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Comment by moron4hire | Hacker News Reader

So this works because you have neighbors who are also on Comcast and you can leach bandwidth from them?

The article is talking about also using the additional WiFi hotspot that every Comcast modem they provide you with has (not leaching from a neighbor). http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/12/comcast-sued-by-c...

But that hotspot goes through the same line that neighbors are connected with, no? Or Comcast doesn't count the hotspot traffic towards the plan bandwidth?

It counts it towards your data cap (if you are subject to it), but not to the bandwidth available under your plan.

That's weird. Since it defeats the purpose of expanding their WiFi hotspots coverage. If people have capped plans, they are likely to disable that hotspot altogether and use their own routers to begin with, to avoid anyone switching it back on. If they wanted such thing to work, it had to be excluded from both monthly data caps and active bandwidth limit.

That's besides the point that monthly caps is a completely nasty rip off. Luckily I never had one. Are they common in Comcast network?

> That's weird. Since it defeats the purpose of expanding their WiFi hotspots coverage. If people have capped plans, they are likely to disable that hotspot altogether and use their own routers to begin with, to avoid anyone switching it back on. If they wanted such thing to work, it had to be excluded from both monthly data caps and active bandwidth limit.

I think what he's trying to say is that as an individual using the xfinitywifi network the traffic counts towards your data cap. As the person hosting the access point, other people using it does not count towards your cap.

> As the person hosting the access point, other people using it does not count towards your cap.

Ah, that makes more sense.

It doesn't count toward your bandwidth either. The neighborhood line has much more bandwidth that is allocated to each individual house. So they just allocate double bandwidth to house, and you get 1 of it, and the wifi gets the other.

Data cap? For Home Internet? In 2015? =/

It sounds crazy, but apparently some places have it. In Australia it's even more common.

That's the worst. I have more than enough bandwidth for Netflix, but I frequently hot my data cap.

I don't think there is such a thing as a comcast account without a data cap.

For well over a year, my Comcast account has had this note:

Note: Enforcement of the 250GB data consumption threshold is currently suspended.

(427GB so far this month...)

I pay for a business account (but I work from home). No caps, no torrent or other throttling, no port blocking (back in the days when I ran my own mail server), optional static IPs. But you definitely pay for it.

I might gave to go that route. Thanks for reminding me.

In my area, there are wireless access points mounted on some telephone poles which provide WiFi hotspots for anyone with credentials from a major local ISP.

Apart from that, my understanding is that Comcast routers broadcast your network and also broadcast this comcast hotspot network, and they are metered (and presumably capped) independently. So with this hack you would use only your equipment, you're just taking advantage of both networks that are being broadcast by your router.

> So with this hack you would use only your equipment, you're just taking advantage of both networks that are being broadcast by your router.

Check the article again. The author is connecting his router to his neighbor's hotspot.

It may be that connections though xfinitywifi don't count against the neighbors allocated bandwidth and won't degrade their service since their router and connection support more than their allocated bandwidth. Can anyone confirm if this is the case?

It works because he has access to two separate networks and can load balance between the two. His neighbors could be using any ISP. So long as his router can also connect to their network, he can load balance between their wireless network and his wired network. If his router had three radios, he could load balance between to upstream wireless networks and his own downstream network.

My point was, in this setup, if his neighbor was not a Comcast customer, then he would not have any legitimate authorization to connect to the xfinitywifi network through his neighbor's router.

I don't have a lot of confidence in Comcast to have set it up so that connections to the xfinitywifi network do not impact the regular, private usage. It's just not in that company's style to think proactively and conscientiously about its customers.

I believe this only increases apparent bandwidth for applications which may open multiple connections at the same time, like web browsing and BitTorrent.

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