Comcast Turns Chicago Customer Routers Into Open Hotspots

Hasn't a story similar to this posted already?

What is going to happen when someone uses one of these hotspots to download copyrighted material via a torrent?

"while non-subscribers can pay Comcast rates of $2.95 per hour up to $19.95 per week to use your bandwidth."

Great that Comcast wants to use your location to provide a service to other Comcast customers and paying, non-customers. Where exactly is the benefit to the homeowner? Unless additional bandwidth is assigned to the "xfinitywifi" SSID and limited at that level, the homeowners are basically giving away their service for zero benefit.

$8 per month, for a device that will soon by default either add to Comcast's bottom line or make cable providers more "sticky" thanks to CableWiFi.

If you pay for 10/1 does the bandwidth come out of your 10/1 or do they provision your line for 20/2 and dedicated 10/1 to you and 10/1 to the hotspot?

And they've got you paying their electric bill to provide their service too.

Potentially having dozens of people logging into your router will use memory and cpu which will degrade service to some degree, depending on the number of people.

I would turn it off, and check wifi to make sure it hasn't been turned back on. You know Comcast is going to turn it back on

On the other hand, couldn't you just use the hotspot feature full-time to avoid their metering?

Take the modem back and then go BOYM!!!

I'm sure they thought of that. You probably have to log in using your Xfinity online account.

No, because if you are a Comcast customer you will log in to the "public" wifi with your Comcast credentials. In this way, they track your usage and tie it to your account.

Oh good grief. I guess you could write that 12 cents a year off on your taxes as a loss.

Use is authenticated, which supports abuse traceback.

It is.

No benefit to the homeowners. If you don't want to do this with your Comcast equipment, you can OPT out..

On the other hand, if you are a Comcast subscriber and you are somewhere and want to use Comcast wi-fi, that was broadcasting in an area you were in, instead of your cell phone's data, wouldn't that be nice ???

I have my own equipment and I don't broadcast.

According to the video tutorial at »www.comcast.com/wifi/hot ··· ots.html they say they add bandwidth to your connection when this is activated.

Also see the FAQs page on this: »www.comcast.com/wifi/faq ··· true#hot

Out side of the concerns about CPU and Memory utilization (which I doubt is really that much of a concern) I don't see a problem with this practice. Especially if you get to use the service when roaming around.

...is due to articles such as this.

The "public" hotspot is totally segregated from your personal WLAN. There are probably separate service flows on the cable modem that deal with the public hotspot. If you are using the xfinitywifi SSID, you need to log in with your account credentials. Usage is attributed to you, not whomever's hotspot you happen to be using.

Using "your" bandwidth is somewhat misleading as well. It's no different than a neighbor moving in down the street and plugging in a new Comcast cable modem, or if Comcast came along and put a public wifi hotspot on the utility pole in front of your home. There's a theoretical max on the node, but it's not "your" bandwidth...it's shared. I guess you could argue that there is additional use of the RF spectrum used for transmission of the wifi, but I wonder how detrimental that actually would be. Incremental cost? Probably $0.10 per year.

As for your benefit, in theory, you as a subscriber get a much broader wifi footprint.

I don't really see much of a downside, however you can disable it if you are really that paranoid.

Exactly. I was able to use a similar service in the UK and found it extremely helpful.

Why use your own WiFi, when you can use one that doesn't count against your cap?

I might consider allowing this hotspottng if could get some kind of rebate or discount for granting permission.

The latter. the 3 real issues are
1] Should subscribers be paying for a device to extend the Xfinity wi-fi network? (can be turned off, does act as a FON-like service if EVERYONE shares)

2] does it draw a noticeable power load operating 24/7(depending on outsiders usage), as compared to your own usage?

3] will it potentially saturate the limited bandwidth on your Wi-Fi channel? (or ALL local channels in high density areas where a dozen or more of these see high use)

I'd think to better match the FON model that micro-credits should be applied for each hour it is left "open" for public use to equal or slightly exceed the device rental. ie the fee is $8, but a month of being left on, should pay $10, the extra $2 being for electric service.
great advantage for country dwellers who may be out of range of most common use, ok for people on higher floors of taller apts, probably not enough for the first few floors overlooking a park.

other choice would be a very complex payment/credit based on usage, which would rapidly become more expensive for Comcast to administer than just adding strand mounts in popular areas (might be the long term plan anyway with this initial deployment acting like probes, to determine high usage areas)

Thanks for clarifying that. Can you verify how much is assigned to it? Does it vary by location?

exactly, i could see an issue with a DSL line that has a pretty set max, but since cable generally overdelivers speed, and the wifi is already on anyway there is no issue with this.

also this would negate the need to give your wifi passwords out to complete strangers

when you login YOUR account to the public side, the meter starts running, but you COULD buy another subscription to the $19.95 a week for extra bandwidth (overages at $10/50G are still cheaper, assuming that the $19.95 wi-fi plan is not unlimited)

Now you know why the FBI or Homeland security showed up at your home. What security can Comcast guarantee?

Comcast can say what they want about how "separate" this is from your personal connection, but no security-minded IT person with a lick of sense would trust it. Not thumping on Comcast. This would apply to any such device from any manufacturer or service provider.

Only way I'd do that would be if there was a separate firewalling device between that router and my private network--in which case the WiFi portion would be worthless, to me, anyway. For that reasont: I wouldn't want it around, cluttering-up already-cluttered 2.4GHz wireless space.

Jim

It dont count against the cap of the user enabling the feature, you still have to login using your comcast information to the xfinitywifi SSID, which is tied to your cap.

You're kidding right?

You don't think the Comcast accountants aren't dancing around the room with the millions of dollars in infrastructure costs they've offloaded onto the consumer?

so, what prevents a guy from naming his router "xfinitywifi" and setting up a login page that captures signons?