A couple of months ago my Buffalo WiFi AP died. I took the PCMCIA WiFi card out from the Lady’s laptop and put it into the AP. Then I sticked a Buffalo USB WiFi client to the laptop, and reinstalled the hardware driver.
We were able to connect to the Internet from the laptop, but couldn’t see our home network. The connection speed was only around 2M. It seemed a bit odd, but I didn’t give it too much thought. No complaints from the Lady as she could get to her email and the Internet and she was reasonable happy.
This afternoon I was working on the Lady’s laptop, and was puzzled that I couldn’t get to my home server. Upon further investigation, it turned out that the laptop was on a different subnet to my home network and wasn’t actually connected to my own AP. So we had been leeching on someone else’s bandwidth for the last couple of months…
2 responses so far ↓
1 Johnathan // Aug 30, 2004 at 5:21 pm
I caught this site when i was looking for the answer to the question that I am now about to ask you. I am wondering about the legality of leeching bandwidth. I do serious downloading and web usage. The thing is, for the last month, I have been using a neighbors AP and didn’t know it. I am seriously considering taking the issue up with the neighbor to split the bill but I am pretty sure I can still get away with it without having to pay at all. We both have the same SSID on the same channel and so it wasn’t something I noticed before and I am sure it is something that the neighbor will continue to be oblivious. So, is it legal?
2 tin_the_fatty // Aug 30, 2004 at 10:29 pm
Big disclaimer first: IANAL.
You should be able to get away with it as long as you don’t get caught.
Now imagine yourself discovering someone leeching on your wifi. What would you do? Switch the channel, change the SSID, put a WEP/WPA password and restrict access via network hardware address, etc. are much easier than trying to hunt down the culprit.