Virgin Media to make your WiFi hub public access

rockin_plumber

If it has they have been very quiet about it

Moneymaker

Some routers have a power setting that reduces the range. Is this the case with those used by Virgin?
It's also possible to shield the signal so that most of it doesn't reach the road.

Nilrem

Moneymaker wrote: »

Some routers have a power setting that reduces the range. Is this the case with those used by Virgin?
It's also possible to shield the signal so that most of it doesn't reach the road.

VM's routers are unlikely to have an adjustable power output, it tends to be either on the higher end/enthusiast models, or models running specific firmware (the open router firmwares such as Sveesoft add the option to a lot of models it runs on).

General purpose ISP supplied routers rarely do by default because the more options there are, the more things there are to troubleshoot when someone says "my wifi isn't working".

You could possibly put some tinfoil on the side of the router facing the street, which would act as a partial shield and limit how much of the signal could reach the street (by basically blocking the most direct route), but you'd probably need to have a larger metal object a short distance away between the router and street for any really effective use.

But it's not really going to be an issue, as most people won't sit outside for long to do anything, and more importantly all such wifi connections will be being logged by VM, probably with the Routers "Public" access having a completely separate IP to your normal one (the VM modems have multiple tuners so it would probably be very simple for them to basically allocate one of them for the public wifi and issue it a separate IP), and more importantly the devices people use to connect will be registered with VM using their log ins.
So you'd have to be really stupid to do anything dodgy using one of the public access points under the scheme.

Far more people are/were probably more at risk from the default setups on their store bought routers connected to VM modems.