[Chester LUG] WiFi Terror

[Les Pritchard]

Hi Bryn,

You say you've not noticed anyone connecting - would you be able to see
through the router? I always assumed that the FON vlan would be completely
hidden from the 'owner' of the router.

On 13 July 2011 22:22, Bryn Salisbury <bryn.salisbury at gmail.com> wrote:

> My experience with BTOpenzone and FON services is not overly positive. Any
> time I've tried to connect to such services, they dropped out or were so
> painfully slow that they were unusable.  When it comes to FON, it largely
> relies on deployment of home broadband systems in order to create something
> resembling a municipal wifi system, except that most of these routers are
> placed inside homes and have such poor ranges that they're just slightly to
> the left of useless.
>
> Additionally, BT routers are being shipped now with FON enabled by default
> (you get the 'option' to disable it when you take out the contract, but I
> doubt most normal people even know or understand the significance of the
> option). Having seen and used several of these devices, I can't say I've
> even noticed anyone actually connecting via FON, or Openzone to routers
> under my control.
>
> Saying that people who go with ISP provided routers get what they deserve
> is a bit harsh, a lot of people don't know why such devices aren't up to the
> job, and end up going for these options because they're far easier to set
> up. It's up to folks like us to design these devices (hardware and software)
> in such a way that it's a trivial matter to set them up, a single screen or
> a few button presses.
>
> On a related note, I'm probably going to switch to AAISP in the next few
> months, as their routers are hand made, and seem to be rock solid.
>
> B
>
>
> On 13 Jul 2011, at 22:12, Sebastian Arcus wrote:
>
> >
> >
> > On 13/07/11 20:37, Les Pritchard wrote:
> >> Oh don't get me wrong, I will always move people (normally willingly
> >> once I've explained the dangers!) to WPA2. I had one person tell me
> >> someone had complained that their Windows 98 system wouldn't connect.
> >> Think we know the answer to that one!
> >>
> >> As for BT....yes what can we say! I've not done any testing of a BT
> >> connection, would someone using BT Fon take bandwidth from the owner of
> >> the connection? Or do they reserve a permanent percentage for them at
> >> all times? In that case you're not getting the full potential from your
> >> connection.
> >
> > Yes - I agree. Either temporarely, or permanently - it is using what
> should be my bandwidth and my connection. It's not like BT are giving some
> sort of discount on their connections because they are borrowing said
> bandwidth/connection share from their customers. Quite the opposite, really,
> if you are to compare their prices with the competition. And the free wifi
> comes under BTOpenZone, BTFon and one more branding which is not coming to
> me right now.
> >
> > I take deep satisfaction in replacing the BT branded routers with off the
> shelf ones (when they break or there is any other compelling reason) and
> always imagine there is a little guy deep down in the BT corporate belly
> jumping up and down furiously and frantically shaking fists in the air
> because they lost one more of their routers. Well, at least it's the sort of
> stuff that makes me feel better :D
> >
> > Sebastian
> >
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>
> --
> Bryn Salisbury
> http://about.me/bryns/bio
>
>
>
>
>
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