<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_extra"><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Apr 24, 2014 at 3:12 PM, Michael H. Warfield <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:mhw@wittsend.com" target="_blank">mhw@wittsend.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">On Thu, 2014-04-24 at 14:40 -0400, Boris Borisov wrote:<br>
> Yesterday I've noticed Comcast silently enabled additional wireless<br>
> network on my cable router named "xfinitywifi". I didn't get the<br>
> reason behind the idea but is open with web based login. Someone else<br>
> with same issue.<br>
<br>
Congratulations. You just became the newest member of the Comcast<br>
wireless internet cafe provider club. Someone with a Comcast login can<br>
now log in through the Comcast app gateway and take advantage of their<br>
expanded WiFi footprint through your free bandwidth that they're<br>
offering up!<br>
<br>
This has been mentioned in a number of forums over the last several<br>
months. I don't recall if you can or how you opt-out of them offering<br>
your bandwidth to all comers. Since I don't have Comcast, I can not<br>
test and say for sure from first hand experience.<br>
<br>
Regards,<br>
Mike<br></blockquote></div><br><br></div><div class="gmail_extra">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.<br><br>
Adding this service from a customer location is:<br></div><div class="gmail_extra">1) Most likely in your customer agreement somewhere<br></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br>2) OBVIOUSLY not going to count against bandwidth caps on your own account<br>
</div><div class="gmail_extra"><br>3) OBVIOUSLY isolated to a different subnet/channel, just like any neighbor of yours could not see your traffic<br></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br>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.<br>
</div><div class="gmail_extra"><br>5) Your own service speed will not be affected any differently than if your neighbor was using their own bandwidth.<br></div><div class="gmail_extra"></div><div class="gmail_extra"></div>
<div class="gmail_extra"><br></div><div class="gmail_extra">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.<br>
</div><div class="gmail_extra"></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br></div><div class="gmail_extra">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.<br>
</div><div class="gmail_extra"><br></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br clear="all"><div>❧ Brian Mathis</div>
<br><br></div></div>