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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."
Who doesn't trust their consumer grade router to handle this traffic appropriately?
I foresee the day a Jehovah's witness comes to my door asking if I can power cycle my router.
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.
I do not use ISP Routers. Only a Modem. (the Modem acts as a PPPoE Bridge, it used to be an ATM Bridge, but now its a PPPoE Bridge.) and my Routers all run DD-WRT. I don't trust ISP Routers and neither should you.
Apologies to US readers, but Virgin are busy suing our health service: http://healthcaretimes.co.uk/v... so I'm boycotting anything that has the Virgin label, airlines, sport, fibre etc. etc.
This particular thing is ridiculous, invasive and potentially full of infosec/legal problems too. Just don't.
On y va, qui mal y pense!
Currently, I live in an apartment, with >12 visible WiFi networks. That means my WiFi connections are often quite poor due to overuse of the same frequencies. I can only imagine how poor my reception would become if these 12 WiFi routers were each acting as 2 WiFi hotspots.
The setting to turn it off is in the router/modem box. Not a big deal.
And tehn setting up a fake hotspot that allows you to spy on all the traffic coming through. Seriously, Comcast is training users their WiFi is safe; setting people up for scammers who decide to impersonate Comcast and steal whatever information they want while they route traffic.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.