
Comcast is turning your Xfinity router into a public Wi-Fi hotspot - weef
http://blog.chron.com/techblog/2014/06/comcast-is-turning-your-xfinity-router-into-a-public-wi-fi-hotspot/#24139101=0
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2bluesc
I hate big cable companies as much as the next person, but I really don't have
a problem with this as long as a few things are in place:

1) Network isolation, according to the article there is some isolation. Not
sure what this means _exactly_ but if it's a private subnet routed to Comcast
on a separate IP for security/privacy reasons. There is no technical reason
this can't be accomplished. I do question how much Comcast (or their vendor)
engineers care about security though.

2) Doesn't affect my speed, article states this. Assuming it's true, modern
DOCSIS 3.0 cable modem can support an absurd amount of traffic, way more then
most WiFi APs can handle at any reasonable range.

My biggest concern is that WiFi is already slow, if I'm streaming Netflix
videos and it now starts to drop segments due to a person in a car on a tablet
streaming the latest Gangnam style, I'll be upset.

~~~
joesmo
This is simply PR BS without a separate IP:

"Kurn said no, anymore than Starbucks is liable for illicit behavior by the
customers who use its in-store hotspots."

The separate IP is the key here when it comes to network isolation. If there
is no separate IP, the customer will be held liable for illegal use, despite
Comcast's ridiculous denial. Starbucks doesn't have to worry about being sued
or prosecuted for the crimes of its customers because it has plenty of
billions to defend itself. Joe Smo, your average end user who probably hasn't
read the mail or e-mail about this and has no clue that it's on, should worry
as he would be a target for other corporations lawsuits and even criminal
prosecution. Without a separate IP and separate audit, he's going to get sued
or thrown into jail. The authorities don't look kindly on such things as kiddy
porn and won't care that it was some stranger using your wifi from across the
street.

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jypepin
I hate Comcast. But I like this. FREE (french provider) has been doing so for
years now. You router shares a _second_ speed-limited connection which doesn't
slow down your own speed, and other Comcast members can connect to it with
their pass.

Maybe it's bad practices to not tell the customer or whatever, but now in
Paris, if you are a FREE customer, there is literally WIFI everywhere for you.
And it's amazing.

just my 2cents :)

~~~
mmaunder
Orange.fr has been doing the same for a while. This is a newer article but in
southern france Orange were doing it in 2012 when I lived there.

[http://www.muniwireless.com/2013/06/10/orange-france-
creates...](http://www.muniwireless.com/2013/06/10/orange-france-creates-
nationwide-community-wifi-network/)

Also my experience with 'free' was that it's vaporware. Hopefully it's
improved in the last 1.5 years.

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emperorcezar
The article states that there is separate bandwidth allocated to the public
wifi. I wonder if there is a way to bridge the two together? Say wired into
your own and wireless into the public and get twice the bang for your buck.

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Shivetya
Comcast is more than willing to allow you to have your own cable modem and
will even assist you in setting it up. I did this recently when I drop phone
service they were providing and no longer needed their special modem. So seven
dollars a month charged for it became zero with my spending less than eighty
dollars and ten minutes on the phone with their tech support.

My concern with their plan besides being opt-out is, who is liable for misuse
of the signal?

~~~
CGamesPlay
The wifi requires you log in with a Comcast user ID and password. It's not an
open wifi network, and only paying Comcast customers have access to it.

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cauterize
This is quite scary. "by default, the feature is being turned on without its
subscribers’ prior consent. It’s an opt-out system".

~~~
jamesbrownuhh
There's not really anything to worry about. One of the UK's largest ISPs, BT
Broadband, does the same kind of thing (in collaboration with their own
network of 'BT Openzone' public wifi spots, and the 'Fon' network).

Basically, (unless an individual subscriber has chosen to disable the
function) their home router radiates a second Wireless SSID, which is
_completely_ isolated from your connection (all traffic to/from is tunnelled
over a VPN back to ISP base) and _never_ detracts from your download speed
(your own traffic always takes priority.)

In return, you have wireless access to thousands of similar hotspots - and in
any populated area there's a more than reasonable chance that you'll be near
someone that uses BT broadband. (UK's largest ISP.)

Nothing not to like about it. It's really convenient and works well.

~~~
cauterize
That's under the assumption that those who write & test the code for those
Comcast devices is competent.

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Retric
So, setup your own router, call it "xfinitywifi" and collect Comcast login
information all day?

~~~
cwkoss
I wonder how much a hacker could hurt Comcast's bottom line by setting up
troll-hotspots, getting people's Comcast info, and then use the info to call
in and cancel accounts. I bet someone working hard could clear $1k/mo of
accounts each day in a couple hours.

Not to mention all the fun data leakage that happens when using open wifi
portals.

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spike021
Comcast is pretty solid. I know it tends to get a lot of hate but my
experience has been fairly consistent.

Like some others have said, as long as it doesn't screw around with my own
connection, then it's not a big deal. Plus I'll now be able to access internet
in a lot more places that didn't have free Wi-Fi before. It's really useful
for me since I only have a 200mb data plan.

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adamman
With all the hate that is going around right now for ISPs, it amazes me that
they would roll something out like this.

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vizzah
At least they let customers to opt-out. In Malta (EU) there is an ISP called
Melita - pretty much a monopoly - which enforced similar to all it's customers
without even informing them and without letting them to turn it off.

It's an outrageous practice to enable radio-emitting devices in customer's
homes without their consent. Unfortunately, they didn't see any backlash from
the customer base, as most didn't understand what happened and believed to
what lies ISP published on their FAQ page - that additional WiFi spot doesn't
emit extra EMF and doesn't consume extra electicity...

I had to go to the lengths of reversing modem firmware looking for exploits in
order to disable this.

~~~
ldarcyftw
I wonder if you could simply wrap the modem in an aluminum foil (provided that
you have your own router connected to it).

~~~
keithpeter
I just unscrew the little aerial when I use a wired connection (we don't have
the public wifi rebroadcast thingy yet)

~~~
vizzah
Looking for exploit was fun - found provisioned administrator password to
access any modem on the WAN - but yes, unscrewing antenna is the first idea
which comes to mind.

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oxalo
Good thing I bought and use my own router and modem. Although the interesting
bit I noticed from the article was about the 'additional bandwidth' that gets
allotted. Meaning Comcast doesn't let you use all of your bandwidth.

~~~
sp332
DOCSIS 3.0 modems support at least 171 Mbit/s
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOCSIS#Speed_tables](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOCSIS#Speed_tables)
But you have to share those channels with your neighbors, and then you have to
share the back-haul lines with lots of people. So no, you don't get to use all
the available bandwidth, but I don't think Comcast ever pretended that they
weren't limiting you. If you upgrade to faster service they just click a
button to bump your allotted speed up.

~~~
Zelphyr
Wait. So a single DOCSIS 3.0 modem (which I own) can support 171 Mbit/s but
Comcast gives me 50 for the low price of $70/month (not including TV)?

~~~
bri3d
It makes a lot more sense to evaluate an ISP based on the speed and latency
they give you for the price (along with other factors like service,
reliability, ethics, etc.), not how much of your modem's theoretical maximum
bandwidth they're able to use.

In order to be DOCSIS 3.0 certified, your modem does have to support 4x4
bonded channels (4 channels up, 4 channels down). But that does _not_ mean
your provider has the channels available or will provision them for you.
DOCSIS 3.0 modems will happily provision themselves down to 1 6.5Mhz channel
down, yielding just 38Mbits as a maximum.

There's a lot more to it than just channel allocation, as well - the 38Mbit
maximum for a 6.5Mhz channel is with 256QAM and a good signal-to-noise ratio,
which depends on a huge variety of factors.

Plus, even if you're getting plenty of channels allocated and have a good SNR,
there's still the backhaul from your nearest point of presence into Comcast's
WAN, the bandwidth across Comcast's WAN, and then whatever peering agreements
they have to get across to the Internet at large.

At any rate, I think this is a pretty silly argument against Comcast - it's
like being angry that your Gigabit Ethernet switch doesn't give you 1000MBit
access to some random server on the Internet.

~~~
munger
Unfortunately here in Louisville/Boulder Colorado, it's either Comcast or
Century Link. I have tried both and done my own testing, and Comcast is still
the best connection despite their price point.

I could not agree more about latency. My first try with Century Link last year
had 120ms latency which is terrible because Comcast was 15ms. CL upgraded my
neighborhood loop and got to 20ms which is fine, but the CL upload speed is
still crippled at an outdated 768kb/s where as Comcast I get 3.5Mb/s upload. I
work from a home office so upload bandwidth is important.

So since there is no other contender that has both good latency and upload
speed I use Comcast for now.

~~~
selectodude
I hate Comcast as much as the next guy, but at least here in Chicago, they're
very expensive and very good. I hate dealing with them, but paying $90/mo for
105/20 that works well is better than paying $60/mo for something that doesn't
(RCN).

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Fuxy
This sounds shady to me i mean if you're a customer paying for a top tire
internet connection that uses all the data capacity you line can give you how
is it not affecting you when this starts serving other people?

The line must be able to handle more bandwidth but somehow i doubt ISP's had
the foresight to leave some extra for just this occasion.

Is the router even capable of handling the extra load this would introduce?
Most consumer routers are known for being under powered.

~~~
anigbrowl
Most people don't run their connection at full capacity all the time. It's
easy to conceive of a router that devotes unused bandwidth to public wifi but
gives it low priority compared to requests from the lessor's wifi network.
It's not like you have a router and are on the same wifi network as the people
walking by in the street.

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joekrill
They've been doing this -- at least here in Philadelphia -- for quite some
time now. The idea is nice, I suppose: it's nice to be able to walk around the
city and have a wifi signal in most places. But the reality is, the connection
is almost always so poor it almost never makes connecting worth my while,
because it actually results in a POORER experience.

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TheLoneWolfling
And what about those jurisdictions where you are responsible for file sharing
that occurs on your network?

~~~
pcl
Sounds like they require customers to log in with their Comcast credentials.
My understanding is that in the US, the laws are such that if someone is
authenticated into a wifi system, the provider of the wifi network is no
longer liable. The article alludes to this in the closing paragraphs.

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DrJokepu
British Telecom has been doing this for quite a few years now as "BT FON".

~~~
mikeryan
I have to say as a visitor to London last year I was pretty happy being able
to get wifi all over the place without using my phones data plan.

That being said I'm also happy I bought my own cable modem for my comcast
internet service.

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tlrobinson
Solution: hack it, upside-down-ternet style: [http://www.ex-
parrot.com/pete/upside-down-ternet.html](http://www.ex-parrot.com/pete/upside-
down-ternet.html)

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gmisra
This has been in place in San Francisco for quite some time (at least a year,
I believe, if not longer).

It seems like a great idea...for opening a giant MITM attack vector to anyone
who chooses to use it.

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morkfromork
I can login and connect to the xfinity wifi at home but, it never works when I
try it at a public place. It seems like just another service they advertise
but, does not work.

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malvosenior
Just tried to opt-out. Took about 20 minutes because "something is wrong,
please try again later", rinse, repeat.

Finally I was able to do it, but now the page where you opt-in/out won't load
so I can't confirm (and of course my neighbors all have it enabled so I can't
tell if the network is mine or not).

Shameful but totally expected. ANY option for high speed internet would be
better than this (except every other cable provider as they're all just as
bad).

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grecy
I suspect this will have a major impact on file sharing lawsuits where your IP
is used to identify you.

~~~
dec0dedab0de
I suspect(hope) that they will have a separate IP for this.

~~~
sroerick
My understanding is that users use their Comcast credentials to login to
public wifi.

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ria_akuseru
What I want to know is if this will count toward my 300gb data cap.

~~~
FireBeyond
You could at least have read a sentence or two of the article if you really
wanted to know.

Separate network, requires Comcast credentials, has -zero- to do with your
account/data cap - other than sharing your Wifi.

~~~
ria_akuseru
Sorry but all I read was 'separate from home network'. I don't see any mention
of the data caps in that article. Though I could very well be blind.

I had to go to the xfinity FAQ to find the answer.
[http://wifi.comcast.com/faqs.html](http://wifi.comcast.com/faqs.html)

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freeasinfree
And 2.4 GHz continues to go to shit with 5 GHz close behind. It's bad enough I
can't turn off the WiFi on my own (rented) modem without having to call
someone and go through the rigmarole, now there's a second network to deal
with.

