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Virgin Media Starts Turning Customer Routers Into Public Wi-Fi Hotspots (arstechnica.co.uk)
UK ISP Virgin Media is expanding its public Wi-Fi network by co-opting customers' home routers as hotspots. Only the most recent router design (the SuperHub v3) will be recruited at first, and customers can opt-out from the program if they wish. Virgin says the change will have "no impact on customers" because affected homes will be allocated extra bandwidth. ArsTechnica offers more context: A little background: a couple of years ago, Virgin Media started trialling a public Wi-Fi service very similar to "BT Wi-Fi with FON," where residential BT customers have their routers turned into hotspots. For some reason the broad rollout of Virgin's service was delayed until now. There are some curious differences between BT and Virgin Media's approach, though. For starters, it seems only Virgin Media customers will have access to this nationwide Wi-Fi network; BT grants free access to BT customers, but non-customers can pay for access ($5 per hour). The owner of that subverted hotspot doesn't get any of the money, of course. Furthermore, while BT customers must share their ADSL or VDSL bandwidth with any public Wi-Fi users, Virgin Media promises that "your home network is completely separate from Virgin Media WiFi traffic, meaning the broadband connection you pay for is exclusively yours, and just as secure."
Comcast already does this. If you use one of their modems/routers instead of providing your own, the router establishes two networks, one your provide WIFI network, the other a Comcast Xinfiniti (or whatever they call it) network that provides free access to Comcast subscribers (or partners among some of the other cable cartel folks). It's pretty convenient: I can have wifi access pretty much anywhere in my city, even while riding the bus, through the service. I don't play along at home, since I use my own cable modem and router, but I enjoy the benefits while out and about in the city. I also don't have a cell phone, so I only use wifi on my tablet and laptop - if I had a cell phone, the wifi coverage would probably make much less sense to me, but I refuse to be reachable 24-7.
I don't get why TFS has all that "subverted hotspot" snark. Virgin is just adopting an idea that's turned out to be very convenient in the communities where it's already operating. I know it's fashionable to hate ISPs, but this seems like a helpful step forward.
If you read how they are structuring it, of course they do. The traffic won't have your IP, it'll have a Virgin Media Wifi IP address. And it's only available to Virgin Media customers anyway.
So the police would be able to know where the person was, and which virgin media account they were using. Virgin would immediately be able to tell them this. It could only be confused with the router-owning customer if they joined the 'public' side network.
You should foresee the day the swat team kicks in your door at 3 am to shoot you for peddling kiddie porn.
Pretty sure Virgin is going to do the same thing that Comcast does now - separate IP range, separate SSID, separate MAC addys, separate bandwidth allocation/QoS... ...so instead of logging into an open Comcast SSID with a Comcast account, you just do a quickie click-trhough EULA like any other open hotspot, and whoever is renting the router is completely isolated from the public SSID (unless the person is actually using the hotspot him/herself...)
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Yawn. The FBI contacted our business due to kiddie porn being distributed via one of our open wifi networks on a Verizon DSL router. Nobody involved could say who it was and it could have been someone off the street.
Nobodies door got kicked in and nobody was in any legal trouble. The FBI IT team contacted us and took a look, that was it. Nobody had guns to their heads.