On Tue, 15 Sep 2015, Per Jessen wrote:
Xen wrote:
Personally I don't like it because I never was the one who decided that I'd share my wifi and these routers downloading updates from centralized servers is a security risk.
I think the two SSIDs basically take of any concerns wrt privacy and sharing. I could imagine some issue wrt load balancing and abuse, but even elderly Zyxel routers had some basic traffic control. I imagine modern boxes to be more sophisticated.
Yes the 'pubic' SSID will simply have access to the (internal) gateway but not to the LAN. I have my Fonera configured this way as well, I had it configured as a public/private SSID provider. The private SSID then had access to the local LAN (bridged with eth0) and the public SSID had its own public interface that was only routed past the main router in the home, but which could not even access it. It's just that I consider it a .... When "community" is no longer the result of "having each other's back" but of some rational, clinical, economic trade... then your "community" falls apart when the rational overlords (the ISP) decide it is no longer in their interests, or whatever. It's just that you are not in control about your life. In the past this wasn't so much of a problem because "they" didn't try to control so much of it. Much of life was free for people to "fill in" on their own, as they pleased. And as a result much was in the hands of the people (even if religion dictated a lot). The thing is that as soon as you let some external party supply a feature of your life to you that should be your own thing, but which you now have no say about at all, you will be less inclined to create your own. This is true of government welfare and government health services and all of that as well. The government's role has grown each and every year and it is still growing. But there is a thing called "the customer decides". Or in Dutch "wie betaalt, bepaalt". (Who pays, decides). And because of this government is getting to have a total say in how these services are offered and within what constraints and under what conditions. Because IT is an area in which complex, hierarchical systems can be introduced in the 'wrong' way, it is an area that lends itself to 'supplying' you your needs to you (or their supposed fulfillment) in a way that leaves you completely powerless and dependent. Instead of spending the time to create your own systems, you would just use what is offered and never become more independent for it. In fact, you might lose things that were previously within your control. Linux and 'free software' is, in fact, at least in principle and in theory, an attempt to "stay in control" about the systems you use. Take Adobe Photoshop and other programs. Software as rental. Microsoft wants to go there too. The software is never in your control because you need to keep dishing out cash to keep using it. In the past, at least, when you had purchased something, you had access to it pretty much forever. That makes Photoshop skills these days a less safe, less dependable, less trustworthy investment for a person to make, and shifts the balance towards open source tools. With open source, the promise and guarantee is pretty much (at least in principle) that the software is never going to go away if you don't want it to. Of course if you are a professional and you believe you will always have that €12 or €60 each month to "buy" the "suite" perhaps it is all irrelevant. Or there are alternatives like Corel Draw and Pain Shop Pro. I hestitate to fall in line with systems that promise heaven but at the cost of your own independence. Even if you had a system where you actually shared wifi or internet access with 10 real persons, you would own more than if you had free (supposedly) access to a 100.000 households. I just don't care to have it. If you really sat in a friend's home, it would be worth more to ask him/her for wifi than to surreptitiously "use" the wifi without asking because you happen to have a login for the shared part... I think it breaks away community and friendship. Anyway, that's just my thought.
In the end it was a nice idea but if it's not even opt-in I don't want it.
I think it is strictly opt-in in Switzerland, but as I am not a Cablecom customer, I don't know for certain.
They would never do that here because they want to deploy it to basically everyone. They will just assume everyone is happy with it and you can turn it off. But most people won't know or won't have any conscious thought about it and will just leave it on. ;-).