Caveats In Reselling DSL Bandwidth To Neighbors? 383
chrisleetn writes "I'm contemplating getting Slashdot (Speakeasy) 6Mbps broadband or something similar and offering wireless internet access to my neighborhood. Speakeasy even has a plan to allow this. What should I be aware of as far as legal/business/regulatory implications? I know I need to restrict obvious illegal stuff and probably p2p to be safe, but is the local cable modem company going to come after me for competing with them? Has anyone done this who can offer some insight?"
Why would the cable modem company come after you? (Score:2, Interesting)
You need a captive portal! (Score:5, Interesting)
Unprotected Wireless... (Score:5, Interesting)
However, would your neighbors be willing to pay?
In my neighborhood, I can count no less than 9 unprotected networks. Most of them are all on the default linksys channel of 6 with the default SSID of "linksys". That can sometimes make them difficult to use since they tend to interfere. Some of them are configured well enough to be usable but are still not protected.
I've found that in the rare events that my internet connection goes down, I've been able to easily just use a neighbor's. I'd feel worse about doing it if it weren't for the fact that it's so common, but it's very common.
A friend and I drove around town one night with a laptop and a wireless 802.11g card and we kept finding Netgear and Linksys routers all night.
Most of them had the default passwords. It's very scary, really.
The scary ones are the ones who know enough to make serious changes to their configuration, but still don't have the sense to change their passwords.
Hogs? (Score:5, Interesting)
But for those that do, what are you going to do to guarantee them that one of your neighbours isn't going to hog all of the bandwidth?
I know just in my house (also a 6 Mb connection), if I'm downloading something through Bit Torrent, it really slows down any internet stuff on the other computers, and if another computer here downloads a file or checks email, it makes games on mine stutter.
Are you going to give them bandwidth caps? And will those go down everytime you get a new customer?
Incorporate (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Is it really worth the trouble? (Score:3, Interesting)
Tech support (Score:5, Interesting)
not OT, but sorta related (Score:4, Interesting)
I have had broadband over cable for close to 5 years now. From the beginning, my uploads have been capped at around 48KBps (384Kbps). In this period, the technology has changed; prices of almost everything in this field have come down drastically; there's a massive bandwidth glut (with oodles of dark fiber lying around), and yet my upload speed is still capped. My question is: why?
OK, one answer could be: ISPs have to pay to send traffic to other ISPs. But that begs the question: why can't I get fullspeed (10Mbps) to my neighbor, if we are both on the same ISP? I can understand this peering argument to have merit when you're crossing ISP borders, but why doesn't the ISP let me get the full benefit of the technology to people in the same subnet?
My cynical guess is that this prevents file-sharing, the bogeyman of the entertainment industry. Since cable ISPs are beholden to (if not owned by) this industry, they are deliberately keeping the UL rates low.
Any thoughts?
Here's an idea (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:This Is Rather Simple (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Is it really worth the trouble? (Score:3, Interesting)
In some places, such as the rural United States, you don't always explicitly barter one service for another. You help out when you are needed, knowing that you'll get assistance in return in the future.
Of course this does not happen as much in my Seattle neighborhood.
Re:They come at all hours. (Score:3, Interesting)
If you were to trash my car, then I'd be seeing YOU in court, and I guarantee I'd win. You are more than welcome to choose not to share something wiwth your neighbors to avoid this, and I agree that it is foolish to do as is business with family, however what would be even more foolish would be doing something like a neighborhood isp without some sort of agreement, otherwise you are opening yourself up to a whole world of personal liability that I'm sure nobody wants.
Re:... but the upload sucks (Score:3, Interesting)
So people will have to ask around or test out their particular local dsl/cable service before coming to the conclusion that it behaves this way.
Re:... but the upload sucks (Score:2, Interesting)
TCP was designed with the assumption that each hop had a buffer and that congestion would increase packet delays long before causing outright packet loss.
So, TCP reacts to 'delay' as a sign to slow down a bit.
The problem is that cable/dsl modems generally do not introduce delays at all. They go direct from normal speed to dropped packets, with little or no warning. TCP goes into a panic and jams on the brakes instead of gracefully backing off like it does when it hits delays.
One of the best things you can do to make your cable/dsl modem work better is to use a traffic shaper on it. I do this with my unix boxes. They provide way more buffering than the modems do, and are set just shy of the packet loss threshold on the modem.
As a result, you introduce delay yourself (so tcp responds sanely) and avoid going off the cliff.
BTW; I felt that DSL modems were a little more extreme in how they did this. They fragment the 1500 byte ethernet frames into 48-byte ATM frames. I suspected that the rate limiting was done at the ATM level and it would drop ATM frames to keep the rates down. The result of that is that a single lost ATM frame means that you're still chewing up bandwidth to carry the other 98% of each ethernet frame which cannot be reassembled at the other end. Maybe I'm wrong about that, but it sure felt like it with my old DSL connection. As much as I hate my cable provider, it doesn't seem to die off quite as suddenly as it did with DSL.
Check your HOA/apartment lease (Score:5, Interesting)
His landlord came down on him hard. A local company had an exclusive contract on providing that service and they demanded that the apartment complex deal with it. IIRC he was threatened with eviction unless he dropped the service. The story made the "legal issues" segment of the local news broadcast, and the lawyer told him he didn't have any options. He may have even been forced to drop his personal service even if he didn't share it with neighbors.
I'm showing my age here but I remember when it took a federal law to invalidate absolute restrictions on small satellite dishes. Exclusive arrangements on cable tv service were common and widely enforced.
The law changed the environment, but you should still check your particulars. E.g., I can easily imagine an apartment or condo complex banning wireless stations because 1) they wish to minimize interference between neighboring units and 2) they wish to retain the option of providing wireless service throughout the complex as a benefit of renting there. That's less likely with detached housing HOAs, but not impossible.
bandwidth-sharing depends on your contract (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm guessing that some allow you to share bandwidth as long as you don't get any compensation. Others may allow you to charge up to a certain amount, and still others may not care.
Technically, it's hard for them to tell for sure unless they drive by with a wifi sniffer. However, they can do traffic-analysis for "suspicious patterns." If you've got people doing web access at all hours of the day and night and it looks "human" rather than robotic, and they know it's just you living at your house, well, that's pretty suspicious. They just might send a guy over with a sniffer.
Of course, this is off the main topic, as the person asking the question has explicit permission from his isp to share/resell bandwidth.
Stay away from speakeasy (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Is it really worth the trouble? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Why would the cable modem company come after yo (Score:2, Interesting)
messages in their ramblings? This is a great
idea for clandestine operations. Who actually
pays attention to this shit? unless you surf
at -1, you wont see it, and normaly when I see
it I just ignore it. But this one caught my
eye, reminded me of an encrypted message.
Think about it, 75% of slashdot would not see
it, and the other 25% would just ignore it,
unless they were specificly looking for it.
Looks like an idea to me.