Virgin Media Creates a Service that turns YOUR Internet Router into a Free Wi-FI Hotspot for any Vir - Polidicks

[QUOTE]In the latest boost for Britain’s sharing economy, Virgin Media announced this month its plans to roll out a free public WiFi network this autumn, using subscribers’ personal routers and existing infrastructure to distribute the service across UK cities. The UK media giant first told investors of the scheme in 2010, advising that the company was in “advanced negotiations” with London councils, regarding the use of street-side cabinets, and that the service would begin “in the not too distant future.” It was explained that the free WiFi service would be made available to anyone at 0.5Mbps, and to its own customers at up to 10Mbps. Last week it was revealed that this network would also be powered, pretty much exclusively, by private WiFi routers. The company explained that public users would connect to customers’ personal routers via a completely separate connection, which it claims will not hamper performance or connectivity speed, nor compromise security. “A user of Virgin Media Wi-Fi can’t see anything on the in-home broadband network, nor can someone using the in-home broadband network see a Virgin Media Wi-Fi user’s activity. There is also a separate content filtering policy for Virgin Media Wi-Fi which doesn’t affect your Web Safe settings in the home,” reads the Virgin Media FAQ page. [...] For those Virgin Media subscribers unhappy with the prospect of sharing their network connection, the company is offering an opt-out setting. Enabling this option however will, quite rightly, prohibit the subscriber from accessing other free WiFi spots – share and share alike etc. [/QUOTE] Source: [url]https://thestack.com/cloud/2015/08/25/virgin-media-to-allow-passers-by-to-freely-access-your-wifi/[/url] Source from Virgin Media's site: [url]http://store.virginmedia.com/discover/broadband/virginmediawifi/what-is-virgin-media-wifi.html[/url] Quite frankly I hate this idea because they calim that it won't affect your Wi-Fi but I seriously doubt this since you're going to be running ANOTHER Wi-Fi channel on your router, and any bandwith used by that person on the free Wi-Fi can throttle my speeds. My parent's love this idea so I've got to deal with this dumb fucking thing

That's stupid. "Hey let's make a free guest wireless network so people can use it and do who knows what, with my internet link!" Better hope they don't look up kiddie porn or illegal torrents. Stupid fucking idea.

BT has this (if you see BTWiFi/Openzone, it's either a public phonebox conversion or someone's home router acting as a front-end) you can disable the service through the user control panel with BT at least

[QUOTE=.Lain;48539497]BT has this. you can turn it off[/QUOTE] Fios has it too but it's disabled by default.

Comcast has been doing this in the US for a while, Thats why I buy my own modem and router

[QUOTE=agentfazexx;48539482]That's stupid. "Hey let's make a free guest wireless network so people can use it and do who knows what, with my internet link!" Better hope they don't look up kiddie porn or illegal torrents. Stupid fucking idea.[/QUOTE] they will most likely use GUID identification because it's going to need to check if your a customer or not, so in the event someone does look up some fucked off shit they'll get tagged for sure

[QUOTE=confinedUser;48539509]they will most likely use GUID identification because it's going to need to check if your a customer or not, so in the event someone does look up some fucked off shit they'll get tagged for sure[/QUOTE] The most you can do is do that based on MAC address but you can spoof that, so..

BT have been doing something similar with BT Openzone / FON / Whatever-it's-called for yonks now. This isn't really new, to be honest.

[QUOTE=agentfazexx;48539516]The most you can do is do that based on MAC address but you can spoof that, so..[/QUOTE] actually no you can use GUID id, as to ID the customer in the database and this would be something noone but the company themselves can edit.

[QUOTE=agentfazexx;48539506]Fios has it too but it's disabled by default.[/QUOTE] actually i think that's the case with BT too, but i'm not sure. i know it was never turned on with our household, but we've had the same account and everything since before the service was introduced

Got it as well over here in The Netherlands, simply turned it off in the router settings no biggie.

[QUOTE=.Lain;48539534]actually i think that's the case with BT too, but i'm not sure. i know it was never turned on with our household, but we've had the same account and everything since before the service was introduced[/QUOTE] That's a good thing. This is a sneaky thing to have turned on by default.

people complain about this yet with all the past implementations you need to login with your ISP which means YOU are held liable if you do something on the open wifi, not the owner of the router.

Yeah most companies are doing this now. I can see this causing an issue with speeds if your connection is already shit below what you're paying for from oversubbing, but for the average user that's about it.

It's probably like the @FON service that I have in mine, but if it IS anything like that, you can turn off the module for it.

BT, Sky and a lot of others have services like this, its normally disabled by default though and functions entirely separately to your network with it needing the person accessing it to enter in credentials of their own, making them liable for whatever they do, not the home owner who has the hotspot enabled. Its honestly dumb how opting out also makes you unable to use it yourself, BT's doesn't work like that and they actually allow anyone to use them, regardless if they are a BT subscriber or not. Plus with this working off existing Virgin routers, I honestly wouldn't enable it at all because what they ship out to their customers is trash, even the BT Home Hub is better because it physically splits the two networks instead of sharing the same hardware.

Ziggo and KPN also have this in the Netherlands, it's pretty awesome

[QUOTE=Reagy;48539586]BT, Sky and a lot of others have services like this, its normally disabled by default though and functions entirely separately to your network with it needing the person accessing it to enter in credentials of their own, making them liable for whatever they do, not the home owner who has the hotspot enabled. [B]Its honestly dumb how opting out also makes you unable to use it yourself[/B], BT's doesn't work like that and they actually allow anyone to use them, regardless if they are a BT subscriber or not. Plus with this working off existing Virgin routers, I honestly wouldn't enable it at all because what they ship out to their customers is trash, even the BT Home Hub is better because it physically splits the two networks instead of sharing the same hardware.[/QUOTE] I don't think so. It's an opt-in program. You want in the program, you get the benefits. Simple as that. Plus even if you opt-out you should still be able to get the half meg, just not the increased 10 meg speeds.

It's a cheap way to spread infrastructure, but at the cost of an individuals band with. Just imagine how bad it would be to love above a coffee shop (even if it too has free WiFi).

This can easily be turned off, and I'm sure it isn't on by default (it may be with new router/customer installations)

[QUOTE=Levelog;48539637]I don't think so. It's an opt-in program. You want in the program, you get the benefits. Simple as that. Plus even if you opt-out you should still be able to get the half meg, just not the increased 10 meg speeds.[/QUOTE] Why enforce it though when none of the other ISPs do? It feels counter productive.

[QUOTE=confinedUser;48539532]actually no you can use GUID id, as to ID the customer in the database and this would be something noone but the company themselves can edit.[/QUOTE] How? Unless they have you provide additional information by logging in or running software, the only identifying information they have is a MAC address. Even if they map that to a table with GUID's, you can just use someone else's MAC address and have someone else's GUID.

I don't see the issue, I'm sure the ISP could just compensate the extra bandwidth another user uses down the line. Pretty awesome if we could free basically expand wifi across everywhere.

This has been around for ages on other isps although this is typically bad in that, if users were to use your internet, it's limiting your overall speed to compensate for the additional devices connected, it's bullshit they say it won't effect your connection as the router\modem only has ONE fiberoptic connection which as a fixed download\upload rate. Virgin media's upload rate is one of the worst in the world with just 3mbp/s upload on their 50mbp/s download package. I bet to enforce this like fon, if you disable the guest wifi they stop you from using other peoples wifi networks.

This is where living next to my school may start to suck. Not sure exactly how far you can reach but I'd rather not have 200 netflix streams sittings on my connection.

yep if any of the decade of hacker conventions have shown its that deliberately creating holes in security won't ever come back to bite people

I doubt this will have a huge impact on performance unless you live in a central area. Especially because they're using a totally different connection for both. The only thing I can see this slowing down is the WiFi itself. We use an ASUS router with the SH in modem mode anyway here, won't affect me. And I have access to my grandparent's Virgin account to make use of the free WiFi. Woo!

As long as such services are opt-in then I have no issue with it.

[QUOTE=Intoxicated Spy;48539508]Comcast has been doing this in the US for a while, Thats why I buy my own modem and router[/QUOTE] You can disable it on Comcast's modems. [url]http://10.0.0.1[/url] Also be sure you own a Docsis 3.0 modem or you probably won't get the speeds that Comcast advertises.

[QUOTE=Levelog;48539557]Yeah most companies are doing this now. I can see this causing an issue with speeds if your connection is already shit below what you're paying for from oversubbing, but for the average user that's about it.[/QUOTE] The public connection has its own up/downstream limits from the ISP, it shouldn't affect your connection at all.