[ale] OT: Comcast Wi-Fi

Dustin Strickland dustin.h.strickland at gmail.com
Sat Apr 26 18:46:44 EDT 2014


I've been trying to not read this thread(stitll haven't), but my two
cents... This will likely sneak by the droolies of the nation. I'm
unconvinced that the average consumer will notice or care that their
hardware is being used to service other people. It scares me how
ignorant most people are of computer systems -- a few days ago, I was
in a local computer shop and overheard a woman ask the owner if
a Core 2 Duo desktop "comes with the cloud." I realize she is not
representative of most people, but at the same time I get the feeling
that the average computer user don't really care to know the first
thing about them.

On a related note, I think this topic is a good one to devolve into a
discussion about public education reform.

On Sat, 26 Apr 2014 18:33:33 -0400
Sean Kilpatrick <kilpatms at gmail.com> wrote:

> Mike has gotten close to what I believe is the only real issue here: 
> Comcast will be using your property to house their commercial
> equipment. This is bound to violate all sorts of zoning laws, rules,
> and regulations. Terms of Use notwithstanding, you should have
> (IANAL) an absolute right to charge rental fees for the use of your
> space and electricity -- no matter how small the footprint of the
> equipment or how low the electrical draw.
> 
> The first thing I'd ask the Comcast rep for is a copy of the approval 
> letter for your specific location from the county zoning office.
> Trust me on this:  they won't have one and aren't about to ask for
> one.
> 
> Sean
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> On Friday, April 25, 2014 11:21:47 am Brian Mathis wrote:
> > 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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