Sharing Broadband connection with Lodgers

Markee

I own my own propoerty and am thinking of taking in a lodger.

I am aware there is a whole subject of legalities etc with this, but I was wondering if I should offer a lodger use of my wireless broadband connection?

As most ISPs have fair use policies and download limits, has anyone any experience or suggestions of how my interests can be protected should a lodger do something dodgy with my broadband connection?

Apologies if this has already been asked, but don't think it has as I couldn't find anything.

Cheers

Mark

pepsi_max2k

>> has anyone any experience or suggestions of how my interests can be
>> protected should a lodger do something dodgy with my broadband
>> connection?

presumably, if you let them on your own connection, the only protection you'd have would be saying "they did it -->" and hoping they either own up, or logs on their computer can verify this.

the only other way i can think of doing it is setting up a hotspot managed by a different company. something like fon.com will allow you to set one up. the advantage of this is anyone logging on to the hotspot side of the connection (you can set up free access, though it wouldn't have any encryption) has to go through what's called a radius server owned and operated by fon, which then logs all traffic made by that person, so technically you'd be able to differenciate between your traffic and theirs, though whether whoever owned the logs would cooperate if you needed them to is another matter.

you could always figure out a way to make your own logs, but would probably involve learning something about servers or some good routing equipment.

the easiest thing to do would just be to set up a firewall within a router to at least segregate the lodgers connection from your own (either wired or wireless, in which case try to set up a dual wifi signal/ssid's). you could also limit the bandwidth and speed they got, but it wouldn't do much for dodgy downloading as everything would be logged online as coming from the one connection, so you'd be back to the "they did it -->" stuff.

you could always just trust them though?

Badger_Lady

Hmmm.... I haven't really worried about any of this, TBH, but perhaps I should...

I had to "lodge" temporarily and the LL gave me unrestricted access to his broadband - equally now that I'm in my own house I'll be taking a lodger and offering access.

Interested to hear some responses...

Conor_3

I'd buy a damned good router with a built in highly configurable firewall. You want one like a Netgear DG834.

What you can then do is assign him a fixed IP address and then set up firewall rules for that address to block everything except web browsing, mail, news, and instant messaging. I'd certainly be blocking all the filesharing range of ports as well as blocking the ports for File and Printer Sharing and NetBIOS for his IP address on the LAN as well so that way, he can't get into your computers.