New
#20
1. It may make you pay additional power.
2. If someone downloads something illegal through the hotspot, the police will assume it was you.
3. A virus could spread through the two networks depending on how it is set up.
Comcast routers broadcasting free Wi-Fi to neighborhood
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New #21
1) You probably will not be able to measure the difference used. It is one antenna broadcasting two SSIDs. Looking at some of the complaints in various forums - the speed is throttled, so hotspot users could not even heat up the access point with a big download. Also, there is a limit to the number of users per hotspot (I think it is 5).
2) The internet facing IP address is different... so, when the authorities ask the ISP, "Who was using IP address xxxxx on this day, at this time"; the ISP can say that account yyyy was signed on to the hotspot at this address.
3) The networks are definitely separate. So many people tried to hook a wireless printer to the hotspot and print to it from their network that the issue made it into the FAQ :-(
edit:
XFINITY WiFi - FAQs
Last edited by UsernameIssues; 11 Feb 2014 at 01:44.
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New #22
My turn to post the negatives.
Someone else can play the devil's advocate.
I would turn it off (if the contract allowed same).
I don't want someone parked near my home. Currently, I can ask the police to ask such a loiterer why they are parked near my home and sitting in their vehicle for an unusual amount of time. If I offer a hotspot, I've just muddied the waters on if they should be there and I might have created an invited (attractive) nuisance issue.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attract...sance_doctrine
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New #23
So what does having a Comcast account have to do with it, couldn`t anyone latch on to the signal if they really wanted to ?
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New #24
It is not a public hotspot. You must sign on with your ISP account before you can "surf".
It is not wide open. Visitors using the same hotspot are isolated from each other.
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New #26
You are correct. A certain level of trust is required. Or at least a certain level of research should be done. Since this is an opt out process. Most users will not even know that it is happening. I guess that is why the article made the news - even though the service has been rolling out since 2010.
Since I stated why I would not use the service - there is not much reason for me to research this like I was contemplating turning it on. If I were researching it deeper, I would look for reviews from people that know about such things. Maybe Krebs (and his resources) will chime in on this old topic someday. (like that'll ever happen)
I have asked some forum members who are using this service to run some tests for me. If those members find the time to do those tiny tests, then maybe I can post back with a bit more info.
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New #27
The problem is 99.9% of the people using Comcast don't know their rounter/modem is a hot spot. I would venture to say most of them don't know what a hotspot is. So, for them to do a bunch of router tinkering and such is out of the question.
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New #28
Well good thing i am not one of those people who don't care about tinkering with their routers.
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New #29
I don't understand why you won't blindly trust this company to handle security issues for you. /jk
Just look how well they handled this recent problem.
They obviously know what they are doing. NOT!
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