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NYC has a ton of street level internet kiosks and open wifi endpoints around, it’s common to have housing above store levels, and it’s common to freeload on
by zxcvbn4038 6y ago
NYC has a ton of street level internet kiosks and open wifi endpoints around, it’s common to have housing above store levels, and it’s common to freeload on them if you are lucky enough to be near one. That might be what your seeing, and as others have mentioned anyone using a cell phone is probably coming through a NAT gateway unless you support IPv6 on your edge.
Personally I’ve not been able to connect wirelessly to any of the street kiosks since about the second week of their existence. I still see the SSIDs advertised but I can’t negotiate a connection. I don’t know if that is because they are congested, broken, or that feature is switched off. I only have one near me but you can find them every block in some parts of Manhattan.
- Nextgrid 6y agoI wonder if they ban MAC addresses that spend too much time on the same kiosk for exactly this reason, to prevent people (who don't know how to work around it) from using it as their primary internet connection. The purpose behind these is obviously advertising and I'm assuming that the most valuable data they are after is physical movement data and that it is valuable enough to subsidize the costs of running the system. However, if you don't provide them this data (by only using the service from a single fixed location) then they have nothing to gain from serving you.