would you go splits on wireless with a neighbour?

yuooo

hi,
we've been trying to get broadband connected in our house for a while, when i realised that our neighbours on bothsides have wireless broadband. it shows up on my mac airport, but they have a password of course. i've heard of people using neighbours wireless before, and hacking passwords and so on. we discussed this in our hosue for a while and then we wondered...

if you had wireless, and yr neighbours knocked on yr door and offered to go splits on yr broadband bill in exhange for yr password and you having it always connected, would you do it? we're trying to think through the reasons people wouldn't, i guess cuz bandwidth and security or something? and i guess that sometimes the signal isnt strong enough to go through walls, but theres already a signal for it in our house (when its on at least).

so what are peoples views? pros/cons?

thanks

Karoma

Already doing it with the neighbours
The only concern I'd have is if the ISP contacted them about the connection going over the cap (It's not really a major issue; but the neighbours might disagree or just be incapable of handling the ISP).
It really depends on how/what you and your neighbours usage. If they use it a lot, for gaming for example (Or anything that requires the bandwidth) then they make not want to share.
You're the best person to judge their possible reaction before asking (You know their demographic).
Just ask them:)
Use "we were going to get ADSL+wireless..but noticed both your and blahblahs connections - we don't really want to create interference..wanna share?" or something

Pro:
It can be the most cost effective way of maintaining it
It is usually the most cost effective way of setup (i.e. Most of the infrastructure is there already)

Con:
Depending on their package(s) and use: there simply may not be enough bandwidth/cap
As with anything money-related: bad things can happen to good relationships (ex: you forget to pay some month or you wanna pull out of it or whatever..)
Less administrative control (Unless they wanna share the router admin pass' also - which,fortunately,my neighbour has. Even so, if ex: the router must be physically accessed: you may be screwed: this is rare though)

I'd say discuss it with the neighbours (Preferably the neighbour with whom you already get along with already)

DonkeyStyle \o/

What if the other person gets in trouble for questionable content or activities, and the evidence is the IP address you both share, then maybe you'd also have your PC taken as part of the investigation... questions asked etc... you'd really have to trust the other person 100% (and anyone likely to use their side of the net) not to fúck around.
Of course you'd be clear once the forensics shows it was the other guy, but to be subject to that kind of hassle though no fault of your own would be quite a pain in the hole.
That's my basic impression of the situation anyway, I'm not a legal expert or wireless guru... maybe someone can crystalize that a bit (or debunk it as waffle).

It also might be against the terms & conditions of the ISP... (ie. one per household)

There might be an issue with having your PC share a LAN with the neighbours (if that is the case with wireless routers), but I'm sure that can all be blocked out with a little know-how.

Karoma

In fairness,how often do the Gardai [strike]perform forens...[/strike] do anything?
But yeah, it reinforces me point (Which may have been lost admittedly): personal knowledge/relationship with the neighbour is essential.
I'm sure the ISP would love to restrict the account to one household -but they can do nothing to penalise or enforce this at all!
Again,sharing files on a LAN could be a good thing if you're friendly with the neighboureenos; otherwise: most routers will restrict this as would a personal firewall.

Goodshape

Sure I would. Would need to set some ground rules though.

yuooo

Karoma wrote:

I'd say discuss it with the neighbours (Preferably the neighbour with whom you already get along with already)

i've never met the neighbours actually, i only moved in in july and they're old terraced houses. as far as i can tell their demographic is young professionals who play bruce springstien and celine dion very loudly, and i know of at least one party which happened in our house that the neighbours made complaints about, and theres more on the way. so i don't know if we'll get on that well, could it hurt to try though? i don't know.

i'm glad to hear some people are doing it though. seems like a nice thing to be able to do, like the modern day version of borrowing a cup of sugar or something.

Karoma

No harm in trying!
(And if that fails: try the other neighbour)
(And if that fails: just crack their pass and use it for free. Damn meanies!)

sixtysix

what happens if next door neighbour is illegally downloading/sharing music?
Who do the copywright people sue?

zoro

sixtysix wrote:

what happens if next door neighbour is illegally downloading/sharing music?
Who do the copywright people sue?

The account holder. They don't care about the money, they just want publicity

Blub2k4

I'd make sure there was a proxy or something logging who and when did what, the LAN would have to be properly set up so as not to get stitched up for anything dodgy.
I wouldn't do it with anyone myself, it opens up a can of worms.

Red Alert

I'd do it for my two neighbours as neither are big gamers - one surfs literary sites and the other just send lots of emails to the USA for work and stuff. I'm trying to build a four-segment router at the minute just to use up some kit lying around so i'd probably put them on their own network segment (away from my file server too) and use Squid like I currently do to proxy internet access. That way all access would be recorded and I could see who's using what.

Blub2k4

Red Alert wrote:

I'd do it for my two neighbours as neither are big gamers - one surfs literary sites and the other just send lots of emails to the USA for work and stuff. I'm trying to build a four-segment router at the minute just to use up some kit lying around so i'd probably put them on their own network segment (away from my file server too) and use Squid like I currently do to proxy internet access. That way all access would be recorded and I could see who's using what.

but do you really even want to know that they visit shavenhaven or granny porn or whatever, I could live without it personally?

ianmc38

No i wouldn't.

Sam Johnston

I wrote a linux kernel module to implement IP quotas a few years ago - it's in netfilter's base patch-o-matic-ng repository:

http://www.netfilter.org/patch-o-matic/pom-base.html#pom-base-quota

If you could get your hands on a WRT54G you ought to be able to get this running on it and then set them a hard limit.

Raiser

World of trouble [potentially] to save a few lousy €uro a month [?]

Nuff Sed.

Red Alert

not really but i don't want granny porn going down my net connection.

yuooo

Karoma wrote:

No harm in trying!
(And if that fails: try the other neighbour)
(And if that fails: just crack their pass and use it for free. Damn meanies!)

would it be easy for them to trace me if i got their password cracked?

Blub2k4

Red Alert wrote:

not really but i don't want granny porn going down my net connection.

Well thing is once it is legal then you really have to allow them to surf it, otherwise you shouldn't be asking them to share the connection, I mean if they pay then they should have the same rights to surf what they want as they would on their own connection or else you have no business splitting it with them.

So your answer I presume in retrospect would really be no to the original posters question?

LegacyUser

No .. definitely not. Not a hope in hell taking the risk of splitting broadband line with a neighbour.

What happens if they download illegal stuff and the line is in your name??
Go to jail for him/her too.

Also, you will find that sharing a line like that is against the TOS of many BB suppliers

For the sake of a couple of quid ..

bungeecork

What if you decide not to secure your wifi (I know, I know - but what if)? You wouldn't know if your neighbours took adavntage of it or not. A TOS violation?

I spent 4 months travelling around Europe with a laptop this summer and was lucky enough to use unsecured wifi several times. I did no harm and didn't download anything naughty but if I had - well, good luck finding me, I'm far away now.

And while I'm here - some of the hotel charges for wifi were ridiculous. Any Accor hotel in Europe charges for it by the hour. Formula1, Novotel, Ibis, Etap - all of them charge through the nose. 1 day of wifi costs more than a room in some Formula1s on the continent. In Seoul our hotel had free wifi in every room. Thats the way it should be everywhere!

bandraoi

where I live I can pick up unsecured wifi from somewhere.
I'm not complaining

Karoma

yuooo wrote:

would it be easy for them to trace me if i got their password cracked?

Short answer: Yes .. if they ever look at router logs they can see that someone else is connecting.. you could try to hide your identity-depending on their knowledge, they may or may not know that it's you specifically (They may have the cop on to realise that it's someone very very close..)
No further detail will be provided on this matter I was hoping you'd show signs of ethical and responsible behaviour,which is essential for this to work... *giggles*

jayneemac

yuooo wrote:

as far as i can tell their demographic is young professionals who play celine dion very loudly,

they should be lined up & shot for inflicting such torture on their neighbours

blahblah06

I didnt think that the wireless internet would work with it been that far away.... ?

Freddie59

yuooo wrote:

hi,
we've been trying to get broadband connected in our house for a while, when i realised that our neighbours on bothsides have wireless broadband. it shows up on my mac airport, but they have a password of course. i've heard of people using neighbours wireless before, and hacking passwords and so on. we discussed this in our hosue for a while and then we wondered...

if you had wireless, and yr neighbours knocked on yr door and offered to go splits on yr broadband bill in exhange for yr password and you having it always connected, would you do it? we're trying to think through the reasons people wouldn't, i guess cuz bandwidth and security or something? and i guess that sometimes the signal isnt strong enough to go through walls, but theres already a signal for it in our house (when its on at least).

so what are peoples views? pros/cons?

thanks

NOT ON YOUR LIFE!

Pros: NONE.

Cons: What if your neighbour was a paedophile?

Case closed. :eek:

dam099

One of the students in our apartments who had just moved in and who I had never met before approached me in the car park and asked just this very thing. I told him to f-off (politely).

I have however happily shared the connection with flatmates previously.