“Apple co-founder Steve Jobs loved to walk around his neighborhood in Palo Alto, California. And after his pride and joy, the iPhone, was born, he naturally took it along with him on walks,” Walt Mossbrg writes for Re/code. “The first iPhone had a lousy, sluggish, cellular-data network, but it also had a much faster data option: Wi-Fi. It even had a feature (still present, but much less touted) that popped up a list of nearby Wi-Fi networks on the screen, so you could always find one in range.”
“But, he once told me, there was a big problem with that technique, one that he wanted to fix: Most of the Wi-Fi networks that popped up on his screen couldn’t be used, because they were secured with passwords,” Mossberg writes. “Jobs said he understood the need for security, but he was determined to figure out a way to make free, safe, Wi-Fi sharing from homes and small local businesses not only possible, but common. He even told me that he planned to get other companies involved, in a sort of consortium, to make this happen.”
“No such big public consortium for home Wi-Fi sharing ever emerged. But Apple and other wireless router makers did wind up building a guest network option into their products. (I have no idea whether this stemmed from Steve Jobs’s idea or whether it was just a logical move),” Mossberg writes. “There’s got to be a way to make it happen, so people needn’t rely on expensive cellular-data plans all the time, so cellular networks can be less congested, and so people can remain connected when there just isn’t decent cellular reception — even good enough for portable Wi-Fi hotspots.”
Much more in the full article – recommended – here.
Doing this on my Airport Base Stations as I type. I just need a name…
Tron Net? The Grid? Yes, Have Some (Ghostbusters Ref)
🙂
Mine is entitled ObamaSucksNet.
Mine is “BorderPatrol ComeOnIn”
heh.
BWAHAHAHAHAHA! That IS a good one. Whoooo! You’ve sure got some wit there.
thanks, but it sure cannot even begin to compare with the fabulous creativity that went into “Strooby Doo.”
I’d use “NSA Trailer 58, Guest.”
I’m all for it. This is what the internet is supposed to be all about. Power to the people!
Comcast does this with their home users’ routers. They have no choice in it. It creates an xfinity wifi network and you have to log in with your comcast credentials.
One of the reasons I never let my provider supply my Wi-Fi. “No, thank you, just give me the pipe to the wall. I’ll take it from here!”
“One of the reasons I never let my provider supply my Wi-Fi.”
It’s actually part of the modem. It’s opt-in in some areas and opt-out in others, but you’re entirely able to provide guest access via the modem (which has WiFi), while taking the “pipe” out from the modem and connecting it to your own router.
In one of my houses, that’s exactly what I do, while in another, I have guest access turned off. In the one house with it on, there are plenty of people who would use it, while the other house is too remote for others to use it and I don’t want to deal with needless frequency use. But in both cases, I’m using my own router.
If I remember correctly, Comcast gave me the option of a modem with wireless or without, and I chose without, and use my Time Capsule. At work I have DSL and just went in and turned off the Wi-Fi functionality on AT&T’s modem, and use an Airport Extreme. (I have guest Wi-Fi networks set up on both.) All Apple, all the time, baby!
Yeah, but eventually they’ll make it part of the terms of service and you won’t have choice in the matter.
Not just home users. Businesses that use COMCAST and COMCAST’s provided routers with WiFi also provide an Xfinity WiFi service. Anyone with a COMCAST Xfinity account can log in through these systems, business or home.
Actually you can have the modem provisioned as a bridge and use your own router. I have Comcast business in my home and all their modem does is connect me to the network. My router provides everything else.
“They have no choice in it”
Yes, they do. It’s opt-in in some areas and opt-out in others.
Shaw in Canada has been building out a Wi-Fi network that all of their customers can use anywhere there is a signal. But I honestly thought things would lean in the opposite direction… vastly improved cellular networks (and they have with LTE). This network needs to be made universal and more accessible. It’s fast and widely available, unlike smaller Wi-Fi zones.
Socialist!!!!
Altruist.
I recently was on a three week trip, staying at various hotels. I also visited many Starbucks. In most of those places my iPad ran faster on cellular than those public WiFi. I read news, kept up with weather, my stocks, my bank, used it for navigation for 21 days. Used just under 3 gigs, for $30.
Never had to log in with passwords, most places had LTE. Probably more secure as well. Perhaps the next generation of WiFi will be great, but most available free stuff sucks.
This has been available for years in Western Europe. You pay for internet access and you get a small discount if you allow for free access for your ISPs client to login. Easy. It’s been done and successfully. Apple doing it would be wonderful because of scale.
This already exists in Europe with FON, the local telco’s implementation is much better than FON’s products which tend to be half baked. https://corp.fon.com/en
Just returned from 3 weeks in Italy. Had free wi-fi just about everywhere I went, and in the hotels, also.
Open, shared Wi-Fi may have been a good idea in the more innocent days of the growing Internet. Now we have to consider these two factors that were not common several years ago:
— ISPs are starting to throttle or otherwise limit connection speeds. I do not wish to subsidise a neighbor who cannot discipline himself pay for the connectivity he uses.
— The government is apt to kick down my door and cart off my equipment if my guest network is used, unknown to me, for downloading kiddie porn.
My Wi-Fi stays locked down and hidden. My security doesn’t have to be perfect, it just has to be better than nearby installations.
This exactly.
If a “guest” breaks the law.. Comcast/law enforcement does not care, it was on your service.
Read up on DMCA lawsuits, owner of the service gets hurt.. The leecher rarely gets caught.
Linksys/Cisco has had the guest network feature for a long time, as have others.
However, the idea of having home wireless routers providing free/open WiFi is a bad idea in the U.S. (and elsewhere) as far as the consumer is concerned.
There are several issues:
1) The home account owner can be seriously affected by misuse of the network. If a guest is engaged in piracy, the ISP can still terminate the account. While the courts are ruling an IP address != person, it doesn’t matter as far as the ISP is concerned with your account.
2) If a guest engages in criminal activity on your network, you can find yourself having to explain that you have no terrorist plans or child porn in your house to a bunch of heavily armed people coming into your home.
3) If the network is open and without a password, then there are security issues for the user of the network as data isn’t necessarily being encrypted.
4) Without QoS configuring, a guest could easily drown out your available bandwidth.
5) If you have any data cap, you could easily go over that amount if you had neighbors just going at it on your network.
There is a better way:
Comcast, and others, are enabling shared networking on their modems (in some areas it’s opt-in; in others opt-out). This requires someone to have an account and be logged in. The data comes from a different IP than that of the home owner and doesn’t impact data caps. It’s auto-QoS, so the home owner will always get their maximum allowed/available bandwidth.
There are still some downsides, such as frequency pollution in areas with crowded WiFi channels, but most of the other problems go away.
Of course the other downside to this approach is that you have to have a Comcast account to log into a guest network. However, if more people did this, and more ISPs did this, then while one house may be Comcast, the next may be Verizon, and it wouldn’t be so much of an issue. Likewise, it would be possible to have a 3rd party allow universal access perhaps even having that 3rd party be a pooled company owned by share of ISPs.
I won’t open my wifi because I don’t want to be sued or arrested when my neighbor does something illegal using my connection. How could that be prevented if you’re going to let strangers access the internet through an account you’re paying for?
Until I am no longer legally responsible for activity that occurs on my shared internet connection, mine will remain locked down, thank you very much.
Open guest network on the Airport Extreme at my abode and that mother carries a fair distance.
As to unwanted third parties, you can hide the open network without password protecting it.
I believe Comcast is doing free WiFi hotspots through customers routers they (Comcast) supply. Its separate from the customers secure connection but its designed to allow internet access in more places. I am OK with it as long as the bandwidth and cap I would be responsible for is kept separate. When I have people over I use the guest mode as a easy way for them to connect. Without fear of their devices accessing my local devices.