4 ms·

What incentive pushed the manufacturers of those routers in that direction though?

johncolanduoni 9y ago
I suspect it was the ISPs who made the decision, not the manufacturers. Removing the common excuse of "my network is open, who knows who did it!" for torrenting may be the reason. Another could be to make open/easily accessible networks rarer as they started selling Wi-Fi via the provided routers.
- superjambo 9y ago
  could be ISPs trying to improve user security generally to prevent lots of their customers becoming DDOS zombies resulting in more contention & customer complaints.
  - arkades 9y ago
    Not a bad rationale, even if consumers don’t complain. DDOS sucks up a lot of bandwidth in aggregate, and this is a cheap way to reclaim some of it.
  - gspetr 9y ago
    That's highly unlikely as we've recently learned from "Internet Chemotherapy": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15946095 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15946095 ISPs are unfortunately the problem, not the solution.
TeMPOraL 9y ago
Torrenting and child porn, I would guess. I remember the slow transition from people using open networks to securing the shit out of them, and there was this big fear that someone could use your network to download copyright-protected and/or illegal material, and it would be tied to your IP.
- userbinator 9y ago
  Indeed, 10-15 years ago in almost any area with a population you could easily find an open network to get onto the Internet when you wanted to. I could check email and lookup some quick things even while riding public transit, without needing mobile data. There was also a grassroots movement of sorts to "share your WiFi", and even a well-known security professional opened his: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/01/my_open_wireles.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/01/my_open_wirel.... Now there's almost none of those left, and what places do advertise "free WiFi" are captive/login portals. It was more free and open back then, I actually quite miss those days...
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    I miss them too, though less than I did in the period between when people started locking down Wi-Fi and when mobile data became cheap. Anyway, this is just yet another example of computing getting worse the more money there is to be made in it from mainstream use.

I suspect it was the ISPs who made the decision, not the manufacturers. Removing the common excuse of "my network is open, who knows who did it!" for torrenting may be the reason. Another could be to make open/easily accessible networks rarer as they started selling Wi-Fi via the provided routers.

superjambo 9y ago
could be ISPs trying to improve user security generally to prevent lots of their customers becoming DDOS zombies resulting in more contention & customer complaints.
- arkades 9y ago
  Not a bad rationale, even if consumers don’t complain. DDOS sucks up a lot of bandwidth in aggregate, and this is a cheap way to reclaim some of it.
- gspetr 9y ago
  That's highly unlikely as we've recently learned from "Internet Chemotherapy": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15946095 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15946095 ISPs are unfortunately the problem, not the solution.

TeMPOraL 9y ago

Torrenting and child porn, I would guess. I remember the slow transition from people using open networks to securing the shit out of them, and there was this big fear that someone could use your network to download copyright-protected and/or illegal material, and it would be tied to your IP.

userbinator 9y ago
Indeed, 10-15 years ago in almost any area with a population you could easily find an open network to get onto the Internet when you wanted to. I could check email and lookup some quick things even while riding public transit, without needing mobile data. There was also a grassroots movement of sorts to "share your WiFi", and even a well-known security professional opened his: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/01/my_open_wireles.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/01/my_open_wirel.... Now there's almost none of those left, and what places do advertise "free WiFi" are captive/login portals. It was more free and open back then, I actually quite miss those days...
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  I miss them too, though less than I did in the period between when people started locking down Wi-Fi and when mobile data became cheap. Anyway, this is just yet another example of computing getting worse the more money there is to be made in it from mainstream use.