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Frightening level of stupidity in that article ("Exact details of the setup aren’t yet known" says the writer, so then go on to pull numerous scaremongering sce
by jamesbrownuhh 12y ago
Frightening level of stupidity in that article ("Exact details of the setup aren’t yet known" says the writer, so then go on to pull numerous scaremongering scenarios out of a hat) and especially stupid stupidity in the comments too.
Why is this so hard to understand? Router broadcasts a second SSID. Router ensures that connections to that SSID are completely isolated from your own network, never touch your IP address or internal devices, and are tunnelled back to base over a separate channel VPN.
In scenarios where you are maxing out your net connection and someone else is using the guest wifi too, your traffic always takes priority. That's a rule right there - the kind of thing that routers are kind of good at.
It also means that you have access to free wifi when you're out and about, as you can use your Comcast ID to use this same wireless in other locations.
As has been pointed out several times, many ISPs around the world do this. It's simple and convenient and not remotely worthy of the scaremongering and technical ignorance being displayed.
- alexkus 12y agoIndeed. The biggest weakness is that users aren't well trained in ensuring that the page they're typing their username/password into (to access one of the public access points) may not be genuine. I know I've seen some faked BT Openzone login pages in the UK, luckily the BT Wifi App is clever enough only to attempt to login to the real webpage.
- kngspook 12y agoYeah...until someone on the guest wifi owns the router. I'm not saying it is, or isn't, likely -- I don't know much about Comcast's Arris Touchstone Telephony Wireless Gateway Modems, but it is a risk. Then again, so is someone hacking your wifi network...
- oz 12y agoYou mean the same someone who would have had to access the router using their Comcast credentials?
- skj 12y agoYes, I am totally confident in Comcast's ability to properly ensure the security of their system, and don't think someone who connects to the guest SSID would ever be able to root it.
- throwawayaway 12y agoGiven that ISP supplied routers usually come with crap wifi ability - does broadcasting a second SSID reduce the other signal even if nobody is using it? I wonder if routers could be exploited via this second SSID and access gained to peoples home/office networks.
- jsz0 12y agoBroadcasting the secondary SSID by itself has no significant impact but there is a wireless performance penalty to having lots of nearby devices connecting (by default) to open networks especially on single radio/band devices. If I lived in an apartment building or near a public space like a coffee shop / etc I would opt-out. On the security front I don't think it's much of a concern. These community wifi services have been widely deployed to millions of devices around the world and enterprise wireless APs have offered similar features for many years. There's always some risk but nothing extraordinary.
- borplk 12y agoDoes this open the door for people to capture their outgoing traffic which will include the traffic of people who are using their router? If you use the ComcastID and connect to someone else's router your non-encrypted traffic is up for grabs?
- ricardobeat 12y agoYour unencrypted traffic is always up for grabs.
- eli 12y agoNo it is a separate network
- borplk 12y agoBut the traffic is going out of your cables at some point no? Is it not possible to capture that even if it's on a different network?
- gizmo686 12y agoIt is certainly possible, but it is far easier to just join the second network and run a packet sniffer. You could also sniff in monitor mode to see traffic on all networks in range, but driver support for that can be annoying.
- eli 12y agoAlso, uh exact details are known. They've been test marketing this in DC for almost a year. I've used it. It seems to work fine and is just as you describe. I actually think it's a pretty cool idea - tons more hotspots throughout the city. If you really don't like it, you can opt out.
- Havoc 12y ago>your traffic always takes priority Does it really though? QoS on consumer grade network devices is thoroughly useless / ineffective in my experience.