoretically it shouldn't affect your internet at all except that you might end up immune from DMCA letters.

I don't understand why there are so many complaints here when this only improves your service (by giving Comcast an incentive to offer the extra speed they might build in).

BT Openzone

[PsyMan]

Is the same in the UK, you do get access to their higher powered public wi-fi as well but due to the fact that their supplied routers barely extend around the house they are intended to feed let alone become some kind of public hot-spot doesnt work very well from the few I have tried to access. I believe the traffic on your own SSID is prioritised too (confirmation needed though). Nothing to stop you using a laptop connected to the public SSID for your illegal downloading though I suppose. Damn those wardriving freeloaders.

Who pays the power bill and also WIFI saturation?

[Anonymous Coward]

I can understand a service provider getting their ROI out of the CPE device, and in addition if there is extra network capacity lying around then sure why not turn it into a hot spot? The main issues I see are:

- The CPE modem/device that the sub was given is now becoming a hot spot serving users other than the end user that has the agreement with the service provider/ISP. That being the case, the end user who pays the power bill to power that device - what % of power will be going towards the EU's service agreement versus the random users that will be coming in via public hot spot side of the device?

- If the public hot spot is using standard 2.4 Ghz or 5.0 Ghz WIFI standard (which I assume it is) there will be much heavier congestion in the 2.4 and 5 Ghz spectrums in all of these areas. I would expect to see frequency overlap in these neighborhoods start to increase thus impacting all WIFI performance in those areas?

Just my 2 thoughts.

Re:Converting Turning?

[Anonymous Coward]

Priorities, clearly.

Great Idea, wrong company

[gatfirls]

If a more reputable company for customer service rolling this out would probably be praised but it's comcast so everyone will hate on it. They pretty much have to make it opt out because no one ever reads anything so it would be 1 person per square mile opted in.

I for one would absolutely love having broadband wifi anywhere in my city. But again it's comcast so they will probably charge more for the service, pissing everyone off.

Two Words

[Anonymous Coward]

Child Porn

Welp.

[Garbage Data]

Time to start a mesh net.

BOFH

[WinstonWolfIT]

One week when I was bored I opened up my wireless, waited for the inevitable leach, and then played routing games around the sick porn sites he visited. Increasingly, all traffic routed to http://www.kittenwar.com./ The leaching soon stopped.

public hotspot at home?

[Anonymous Coward]

home routers as public wifi-spots? my experience with 802.11g range is that my android tablet on detects strong routers within about 100 feet of the device. so the hotspot will only be usable within 75-100 feet of a home wireless router in a residential neighborhood or apartment complex? who are the intended users? *scratches head*

Re:public hotspot at home?

[whistlingtony]

The intended customer is that guy in the free candy van parked in the alley behind your house. Don't worry. He's a fellow Comcast customer. He's totally legit. :D

Re:Converting Turning?

[Stan92057]

Your paid subscription here might provide the money to hire said editor. Oh wait Slashdot is provided for free, what do you expect for free??gezz

Buy your own broadband router, damnit!

[kheldan]

NEVER use what Comcast provides, buy your own equipment and don't allow ANYONE else access to it!

I'm not in Houston

[Andrio]

But as a Comcast customer, I'm damn glad I don't lease my modem or router from them.

Maybe I should start selling a decent router and Comcast compatible modem on eBay as a pair, calling them something like "No Lease Comcast Hardware Kit - pays for itself in just 10 months!"

Re:Converting Turning?

[Njovich]

Wish I had modpoints to mod this to -2, but Soulskill, you are definitely one of the top 3 best editors Slashdot has had, don't listen to these idiots.

In addition

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe you have to be a Comcast customer to have full access to it. Non-Comcast customers have limited access I think.

The fix is simple. Give Comcast their modem back and go buy your own.

The right thing to do ( from a Comcast perspective ) would be to waive the monthly fees they charge when using their modem if they're going to allow outside access to it. Essentially, they're charging YOU ~$100.00 / year ( rental fee and power costs ) to give them free access points for entry into their network. :|

I simply don't trust them enough to allow outside access to anything connected to my home network.

Re:In addition

[Drakonblayde]

The flip side of that is that you have access to the wireless mesh as well if you want it. You're not only providing it, you can consume it as well.

And Comcast is not charging you for power. You have to provide power to the cable modem in order to use it, and you're paying that fee whether you provide your own, or you take theirs.

I do agree, however. Leasing a modem is stupid. A Motorola SB 6121 costs about 80 bucks at your local big box store and is fully compatible with the Comcast network (do not believe the sales people or the install techs when they try and make you doubt whether or not the modem will work with the Comcast network - it will. Comcast supports every cable modem vendor you can find in Best Buy and it's like). It'll pay for itself in under a year. Now, if you're using one of the Wireless gateways, then the cable modem is also acting as a router, so you'll need to buy one of those as well if you don't already have them, which takes you a little longer to reach your break even point. However, most folks only change service providers when they move, and most folks don't move frequently, so chances are you'll hit the break even point before then.

If someone has been paying a cable modem rental fee for like 5+ years, then that person is terrible at math.

I suspect there's another longer-term motive here

[93 Escort Wagon]

So to get access to a Comcast customer's wi-fi, you also have to be a Comcast customer AND you are limited to a short amount of time per month.

I suspect what's going to happen soon is Comcast will start charging its customers per device, since visitor's computers/devices are now separated out from the homeowner's stuff. "So you own one iMac, three Kindle Fire tablets and an iPhone? That's five MACs connecting to our service - so here's the base charge, plus the $10/month surcharge per extra device."

I also expect there'll be a premium "feature" where Comcast customers can pay for additional "roaming" time on Comcast routers other than their own.

I called Comcast to turn off the xfinity-wifi

[rsborg]

For one, I don't want random people in their cars hanging out in front of my house - as we don't have a very large setback and wifi coverage is OK from the street.

Secondly, this signal interferes with my Airport Extreme I have sitting behind it. Once I upgraded to the new modem (only because the old one finally quit on me), I immediately called Comcast to disable the wifi (you can't do that with a button), as I was getting a whole lot of disconnects and failures to connect on wake on my MBPr.

Now it's all copacetic. If they didn't allow me to opt-out, I'd be furious. Typical of Comcast to turn your home into a wifi hotspot - it's so ill designed and inconsiderate. If they ran it outside for folks outside, that'd be much better.

They have this backwards...

[Anonymous Coward]

This should be an opt-in "feature, and Comcast should discount the monthly cost of internet service for those who do opt-in.

Oh really Comcast?

[jon3k]

So if anyone is interested, I'm developing a new device called the Comcast Fucker(tm). Its a lead shield that you place over your home WiFi router.

Who goes to jail when kiddie porn is downloaded?

[Rene S. Hollan]

This is a bad idea.

Good thing....

[rew]

Here in holland and across europe the same is being done. The thing is, technically, many homes are hooked up with a line physically capable of say 20mpbs, but with only a 10mbps subscription. The extra bandwidth can be alotted to "guest users".

Similarly, even if someone has a 20(or more) mbps subscription on a 20mbps line, he/she won't be using all of it all of the time. So you can again use part of the bandwidth for guests. In this case it would be fair to give the original subscriber priority to use whatever he/she wants, and put the guests at a lower priority.

Oh, security wise they also separate the original subscriber from the guests.

I have the impression they do this "sensibly": the subscribers don't really have a valid reason to be upset about it.

And the thing is: If you're a subscriber, suddenly there are hundreds or thousands of places where you won't be using your 3G datalink but a wifi hotspot. Faster, cheaper!

but they'll cry like little girls

[iggymanz]

if you skank some free cable tv

We are only human

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone did a similar setup in another country.The guest packets were supposed to have gone through a seperate VLAN. Turned out they forgot about IPv6...you can imagine the rest.

happened in philly suburb

[soldack]

I live in a suburb of Philadelphia, PA and comcast tried to do this to me. They did send me a notice though. I replaced their router with a third party wifi router and cable modem. I didn't trust that they would keep their traffic separate from my traffic and I didn't see how someone hanging off of my router wouldn't degrade my service.

No way

[DaMattster]

I would opt out immediately. This is an immensely devious way to get other people to pay for a large WiFi buildout. I guess that there is no low that the telecom industry will stoop to in the name of a buck.

Officially

[Anonymous Coward]

In practice though, they'll be about as separated as your neighborhood's monthly total download rate.

Oops.

Even Slashdot Classic is Going Downhill

[sk999]

Slashdot gives me the option to disable ads, but for the longest time I didn't bother, because - heck - it's what pays the bills, plus I even bought something once through one of its ads.

Then the obnoxious oversized ads and overlayed popups started appearing, and suddenly disabling ads became the only way to even see the site content.

Now, even with ads "disabled", I still get ads. Nice job Slashdot.

The sooner they do this, the

[n6kuy]

... sooner I can cancel my Comcast internet service and just use my neighbor's.

Credential phising

[Anonymous Coward]

I already have this PoC working on an OpenWRT box. I was going to use it locally but instead I think I'll ship it to my friend in Texas.

Rent

[riverat1]

If Comcast is setting up these wifi hotspots shouldn't they pay me rent for hosting it for them?

Already happening

[TheQuantumShift]

Comcast already has been doing this for some time where I live (SLC) and I've already found several suspicious open networks in various spots, all named "Cable WiFi". There's only one cable provider in town, and they're not shy about branding.

Re:Converting Turning?

[nigelo]

I expect to get topic subject-lines that incorrectly state 'Public WiFi Hotspots' when the article is clearly about 'Comcast Subscriber-only WiFi Hotspots'.

I am surprised that the topic subject line was updated so quickly, frankly, when I pointed it out.

Too bad I didn't mention the other error...

Vogon Poetry

[Anonymous Coward]

nice reference to a hyperspace bypass

Electricity usage

[Larry_Dillon]

It will consume more electricity when someone else is using it. A trivial amount, perhaps, but none the less, more. Al mot of these things have overheating problems in the first place.

Could be good, could be bad

[whistlingtony]

So. Comcast is going to let their customers access the internet through other customer's wireless routers.

Good: you can get wifi in lots of places.

Bad: You're trying to do stuff with your connection and some other people are "borrowing" your bandwidth.

I'd be much more inclined to be happy about this if Comcast was paying customer A for helping provide service to customer B. But they're not. Customer A is paying for service, and Comcast is piggybacking on that to provide service to Customer B, without benefiting customer A at all.

I'm quite biased against Comcast, frankly. This is a good idea, for them. It will help get them customers. It's a good feature. And perhaps this will convince router makers to provide a "public hotspot" option on future routers, which will be throttled of course... But I doubt it.

I can't help but look at this and compare it to the ISPs that let you farm out your connection to your neighbors, and help you charge your neighbors whatever you want... even handling the billing for you. I think that's a much nicer feature, but that's just my opinion.

My bandwidth can be had... for a fee.

[eudaemon]

This is the same company that has established the following:

1 - Bandwidth is finite. It must be controlled and limited. Users must endure caps and pay overage fees if they abuse the system.

2 - Bandwidth is so precious, in fact, that we need to charge for it twice: both the consumer and producer must pay. This is why we don't support Net Neutrality.

I'm fine with this model as long as it cuts both ways. After all Comcast is getting a free ride: they're using my electricity, their router is taking up space in my home, their users are consuming capacity both on my wireless network and my cable connection that I might otherwise consume. Therefore I must be compensated.

If comcast refuses to compensate me for my resources consumed in the pursuit of their commercial goals I have no choice but to snip the antenna wire in their router, or more realistically return it and purchase my own. In short: they can suck it.

Bit Behind.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is country wide, not just... metro areas. It's called "XfinityWiFi", and can be disabled through the user's online profile with Comcast.

Source: I work for them through a third party contractor.

With my electricity, the hell they can.

[Anonymous Coward]

You must be one of these fucks. Seriously, fuck you and the horse you rode in on.

As someone who designs this stuff

[papasui]

Although not for Comcast but another major player, they likely are putting the "public" wifi on its own SSID, service-flow, and MAC/IP. This means that your modem will have a secondary data stream that can be enforced separately. About the only thing I'd be worried about is someone overwhelming the CPU as these are still underpowered home wifi devices.

Get a grip people!

[Anonymous Coward]

The REAL problem is WiFi bandwidth. If somebody else is doing continuous downloads over your AP, that can definitely hurt your WiFi performance.

I know this is /. but still, some people really need to take off their tinfoil hats. Comcast is a perfect mix of four parts evil and one part asshole. There's no need to get all worked up over imaginary misdeeds when there are so many real ones to complain about.

• This only applies to people who rent a cable modem/wireless router from Comcast. You can stop reading now if you supply your own equipment.
• This is not public WiFi -- only other Comcast customers can use it, and they have to log in with their own credentials.
• Comcast can direct the police/MAFIAA/etc. to the person using the hotspot.
• The Hotspot WiFi is separate from the customer's own network.
• Hotspot data doesn't count against the customer's cap.
• Hotspot data won't reduce the customer's own cable modem speed (over Ethernet!).
• Comcast is not "stealing electricity". Read the fine print of your rental contract -- I guarantee there is language in there that allows them to do whatever they want, including changing the contract terms in case they forgot something.

Comcast is clearly hijacking public frequencies...

[Anonymous Coward]

...for commercial purposes. This is exactly like setting a new cellphone frequency on the 2.4 GHz public bandwidth and arguing that since the cellphone does data it's a Wi-Fi.

This will literally hog a significant portion of the public 2.4GHz bandwidth (read "no longer available to anyone else"). Go grab a freeware to sniff you area bandwidth/channel usage (like inSSIDer or Vistumbler) and you will see the problem for what it is.

Why is no one even talking about this? Isn't it the FCC job to make sure that the radio spectrum is respected?

Re:Converting Turning?

[Anonymous Coward]

Man. Tough crowd. lol

And this is what....

[Anonymous Coward]

the WiFi Pineapple was created for.
Step 1. Configure your pineapple
Step 2. Clone the login page and make it the captive portal on your pineapple
Step 3. Initiate the wifi Karma attack
Step 4. Capture the unsuspecting users login creds
Step 5. PROFIT!

Easy fix - faraday cage

[technosaurus]

Just get some metal screen and make a box to put the comcast router in. (you can just line a small cardboard food container with the screen)
Cut small holes to fit power cord, coax and ethernet cable through.
Connect the ethernet cable to your own router and BAM!! you are opted out.

Re:Converting Turning?

[Ol Olsoc]

Maybe just show us how it is done perfectly. You apparently know how to do this sort of thing, nigelo.

Liability

[Anonymous Coward]

It's comcast. You'll be charged a $5 service fee.

comcast employee here

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes this has been going on now for over a year .. This is just a hodtspot that is separate from your data plan .. This Noway effects your paid subscription.. Comcast has a located more bandwidth for this you dumb mother cookers ... Shut the fock up and be happy

comcast hotspot

[Anonymous Coward]

Has nothing to do with your data plan ... All Comcast customers will have access to hotspots and this will not affect your plan get your facts straight faggooot ...

Liability

[Anonymous Coward]

If you lease the modem, it's not really up to you. It's their hardware, not yours.

Free!

[Anonymous Coward]

Does this make it legal for me to steal every wifi user's login and password information for all of their favorite websites as they would technically be using my access point? This is the exact reason I don't use Comcast's terrible routers in the first place.

Re:Converting Turning?

[Anonymous Coward]

So... they're paying those customers to use the equipment they leased (and in some cases, which they've bought)?

Because the customer takes a hit (throughput), while the beneficiary is Comcast.

Heh, savvy customers can probably make money with it. I won't say how, but let's say it's very possible to paywall these routers.

Prepare to get hacked

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like watch dogs is coming to life

Simple solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop leasing equipment from Comcast and purchase your own. If Comcast doesn't own it, they cannot turn it on.

Time to BYOM!

[Smokeybehr]

The way around this is to buy your own modem that doesn't have all of Comcast's cruft. The major chain electronics stores all have DOCSIS 3.x modems for sale, so you save the cost of leasing the equipment (which you can recoup in less than a year), and you can control who has access to your bandwidth.

Re:still eats up CPU and Wifi Spectrum and cable n

[PSUSkier]

I don't think the router CPU would be of any concern because they should be more than capable of forwarding at line rate. And as far as spectrum, you won't be using any extra channels because both SSIDs would be carried on the same channel. That being said, your channel utilization would go up, but again, if it is an N access point your cable connection will saturate long before the WLAN connection does. Quite frankly, the only thing that gets used up is your Internet bandwidth, unless they pull all the caps from a bandwidth perspective and throttle on a per-client basis.

Faraday Cage anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Build a Faraday cage, place the cable modem inside, wire the ground of the Faraday cage to the cable ground, put some feedback into their circuit.

When the cable node up the street fries, tell them it's their own fault for turning on the WiFi, which you had carefully disabled before placing the modem in said Faraday cage.

When they ask if you have wireless, you answer, certainly, my own private wireless device plugged into the cat-5 port of the cable modem that Comcast cannot fucking touch under penalty of law, ie - it violates the IPA posted clearly on the side of my wifi device. (Internet Provider Agreement) which basically states that if Comcast attempts to get in to my WiFi, they forfeit any and all income they've ever earned or will ever earn from the time they started til the end of time (or end of Comcast). They agreed to this IPA by not disconnecting my Cable internet service when it was posted.

Cut them out

[Anonymous Coward]

I own my modem and router. I pay them too much. I'm not doing them any favors.

XFINITYWIFI In The Bay Area

[Anonymous Coward]

OMG! I think this is the same thing I've been seeing around the bay area (SF/Daly City). It's an open wifi called "XFINITYWIFI" and when you connect to it it asks for your comcast account information. I am a comcast user but my cable modem and router are mine so I have a feeling they cannot use my line for this. This is absurd. I hate comcast. You would think that we would have options here in the bay area, but we don't. We have comcast or ATT, and if you're luck you're in range of Sonic.net. It's all trash. You would think google might make an effort --- or any of the high tech companies around here --- NOPE.

Default SSID is xfinitywifi

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is a non-paywall version of the same article:

http://blog.chron.com/techblog/2014/06/comcast-switches-on-50000-residential-wi-fi-hotspots-in-houston/#24139101=0

Xfinity wifi hotspot finder... It is not just Houston. I think they turned-up something like 80,000 spots in a city in Indiana recently, among others across the nation.

http://hotspots.wifi.comcast.com/

This is monumentally stupid. I have already warned all of my family who have Comcast how to turn it off. I live in Houston, in a neighborhood with Comcast/Xfinity. I am going to take a stroll around the neighborhood with my tablet tomorrow, and see if I can pick up that SSID. With EvilAP set to SSID xfinitywifi, it should be trivial to grab login credentials... If I understand correctly, for this to work, all the SSIDs have to be the same so as you move around, your device connects to the strongest signal automagically without re-config.

How long will it take hackers a way to get around the credentials, and then how much longer before they find a way into your home network... *sigh*

Router congestion and power consumption

[odie5533]

Adding more clients will congest the router, and draw more power. Some people (like myself) disable the wifi on the crap routers they receive from their ISPs. Would this override that disable? It also features extra radiation going through your house, and makes it easy for people to find your router which you thought you were hiding by disabling SSID broadcasting.

TWC is already screwing customers using fast lanes

[msoftsucks]

I have a customer who is currently with Time Warner Cable and their speeds have gone down significantly over the last 6 months. They used to be able to access web sites with split-second response times. Now the average is at least 5 seconds before a web page comes up. I have placed numerous support calls, they come out and run their own hosted speed test which claims they are meeting speeds. They then leave saying there is nothing wrong, yet browsing is almost unusable. I believe they have QoS turned on so that their own speed tests run fine, yet the overall browsing experience is significantly worse. If they are playing these games now, what will happen when net-neutrality is eventually abolished by these big souless corporations?

Why pay when you can have it for free?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if people will start cancelling their home broadband accounts once they realise they can poach internet for free from the public Wi-Fi on their neighbours' modems? I predict this whole exercise might self-destruct very quickly.

So block it!

[Anonymous Coward]

If its a router and its in your house, you have more access to it than Comcast. They plug software into your router to make it a hotspot? Wrap tin foil around it. Ground the tin foil. If it sounds odd to you, get your head out of your ass, google the words 'Faraday Cage', and get a clue. This isn't hard.

Time to torrent

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever gotten those pesky copyright notices? Well now you can use someone else's wifi to seed seed seed your torrents

Re:Converting Turning?

[davester666]

High praise, considering they are down to 2 editors...

Re:Converting Turning?

[crimson tsunami]

'Has had', includes all previous editors of the site, not just the current ones.
I'd hate to see your edits if you don't understand even very simple grammar.

Re:Converting Turning?

[L4t3r4lu5]

If this was the first instance of shoddy editing, I'd agree with you.

It's not. Not by a loooooooooong way.

Metropolitan Area Networks?

[Anonymous Coward]

In densely populated areas these Wifi hotspots could create a decentralized mesh network. I think it's a great idea but in the hands of the wrong people.

This is the reason

[jennatalia]

you buy your router and not use their leased one.

Too Trusting

[Anonymous Coward]

You seem to trust a few things that I wouldn't:
* That the hardware Comcast has deployed is capable of doing this securely, without fail or lapses.
* That every Comcast employee and random, contractor, consultant, won't setup this up incorrectly.
* That the remote management systems won't be hacked.
* That the configuration of that management software won't be bungled.

BTW - Houston is NOT the only place this is done. I saw the terms of service changes to allow it months ago - and they turned it on here about 3 momths ago.

My router doesn't have wifi, so I am not impacted. Plus I run another router inside theirs after learning years ago that even if I owned the router, Comcast would still "own the configuration".

Certain companies shouldn't really be trusted. You know all the names already.

spectrum, not bandwidth is the issue

[Anonymous Coward]

This is happening in the Chicago area already as well. So many "public" subscribed neighbors were on his comcast wifi that his own devices couldn't get through the mush.

Oh I get it...

[Anonymous Coward]

I literally have the choice between Comcast, Satellite, and Dial-Up.

So in other words, no choice

Re:Converting Turning?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the internet. We expect *everything* to be free!

paid subscriber wifi

[Anonymous Coward]

There are other isp's doing similar with customer facing equipment, but the question isn't so much if it's done, but if it's isolated from the customers services, I.e a separate blanket ssid that all of the devices use. And the customer has their individual one as well. . With its own bandwidth. ..

What kind of...

[Anonymous Coward]

...idiot "rents" equipment from ANYONE?

Free clue, after anywhere from 3-12m, depending on how much you blew on your own equipment, the saved "rental" fees will have paid for said equipment... (specifically I referring to the cable modem/router/box rental fees, other things MIGHT take more or less time to recover the initial outlay but it's still the same in the long run if you're using the equipment over a fairly lengthy period(e.g. years) it's usually cheaper just to own, however that MIGHT not be the case with some mechanical equipment given the added maintenance, etc. costs which in the case of a rental the rental provider would be responsible for... well if they like their equipment to last that is...)

Please rob me

[Bitbeard]

Comcast's WiFi Location Map is the hot new burglary tool. Thieves are so thankful for the time savings. Soon we will hear old crooks lamenting to their children how when they were kids they had to break into half a dozen homes just to find one with laptops and tablets.

Comcast = Jackasses.

[Anonymous Coward]

Very happy with my own Motorola modem and DLink router that I control and they don't.

Re:Converting Turning?

[Anonymous Coward]

Soulskill, you are definitely one of the top 3 best editors Slashdot has had,

That isn't saying a lot. It is like being in the top three of a remedial class.

Not Free

[Anonymous Coward]

They are using my electricity to run the router. They also expect me to pay for the bandwidth from my monthly Comcast bill. How am I being compensated for that?

Ripoff

[Anonymous Coward]

they should not charge for router rental.... or modem rental.

WiFi Radiation safe for humans and animals?

[Anonymous Coward]

Has this WiFi radiation been tested for safety to the health of humans and animals?

They sell a service based...

[niftymitch]

They sell a service based on my power bill and my real property....
They do not compensate me...
They do not ask me....
      They would owe me $$$$$

The technology is OK with me modulo the remote access into a smart device
inside my home. i.e. guest networks and other isolation tricks including
bandwidth management is a solved problem.

However I elect to not play and have my own firewall hardware that I control....

Credential phising

[Anonymous Coward]

How long before someone releases a tool that would have a Linux-running computer or device with a WiFi card masquerading as an official Comcast WiFi hotspot an collecting the usernames & passwords of the users trying to connect ?
 
They do its called the Wifi Pineapple. Nice piece of hardware!
http://hakshop.myshopify.com/collections/wifi-pineapple-kits

Monitor MAC IP ... I/O

[OldHawk777]

At home, I have a firewall/proxy pass-through (a stealthy honey pot) for all my bits and bytes and scan for criminal and malicious data/bots/.... It is all just for fun, and trusting any Web-Services Providers (WSP) Google...Alibaba, or Internet Access Providers (IAP) ComCast xFinity, Verison FiOS ... is as foolish as trusting any government.

Re:still eats up CPU and Wifi Spectrum and cable n

[Anonymous Coward]

And if they mounted it on a pole outside your house and attached to the shared neighborhood coax, the net outcome would be the same.

In the way they are implementing it, with separate IP address and bandwidth cap, it's a GOOD thing.

Re:still eats up CPU and Wifi Spectrum and cable n

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong you fucking cretin

If they "mounted it on a pole outside your house and attached to the shared neighborhood coax" Comcast would have to pay electricity and renting space on the pole.

That is what this about, Comcast is ripping you off and you bend over and ask for more. Fuck off corporate whore.