Legailty of Sharing Broadband??

Thomas_S_Hunterson

I was just wondering if anyone knew whether or no it's legal to share broadband?

What i mean is that if I were to get a broadband connection installed in my house, and then to share it with my neighbours via Wi Fi and in return get them to pay a share of the bill?

magpie

What your ISP doesn't know can't hurt them.

GarfieldConnoll

magpie wrote:

What your ISP doesn't know can't hurt them.

It might hurt you though. Will you be authenticating/ authorising your neighbours' connections? Will you be able to account for their traffic?

If your ISP comes after you because of traffic they're seeing on your connection, will you be able to point them in the direction of your neighbours?

Garfield.

chorus techy

Yeah, and with the recent of news of IRMA beginning to heavily fine uploaders and downloaders etc., if your neighbours use your connection to fileshare illegally, or to hack then it will be you who is responsible.

Thomas_S_Hunterson

Hmm, better not then, just thought I might be able to get it on the cheap. Thanks for the advice

ntlbell

It all depends on what your neighbour wishes to do.

If they just want to browse and use mail you could restrict the connection to http,smtp and pop access.

I wouldn't worry about it too much, ignorance is bliss.

Blaster99

You don't want to share your connection with somebody who's warez crazy in any event. I would think sharing the connection could potentially get quite annoying.

Red Alert

Use an old PC as a router/firewall/proxy. Only allow access to the web from port 80 and 443 and log all proxy requests against a username/password - people are less likely to try anything if they enter their username at the start of the web session.

jimmycrackcorm

chorus techy wrote:

Yeah, and with the recent of news of IRMA beginning to heavily fine uploaders and downloaders etc., if your neighbours use your connection to fileshare illegally, or to hack then it will be you who is responsible.

All the better in a court case - more than reasonable doubt as to whether you were sharing mp3s or not.

sharingan

sean_keevey wrote:

I was just wondering if anyone knew whether or no it's legal to share broadband?

What i mean is that if I were to get a broadband connection installed in my house, and then to share it with my neighbours via Wi Fi and in return get them to pay a share of the bill?

It is perfectly legal - i.e. the Gardai will not come knocking on your door about it, as it is not a crime in any way.

However for some ISPs it is against the Terms of Service to attach switching equipment to the modem for the purposes of opening the connection up to multiple PCs, either in the same residence or multiple residences. So if they manage to find out, they can disconnect you, or take whatever disciplinary measures outlined in your T&Cs.

Its pretty much impossible for them to find out, without stalking your house (which would get *them* in trouble with the Gardai) and Wardiving.

Sharing your connection is very likely to max out whatever cap you have, and drive you into metered space. Another thing to make sure of, is that only the people you know and want are using it, so lock down your network.

Some of the expensive services with good D/L speeds and high caps have no issue with you attaching switching equipment. You are paying enough for the service to cover large B/W usage.

Sure there are some whiny US ISPs who are comparing it to downloading music (marketing at its best) - what they are complaining about is the opportunity cost i.e. your neighbour did not become a customer as well. They don't really think about the cost-sharing arrangement with your neighbour was what made you a customer in the first place ....

Edit: Jumping in on the discussion wrt making sure your neighbour doesn't get you in trouble:

Theres a few options you can do -most ADSL Gateway equipment comes with wireless integrated. Essentially, what you want is to be able to define stricter rules for the wireless users than for yourself. I.e. you plug in wired into the gateway, you plug in the WAP into the gateway too, but you configure the WAP's firewall to block all the filesharing ports. If *you* still want to do downloading and stuff you are free to do so.

Depending on where your neighbours house is, you may need specialised wifi gear anyway (like directional antennae). You don't want to use a PC, cos they are noisy, you are going to need them running 24/7 to be fair to your mate and they will chew up some power.

Netsharing is fine way to make broadband affordable, and most people who just want faster surfing like your neighbour, probably won't be excessive users. But maybe their kids will.

The most complex thing in this arrangement, is making sure that your mate doesn't compromise you with his online activities. Have a clear discussion with him about it.

RangeR

To the best of my knowledge, most if not all ISP's have a clause in their contract thet the broadband connection they offer you is for the use of YOUR houshould only. It would also state that you can not share it with others otherside your household.

I'm not a lawyer but from what I read out of this. You would be breaking the terms of your contract so they can either terminate the contract or seek damages in court.

In real terms, they may never find out and in real terms they might not want the hassle or publicity that comes with dragging a residential through the courts.

Probably not a case for the gardai but they are not the only ones who can enforce the law.

Correct me if I'm wrong, as I may well be.

Marcopolo85

GarfieldConnoll wrote:

It might hurt you though. Will you be authenticating/ authorising your neighbours' connections? Will you be able to account for their traffic?

If your ISP comes after you because of traffic they're seeing on your connection, will you be able to point them in the direction of your neighbours?

Garfield.

Agree totally. File sharing would be the least of your worries. What if a paedophile hacked in? I wouldn't leave a wireless router inside the door! :eek:

jor el

I know when Eircom first launched broadband (I-Stream) there was a "Solo" product that was to be connected to one PC only, and not shared on any kind of local network according to the T&Cs. However, it'd be impossible for them to find this out. There was also a more expensive product that you could share to multiple PCs. I think this strategy is no longer employed by Eircom, especially since they now offer wireless routers which can have many connection off them. It may still be in the T&Cs that you can't share your connection outside your address, which would still allow you to share it to many PCs in the home.

Apart from your neighbour doing possiblely illegal things on your connection, the biggest drawback with current fixed line DSL is the 128k upload. This can be a serious drawback when sharing a connection to more than one PC.

For example, when I use emule (with the upload limited to 8kB or 64kb which is half the upload speed) I get a massive decrease in maximum download speed. Just yesterday when downloading large files over HTTP I was getting 216kBps, which is about the max available on my connection. When I started emule that download instantly dropped to about 50kBps. Emule wasn't downloading anything and only had 4-5kB upload going but my download speed was knackered.

It would be nice to share the expense, but not so nice when only one of you can functionally use it at a time.