> [...] Does anyone reading this group
> know any reasons why it would be unwise to set up an open wireless
> system? If there are potential dangers, are there cures?
My father has an open wireless connection at his house. He's out in the
country, in a house surrounded by trees, and his is the only SSID a
person can reach in his house (and it doesn't cover his whole house). In
fact, he's far enough in the country that only one cell phone network
reliably covers his area. He gets a lot of company at his place, though,
and it makes more sense for him to just leave the network open. His
driveway is also long enough that you can't pick up the network from the
street.
I, on the other hand, live in a rented condo. I've seen a dozen SSIDs
show up. My primary concern is with people soaking up my bandwidth. I
don't care what they're downloading, be it warez or porn or infringing
upon copyright of music or video. Really, I don't even care if they're
just downloading ISOs of Linux and software from SourceForge. It is my
bandwidth, and I have enough ways of using it on my own.
I can be a bandwidth hog. My wife can be a bandwidth hog. My inlaws next
door (who have access to our WiFi network) can be bandwidth hogs. I
don't need random bandwidth hogs on my network.
If you ever plan to actually *need* bandwidth to do work, then you need
to be aware that when you need the bandwidth may conflict with when your
neighbor needs to watch that movie from Netflix. There's nothing like
other people streaming media to soak up your bandwidth.
Cheers,
--
Steven Black <blacks@indiana.edu> / KeyID: 8596FA8E
Fingerprint: 108C 089C EFA4 832C BF07 78C2 DE71 5433 8596 FA8E
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