[ale] OT: Comcast Wi-Fi

[Brian Mathis]

On Thu, Apr 24, 2014 at 3:12 PM, Michael H. Warfield <mhw at wittsend.com>wrote:

> On Thu, 2014-04-24 at 14:40 -0400, Boris Borisov wrote:
> > Yesterday I've noticed Comcast silently enabled additional wireless
> > network on my cable router named "xfinitywifi". I didn't get the
> > reason behind the idea but is open with web based login. Someone else
> > with same issue.
>
> Congratulations.  You just became the newest member of the Comcast
> wireless internet cafe provider club.  Someone with a Comcast login can
> now log in through the Comcast app gateway and take advantage of their
> expanded WiFi footprint through your free bandwidth that they're
> offering up!
>
> This has been mentioned in a number of forums over the last several
> months.  I don't recall if you can or how you opt-out of them offering
> your bandwidth to all comers.  Since I don't have Comcast, I can not
> test and say for sure from first hand experience.
>
> Regards,
> Mike
>


Please stop with the conspiracy theories.  Comcast may be evil, but they
are not stupid, and anything they do is most certainly going to be legal.

Adding this service from a customer location is:
1) Most likely in your customer agreement somewhere

2) OBVIOUSLY not going to count against bandwidth caps on your own account

3) OBVIOUSLY isolated to a different subnet/channel, just like any neighbor
of yours could not see your traffic

4) Uses a totally separate wifi subsystem, which is why they need to
"upgrade" your equipment for this service to work.  The new cable modem
needs to have a totally separate AP, or at least a chip that can support
multiple wireless APs.

5) Your own service speed will not be affected any differently than if your
neighbor was using their own bandwidth.

No, I don't have a source for any of this, but these are clearly the first
questions anyone would ask inside a company when they decide to roll out a
service like this.  Common sense isn't all that common, but this stuff is
just bloody obvious.

If they didn't do any of these, they could easily be sued by customers for
either exposing their networks to security risks, and/or using up the data
caps they paid for.  The only possible complaint you could make is more
power usage, but at only a few hundred milliwatts for the additional wifi
network, that's barely costing you a penny per year in power usage, if that.


❧ Brian Mathis
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