Selfish WiFi Sharing
December 24th, 2009I’d like to share my internet connection over WiFi, but there are a couple reasons I don’t.
- I don’t want it to impact the bandwidth I have when I’m using my connection.
- I don’t want them to use it in such a way that it triggers my ISP to throttle my connection.
- I don’t want to be held responsible for what people do on my connection.
Basically, what I’m saying is that I’d like to be able to share without it negatively impacting me. I feel like a lot of people would also share their own connections if it were easy to do and didn’t have negative consequences. I also feel that it should be entirely possible to do this!
In (1), what I really mean is that my use of the connection should get priority over whatever random strangers I’m sharing with. Maybe it’s my neighbors, who don’t have a connection of their own, or maybe it’s just someone passing through, looking for a few minutes of WiFi to check their email. There’s plenty of time during the day when I’m not using my connection at all, and plenty of time when I’m just doing some light surfing.
What I want is a WiFi router that supports this kind of prioritizing. Set up and broadcast two different SSIDs: one for priority traffic, one which just gets whatever bandwidth is left over. The priority channel gets normal encryption and access control, the shared channel is unencrypted. Maybe I’d call the shared channel “Spike’s Free WiFi.” The quality of that connection would fluctuate wildly, depending on whether or not I’m filling up the priority channel, but hey, it’d be free.
For (2), I’ll start off by saying that net connections in the UK have advantages and disadvantages over those in the US. I think they typically come out slightly cheaper per MBit of connection speed, but most ISPs have annoying “network management policies.” These include throttling connections if you use push or pull too much data during peak hours, and, I suspect, if you use particular protocols, like those that run P2P services (I’ve noticed severe slowdowns when I put up a bittorrent client or the BBC iPlayer Desktop application, even before I’ve moved enough data to trigger the limits detailed below). For the most part, ISPs are relatively transparent about their traffic management with respect to peak hour use (see for example Virgin Media’s), but I would like more detail. Like, the kind of detail that would allow configuration of a router to keep strangers using the connection from getting my connection throttled. In particular, a clear statement about how different protocols trigger throttling, if any. If UK ISPs are going to go down the road of advertising “Unlimited” plans, but actually enforcing limits by throttling connections, then they should publish enough detail to allow customers to configure tools to avoid those limits.
(3) is one which needs a legal solution, rather than a technical one. Basically, what is needed is either legislation or legal precedent that establishes that simply providing internet access doesn’t make a person liable (in both criminal and civil senses) for what is done by others over that connection. ISPs enjoy this legal protection, as do other providers of communication services—you can’t sue the postal service if they deliver a harassing letter sent to you by someone else. I know of no cases where a person operating an unencrypted access point has been successfully sued or prosecuted for what others have done on the connection, but there are particularly worrying measures being considered. At the top of the list are the so called “3 strikes” proposals where being accused of sharing of copyrighted works over a network connection 3 times can get your connection terminated. I think this is a bad idea for a number of reasons, but it would effectively kill the idea of sharing your network connection with strangers—which would be a real shame.
If you walk down a city block or residential suburb with a WiFi sniffer these days you’ll find dozens of operating access points. Imagine how much coverage could be achieved if everyone got into sharing the bandwidth they had going spare. Coverage would be patchy, and speed unreliable, but it would be free and leverage a piece of tech most people will be upgrading over the next few years anyway. Crowd-sourced municipal WiFi!
December 25th, 2009 at 2:44 am
Regarding (1), have you ever heard of FON? http://www.fon.com/en/
It does more or less what you laid down, with the added benefit of being able to use any other FON wi-fi connection around the world. Which can be quite neat….
Though I haven’t had a chance to try it, their new router (2.0N) looks like a treat, but not selling in Taiwan at the moment…
(2): I had Demon http://www.demon.net/ in England, at they weren’t at all open about any of their policies. Throttled us (3 people on 3 computers in one household can easily go over 50Gb/month…) but couldn’t even point to any disclosed information of the existence of traffic limits… Hope your ISP is better…
(3): Bad idea on so many levels, and others think that too. Look at the popular demand in France and New Zealand going against the governmental wishes of such graduated response laws, even if the politicians still trying to push it through. Also EU legislature trying to adopt regulation against such laws, and Spain proposing internet access as human right.
On another note your wi-fi don’t have to be “shared” to be shared – WEP and WPA connections can be broken at relative ease. It’s just like putting a lock on your bike: sure it is easier to steal the bike that has no lock, but it does not stop the determined people to steal your bike if they really want to. So, just securing your wi-fi can leave you worse off in certain jurisdictions, since in case of any issues it much more likely that it was you instead of someone else.
Also: you don’t even have to share anything to be implicated. Researchers could trigger DMCA notices to any IP address they wanted, framing network printers, routers, etc…. http://dmca.cs.washington.edu/ Which means a bad / technically infeasible law, which should be changed, in my opinion.
December 25th, 2009 at 12:46 pm
I have some confidence that the courts in the US would rule that such a law violates the due process clause in the Constitution. Not sure about the UK, as I don’t know its legal system or history as well. Better, though, that legislators be convinced of how colossally bad such a law would be.
I’d ideally like to be able to share my connection with anyone, not just members of my sharing network, like FON. Joining a network like that gives a nice advantage to those who participate, which might be important to gain widespread traction. I’d like to believe, though, that most people are like me–they don’t mind people freeloading as long as they don’t impact my experience.
I knew WEP was broken, but thought WPA was still relatively robust. Anyone heard about WPA-2? Theses systems actually serve two separate purposes: data security and access control. I’m not particularly concerned with the former; at least with respect to WiFi, because eavesdroppers cruising around my neighbourhood are unlikely. All the important stuff like email and credit card numbers go over secure protocols. Neighbours getting on and using up all my bandwidth seems much more likely (and, as I said, it’s only the bandwidth part that I mind).
December 25th, 2009 at 6:17 pm
Yeah, FON and your dual-router idea is a bit like GPL and the MIT license (respectively), both has its advantages and the choice between them comes down more on personal beliefs than anything else.
One of the many sources of the WPA cracking.
http://docs.lucidinteractive.ca/index.php/Cracking_WEP_and_WPA_Wireless_Networks
This might give some idea, what settings supposed to give a bit more security than others. And WPA2 is still secure – though there are some devices which cannot access it.
As for deciding such things in the courts. Maybe I’m biased a bit, but don’t feel too confident about it. The “jury of your peers” are very rarely your peers in these cases. As much as I’ve heard, anyone who have _ever_ downloaded anything that infinges on someone’s copyright (which, I think, the large majority of the computer literate population) are barred from the jury. What one ends up with is a bunch of computer semi/illiterate people (used this only as a description, not a pejorative term) who are unlikely to be filled in e.g. about the differences between the expected security of WEP and WPA… These are the people who think it is completely rational to award tens of thousands of dollars in damages for unauthorized downloading of a single copyrighted song.
The content industries have very powerful lobby, and it is not in their interest to fix the broken and on many level unenforceable copyright laws. I too believe, that it can be fixed, however that is not through the courts but with a bottom-up consensus, that would require both sides to compromise. I also believe that the content industry is missing out on new business opportunities that would mitigate most of the problems they have right now. Though this creates opportunities for disruptive startups.
Just some thoughts… Probably a bit long-winded, sorry about that
December 26th, 2009 at 5:39 am
One little note I just remembered.
If you are into experimenting a little, then you can try dd-wrt.
You need one of the supported routers and it’ll let you customize the firmware and adds a lot of capabilities. One of them is “multiple wlans”, creating multiple virtual wi-fi interfaces with their own security settings.
http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Multiple_WLANs
I haven’t tried it yet, but have a router (Buffalo WRT-125) that is compatible (with some quirks), and planning to give it a go since recently run into some limitations of the factory firmware (that is not upgraded anymore). Anyways….