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The Hidden Cost of Your New Xfinity Router

Posted by timothy on from the opt-out-options-obviate-opposition dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The battle over Comcast's public WiFi network that is hosted on your cable modem continues. Comcast responded to Speedify's earlier power measurements by rushing them a new Cisco cable modem. The new modem proved to be more power hungry than the last, and also introduced some tricky IPv6 problems that caused major headaches for the team."

3 of 224 comments (clear)

  1. Service in exchange for a free modem? by Memophage · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I actually think this could be pretty cool if Comcast would offer customers *something* in exchange for them hosting a public hotspot out of their house.

    How about a free modem, instead of charging them $3/mo to rent one?

    I own my modem outright, so have negative incentive to upgrade. But if they were to offer me a free basic IP phone line, or a free upgrade to the next speed tier, or free access to this service I'm hosting, or *anything*, I'd certainly consider it.

    But otherwise, yeah, it seems like they're forcing everyone to pay for their network electricity as a requirement of getting their own internet, with no added benefit in return.

    1. Re:Service in exchange for a free modem? by fhic · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Not mention the potential liability issues.

      I can easily see the cops kicking in my door because somebody used the hotspot in my house to download kiddie porn or copyrighted files.

      Does anyone really think the cops are going to differentiate between the public side and private side of the router? No, they're going to call (or subpoena) Comcast for the address where that router lives. My house.

      Yeah, it'll probably get straightened out, eventually, after I get dragged away in handcuffs to the amusement of my neighbors, spend a weekend in jail, get branded in the media as a baby-raper, and get fired by my media-phobic employer. And in the meantime, I'm going to have to pay a lawyer, bail myself out, and put back together my ruined life. And Comcast will point to a sentence in their 20,000 line EULA or ToS that says it's not their problem.

      And then if I have any money left, some scumbag lawyer will sue me civilly for conspiring with Comcast because I paid for the power for the router that the real kiddy porn collector used.

      Not a chance.

  2. Comcast engineer here by scubamage · · Score: 3, Interesting

    FYI, I'm a Comcast engineer. All CPE management interfaces (the interface between the CMTS and the CM) are moving to IPv6 and should be transitioned by the end of the summer. The only remaining devices with the CMM interface still running on IPv4 are a handful of business class devices which should be converted by september. Beyond that, any modem which runs DHCP on LAN interfaces is running in either IPv4 or dual stack mode, though the ultimate plan is to move everything to IPv6 eventually.