Comcast plans to turn 50,000 home routers into public Wi-Fi hotspots without their users providing consent!

[dazedCobra42]

VIA -http://beta.slashdot.org/story/203157


'As a Houston resident with limited home broadband options, I found the following interesting: Dwight Silverman of the Houston Chronicle reports (warning: paywalled) that Comcast plans to turn 50,000 home routers into public Wi-Fi hotspots without their users providing consent. Comcast plans to eventually convert 150,000 home routers into a city-wide WiFi network. A similar post (with no paywall) by the same author on the SeattlePI Tech Blog explains the change. From the post on SeattlePI: "What's interesting about this move is that, by default, the feature is being turned on without its subscribers' prior consent. It's an opt-out system – you have to take action to not participate. Comcast spokesman Michael Bybee said on Monday that notices about the hotspot feature were mailed to customers a few weeks ago, and email notifications will go out after it's turned on. But it's a good bet that this will take many Comcast customers by surprise."'

[Toxic Tom]

That's not really bad. There is the option to opt-out for those techy enough to care, the average user won't know what's going on so they will just leave it, creating public WiFi for all. Sounds like a good idea to me!

[Oshino Shinobu]

Comcast:

 

[qwertywarrior]

this will only work with "their" routers

 

and so what if they did that

they wont be using "my" internet it will be separate

[Guest Kloaked]

If this is true, users better take up their torches and pitchforks.

[Vader]

I'm sure that'll only be with their routers. 

[Ssoele]

That is being done all over the world. Here for example too.

It's quite handy actually, no matter where you go, there is always a Hotspot to use.

 

And yes, it's only on their routers, after-market routers will not have this. It's on a separated network, so visitors can NOT access your home network.

[madscientist56]

1-that should be illegal (it takes advantage of people like my grandma who don't know what's happening)

2-the average consumer won't notice or care

3-anybody who does can opt out

[Ssoele]

1-that should be illegal (it takes advantage of people like my grandma who don't know what's happening)

 

Why should this be illegal? How does it it take advantage of those people?

 

• The volume is not subtracted from their limit
• The hotspot user dies not have access to the private LAN
• You can decide to turn it off
• ...

[Tygron]

True as this may be but the problem I see is lowering my bandwidth. As someone who lives with another gamer, whenever one of us starts downloading anything more than a simple image our games get lagged all to hell. I can see someone purposefully connecting to my network and just bottleknecking my connection to hell. Sure I suppose if you have a high enough date rate but in some slight testing that doesn't seem to actually matter too much.

 

While it makes sense to do this, why not just add wifi to the poles outside or something. Big whoop if they have to come out and repair it every once in a while.

[Thorium19]

This sounds a bit like the bt hotspots in the uk, where some people with bt internet and routers create a localised wifi hotspot that only those with a bt account can use.

[jmaster299]

Cox is planning on doing the same thing, but anyone who is capable of using a computer should have the basic intelligence to perform a Google search to get instructions on how to manually disable it.

[madscientist56]

Why should this be illegal? How does it it take advantage of those people?

• The volume is not subtracted from their limit
• The hotspot user dies not have access to the private LAN
• You can decide to turn it off
• ...

Say somebody who doesn't know anything about computers uses Comcast, Comcast starts using their router for purposes they are not ok with, (using it as a "public Wi-Fi hotspot"). This is an issue because they would have no idea what's happening, and if they did they wouldn't be ok with it. Even if Comcast sends them a letter or something saying what they are doing many people still won't understand (my grandma). This is why there is an issue here most people will just go along with their lives not knowing Comcast is using them, Comcast is basically taking advantage of these people.

[PortentousLad]

Sounds fishy to me. And from that I've heard on the TEK Comcast are not really the trustworthy bunch.

[StingBull]

They won't bill the users for it (at least I fucking hope so) but won't that still slow down their internet?

[Askew]

It does have a negative, it may increase WiFi interference in densely connected areas.

2.4ghz is pretty congested as it is.

[wpirobotbuilder]

This is kind of a cool idea, although I doubt that the range will make it effective. It's difficult to get a signal from the sidewalk outside an apartment building.

 

It won't increase interference, because the signal is already present. It may slow down wireless internet browsing because there is more traffic being sent over a relatively slow connection.

 

It also won't slow down your wired internet browsing, unless your internet speeds are close to 100 Mb/s and your router doesn't have gigabit ports (which it really should).

 

You can always buy an aftermarket router if you don't want this.

[WanderingFool]

That is being done all over the world. Here for example too.

It's quite handy actually, no matter where you go, there is always a Hotspot to use.

 

And yes, it's only on their routers, after-market routers will not have this. It's on a separated network, so visitors can NOT access your home network.

The key is the sentence should read so visitors should not in theory be able to your home network.  Anytime you have information traveling along one device (some public and some private), there will likely be exploits found that opens up private portion...My main problem is by offering open wifi, you essentially open yourself up to router exploits (say if they hadn't patched heartbleed), then you could get people snooping (and believe me someone will figure it out).

 

True as this may be but the problem I see is lowering my bandwidth. As someone who lives with another gamer, whenever one of us starts downloading anything more than a simple image our games get lagged all to hell. I can see someone purposefully connecting to my network and just bottleknecking my connection to hell. Sure I suppose if you have a high enough date rate but in some slight testing that doesn't seem to actually matter too much.

 

While it makes sense to do this, why not just add wifi to the poles outside or something. Big whoop if they have to come out and repair it every once in a while.

The main reason your internet is likely lagging is because you are using the same capped bandwidth.  The routers should have access to a lot more bandwidth than your own connection *assuming the node isn't saturated*....so a secondary connection is likely not going to hurt you.  Although depending on the router and what the other person is using it for, it could actually cause a detriment....If you flood a router with too many connection requests you can drain all the routers internal memory (or I am assuming that is a problem, since I had it happen before on a cheaper router...and I assumed it was lack of memory/processing power), so they would need to assure that there isn't a problem when people connect.

[Misanthrope]

The key is the sentence should read so visitors should not in theory be able to your home network.  Anytime you have information traveling along one device (some public and some private), there will likely be exploits found that opens up private portion...My main problem is by offering open wifi, you essentially open yourself up to router exploits (say if they hadn't patched heartbleed), then you could get people snooping (and believe me someone will figure it out).

 

Not only that but the reverse it's also true: someone will eventually find a way to exploit their own router to access their public side and use that instead of their regular connection getting around bandwidth and/or transfer caps among other uses.

 

And since they require you to be a paying comcast customer this is just too counter-intuitive and not worth it: For residential users if you're in range of the router you're likely visiting that person and can just ask for the private key anyway.

[ionbasa]

The key is the sentence should read so visitors should not in theory be able to your home network.  Anytime you have information traveling along one device (some public and some private), there will likely be exploits found that opens up private portion...My main problem is by offering open wifi, you essentially open yourself up to router exploits (say if they hadn't patched heartbleed), then you could get people snooping (and believe me someone will figure it out).

...

This should not be a problem, with different subnets and V-LANs, and routing. Also by offering free WiFi, it does not open up your own personal network to the outside. An real world example of this working successfully is for people running DD-WRT on their routers at home. DD-WRT allows for a separate WiFi APs. Some people choose to use this feature to actually provide free WiFi with adverts or pay walled WiFi access without the ads.

 

As for your second  concern, you are correct that cheap routers can run out of space for iptables in memory. I would hope that Comcast at least upgrades users routers so that they feature two separate banks of memory. 1 bank of memory for the owner and a second bank for the open WiFi hotspot. This can prevent a router running out of memory or 'freezing' because of saturated look-up tables.

 

As for connection saturation on the WAN side, Comcast will probably add a second connection or more uplink/downstream bands dedicated to the free WiFi portion. These connections will more than likely have throttled bandwidth.

 

Your concerns are valid, but if done properly, there is nothing to really fear, and this only improves the public infrastructure for Internet access.

[Ssoele]

Not only that but the reverse it's also true: someone will eventually find a way to exploit their own router to access their public side and use that instead of their regular connection getting around bandwidth and/or transfer caps among other uses.

 

And since they require you to be a paying comcast customer this is just too counter-intuitive and not worth it: For residential users if you're in range of the router you're likely visiting that person and can just ask for the private key anyway.

 

As it like in places elsewhere in the world, it will likely be behind a portal where you will have to sign in with your Comcast login, all your data on the hotspots will probably also be counted on your data cap.

[Legion]

No doubt comcast will use ad banners and like the on these public hotspots.

 

Privacy concerns aside, this will mean comcast will be able to increase profits by using current customers and abusing those who don't understand exactly what is going on.

Will users who opt-in see a discount for subsidising comcasts public wifi I doubt it instead they will see more traffic flowing through their router than before, I'm not sure what routers comcast give to customers but if they are anything the like the crap ISP's over here give having to do more processing than before is significantly going to impact the routers performance.

 

Hey if my ISP agreed to upgrade my own personal line in exchange for this I'd do it but I'd also have my own router behind it.

[Mooshi]

This is why you NEVER lease hardware from a shady POS ISP, you use your own.

[Sidiox]

 

 

Your concerns are valid, but if done properly, there is nothing to really fear, and this only improves the public infrastructure for Internet access.

If done properly.....

 

This is Comcast, I don't see them doing anything properly.

[Admire]

Skeptical chloe does not approve.