BeWifi lets you steal your neighbor’s bandwidth when they’re not using it | Hacker News Reader

BeWifi lets you steal your neighbor’s bandwidth when they’re not using it

arstechnica.com

93 pointsa_olt47 comments

> What if, when you were up at a ridiculous hour Skyping your relatives in Australia, you could borrow unused bandwidth from your sleeping neighbors to make your own broadband connection faster and stronger?

Maybe this makes sense if you're lucky enough to have FiOS (which gives you a dedicated line). For me (a Time Warner customer), this is already the case. Except, it's not "borrowing" so much as it is "stealing".

Technically, I should have 2.5MB/s down (20Mb/s is what I pay for), but in reality, I'm often lucky to get 1MB/s, because my neighbors are using the Internet and watching Netflix, etc. And I have never observed more than 2.5MB/s, so it doesn't average out.

Theoretically, this should already be illegal, but it's still very common in practice.

For this inconsistent connection (and no other services!), I am forced to pay over $50/month.

Edit: Updated - I pay for 20Mb/s, not 15Mb/s.

15Mb/s=1.875MB/s.

Get one of samknows boxes[1] to measure your broadband. It is like a bandwidth test but mainly measures when you are not using your home network, i.e., it senses for traffic before making measurements. You'll be able to see a historic graph of the available bandwidth, average RTT (to some popular sites) and losses (if any), DNS response times, etc.

They run some of the above tests once every hour. The good thing with this initiative is it attempts to build an IETF standard [2] that can be incorporated by all ISPs to make sure that their deployed network is performant.

[1] http://www.samknows.com/broadband/ [2] https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/lmap/

FiOS doesn't give you a dedicated line. FiOS uses one wavelength to transmit downstream traffic. All subscribers on a segment (up to 32 or 64) receive all downstream traffic. Your ONU discards the traffic not intended for you. The headend limits the amount of traffic destined for your ONU according to your rate plan. All subscribers on a segment share another wavelength for sending traffic. TDMA is used on the upstream. The number of slots assigned to your ONU varies depending upon your rate plan. Also dynamic bandwidth allocation can be used to adjust the number of slots assigned to an ONU based upon the traffic being sent by the ONU.

FiOS uses dynamic bandwidth allocation to enable oversubscription on a segment; therefore, FiOS spends can be impacted by the usage of your neighbors just as cable can be.

Realistically, 2.488 Gbps shared by 32-64 customers is pretty damn good; it's a bare minimum of 38 Mbps/customer. That's like having your own DOCSIS 1.0 channel.

Your neighbors aren't stealing from you, your ISP over allocated your trunk.

I have no idea what my entire connection is supposed to be, but my cable connection here in Aus pulls down 75Mb/s at peak times. I pay $90/m for that and home phone. The more I research what everyone else has, the more I realise how lucky I am to live where I do :/

Telefonica is also an isp. Or more exactly it is the isp in Spain: it owns the wires and has overwhelming dominance in the market.

So (@dangrossman) the legal issue is averted: both costumers are in the same isp which, to them, works like a black box. So the article's use of the word "steal" is quite nonsensical.

Also remarkable is the advanced anticipation of demand. For example, Netflix is not even available in Spain and bandwidth demand is currently low compared to say the US. My guess is that it is not to facilitate video over the internet etc. but that it is a cheap way to undercut competition from Vodfone and Orange (other Spanish providers). Bandwidth sharing might mean more consistent high bandwidth for those who need it.

Actually the potential issue is inverted: you may not be able not opt out of the system.

The other potential issue is Telefonica itself. Historically it has been as appalling company to customers. It is possible this is changing but there certainly used to be a long track record of awfulness. Indeed it is my utter shock that Telefonica of all companies on earth would manage to do something of this sort that is compelling me to ramble on like this.

If Telefonica is changing, kudos!

My neighbor is already using my WiFi, he was paying $10 to AOL(yes there are still ppl using AOL) for dial-up so i gave him WiFi for free :).

That's very kind of you. Our neighbor has an open WiFi that my family uses when our WiFi is misbehaving. I wish I could give something back, but I don't even know which neighbor it is.

Well he's a bit older and struggling with money as it is, i actually got him a directional antenna and installed a omnidirectional one in my house for him to get a good reception.. Hes mostly playing on-line games and checking his email and the stock market.

Some time ago I made a second SSID on my wireless router and gave it this standard name: https://openwireless.org/

Unfortunately, I've never noticed anyone using it. Anecdotally, however, take this as one data point that I've never had a problem with bandwidth hogs.

It sure comes in handy when guests come over---there's no password to explain.

I wish more people would do what you did.

Using the example in the article, how is it technically possible for me to Skype with someone, while dividing the stream between two IP addresses (of the two different routers)?

I mean, Skype's going to be sending my conversational partner's audio to a single IP address that represents me, no? How could that be divided among multiple people's bandwidth, technically speaking?

It probably doesn't. It can still take advantage of the pooling by, for example, routing your Skype call through your neighbor's connection because yours is already busy streaming Netflix in another room.

My concern would be my neighbor downloading movie torrents on my connection while I'm asleep. We'd need a really strong legal precedent that the person paying for the connection isn't responsible for what others do on it before this kind of thing could catch on in most countries.

Shouldn't this (in a better world), be the opposite however? We'd need a really strong legal precedent that the person paying for the connection IS responsible for what others do on it

Should cafes be bankrupted because a customer downloaded some music on the store's wifi hotspot? If you lend someone a hammer and they use it to smash someone else's window, you're not liable for that so long as you didn't know that's what they were borrowing the hammer to do. I think, generally, you should never be in a situation where you're liable for crimes someone else committed without your knowledge and assistance.

If it's done by routing, then potentially, the final IP address would still be that of your torrent downloading neighbor.

But, the devil's in the details.

No, you typically get one publicly routed IP address from your ISP. The local IP address that initiated the connection is not visible to the internet from behind NAT.

But it could be conceivable that your public IP is being routed through some one else's public IP/mesh router. I'm not sure how the actual packet flow in this case works, and with a mesh it's unclear how the packets get back to the original router. Everyone can't just be connection g to the same wireless ssid or you wouldn't be able to avoid local faults. So, the mesh would likely be able to distinguish which packets came from which subscriber.

Again though, without knowing more about the protocol/mesh they are using, it would be impossible to know.

Not really. Consumer ISPs hand out specific IPs to their clients and will only route traffic for those clients. If they'd start accepting arbitrary internet traffic from you you could simply start your own ISP ...

So the mesh stuff has to happen behind NAT, on local IPs.

This isn't your typical consumer ISP. Since they control the hardware, they could setup the mesh in some interesting ways. I'm not suggesting that they would accept arbitrary internet traffic, but you could see the routers accepting traffic from other peers in the mesh.

P2P is not illegal in Spain, so feel free to download torrents in their spare bandwidth ;)

The article is very light on technical details, and tries to imply some advanced things with the whole "mesh network" terminology.

In almost every product like this I've seen, it's not load-sharing a single session (like a Skype call) across multiple Internet connections, but instead sharing/routing particular sessions to particular networks.

Skype for instance is relatively low-bandwidth, but latency sensitive. Downloads are high bandwidth, and less concerned with latency (within reason). The router can make decisions, most likely based on the protocols and/or ports of the session, and route each session to the most appropriate outbound Internet connection.

You can aggregate multiple pipes into one larger "bonded" connection, but this would generally require equipment on both ends of that connection. Technically, feasible, but most likely not in this case.

They could also use the mesh network to route some packets, or segments (eg: bunch of packets in a row) to the best outbound pipe, which would be selected based some continuous ping tests (in essence). You could probably make that happen with transparency to the end user, even in Skype.

In the end, from the very limited info, this sounds like the next rev of basic multi-homed "load sharing" routers that have been around forever, just with a new twist.

Yeah. Free mesh networks like Mt View Google WiFi perform badly because they're constantly reforwarding to a tiny, low-bandwidth pipe. It's tragedy of the commons also, it only takes one jerk on a poorly QoSed network to hog up all the donated bandwidth.

If you assume that datacenter bandwidth is cheap and the last mile is expensive, then this problem can be trivially solved by tunneling all of your traffic through an IP address hosted at a nearby datacenter.

Unfortunately it's difficult to achieve this sort of innovation on a large scale, because we don't have enough IPv4 addresses, and everyone's dragging their feet on the IPv6 upgrade.

Maybe a stupid question but - are there regulations ISPs might use against this? I know it's illegal in most places to resell your bandwidth to neighbors and I wouldn't put it past them to equate giving away with selling.

I also wonder if HBO and other channels might get overzealous and shut people down for the p2p nature of it.

But all that said, this is the obvious future of the web until we have a true, free, ad hoc/distributed network and on some level I can't believe it took this long to get the ball rolling..

Is it actually illegal to resell? I was under the impression that it was just a contractual agreement with the provider not to resell.

Sounds like a slight twist on Fon[0] The problem for things like this is it is only really useful if it is ubiquitous in your area hopefully they have a plan to kickstart adoption otherwise who cares.

[0] https://corp.fon.com/en

In Spain is customary for ISPs to provide routers to their customers. They'll just have to install their custom firmware (which I think they do already) and get the customer to opt-in (or not opt-out, given recent trends). It's easier to take your customers to opt-in if you're a huge company like Telefónica.

MPTCP and MPRTP to the rescue... these also have inbuilt algorithms to pick the best interface.

http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-singh-avtcore-mprtp (for skype and multimedia)

https://tools.ietf.org/wg/mptcp/ (for everything else, even Siri)

It was interesting to see everyone rage about how amazing Apple was to be leveraging MPTCP in the latest version of iOS. However most don't realize the implications and risks that these types of things bring to generalized use cases and operational models of networking and paid for data buckets.

Regardless it looks like these guys are just taking the Commotion firmware and re-branding it as a service. It also doesn't solve the local node problem. Most people don't understand how cable (HFC), fiber and copper (DSL) are built out to the neighborhood or 'node'. It's all oversubscribed and shared. So this type of solution really does nothing for the local congestion in a node. To me, this is a pure marketing gimmick.

At the networking stack level, it depends on how one implements congestion control. AFAIR, in the case of Apple/MPTCP: they were sending the same packet on both the interfaces and hoping for the best delay (a really bad idea) unless you are in a managed network else you are just creating unnecessary congestion.

OTOH, if the last mile is oversubscribed, there is very little one can do.

BT already do this in the UK with their infinity routers, they run a separate public channel (BTWiFi), I've got one in my flat right now.

Anyone can connect to it for free if you're a BT customer elsewhere or you can pay. It doesn't effect my bandwidth as most plans are unlimited anyway.

Now I understand why Telefónica forced me to have WEP 128 that was automatically generated from the SSID. After I asked them to set up my own password (the router was password protected) they suggested I tell them what password I wanted over the phone. I switched ISP two weeks ago.

This reminds me of Radiuz, but the problem was that it was a double-ended userbase that needed far more press and capital to survive.

http://wifinetnews.com/archives/2004/06/radiuz_combines_wpa-...

Perhaps this solves the problem of not having to deliver as much aggregate bandwidth as isolated pipes on a per carrier basis, but cross carriers may or may not go for it, like "roaming."

In an ideal world of BeWifi everyone will be a member and the internet will be shared between all the members. Does this mean if we all downgraded our connections to the basic offering of our choice ISP we could still get a decent connection and in return force ISPs to lower their prices for higher connections? Seems like a never ending cycle.

Liked it. Very intelligent way to utilize the spare bandwidth. One thing everyone forgets is that we are actually paying for the full-month bandwidth from Cable companies so they shouldn't worry if I use it 24 x 7 x 30 OR my neighbor. As long as there is mechanism to give priority to the owner when he demands the full bandwidth.

I thought this was very cool and would be happy to "lend" my neighbor my unused bandwidth but then I thought what if my neighbor is skyping with a cousin in Australia or wherever and this cousin orders his pizza from the same pizzeria where a al-qaeda guys orders his pizza and lo behold I get put on a no-fly list .

Well it sounds like "the terrorists" have won the war in your mind. Fearing the state you turn your back on your neighbor.

...So my neighbor decides to download a torrent and all of a sudden I am hit with a lawsuit? Unless this issue can be solved, no thanks.

So, I could download pedophile pictures with my neighbor's wifi bandwidth?

There's no way ISPs in the US will allow this.

It would be hard for them to prevent it, to them it would look like it's just another computer on the wifi.

Well, there is Comcast's program to deploy dual-WiFi APs. One side for the subscriber, one side for Comcast to use as it sees fit (public hotspot being a declared use):

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/06/comcas...

so Comcast is going to be paying me for the use of my facilities to host its plant cool - just like if i have a telegraph pole on my land I get rent.

It doesn't hurt to dream. Normally ;) BTW, this type of thing might be or become more widespread than I initially thought: http://www.cablewifi.com/

This looks awesome

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