Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Community wide Wifi

[Diana Carroll (dianaecarroll]

This is the same for us: our common house wifi signal is very weak in most
of the homes, so most (all?) people have their own internet via Cable or
DSL at home.

A lot of our residents don't use passwords on their wifi at all.  We live
in a rural town where someone would have to be actually on our property to
access the signals...and a stranger sitting in their car surfing the net on
our wifi would stand out like a sore thumb!

That said, I recently decided to set up a password for my family wifi
network, not because I'm worried about malicious theft of my bandwidth or
interception of my important personal communications, but out of concern
for viruses and non-malicious accidental damage by people who don't know
anything about networks.  So I got a new router that allows me to  set up a
"guest" network that allows others to use my bandwidth without a password,
while keeping a firewall between their devices and our home intranet.  I
love that, and I'd love to see more others in the community doing that.

Diana


On Wed, Jan 29, 2014 at 10:05 AM, Sharon Villines <sharon [at] 
sharonvillines.com
> wrote:

>
>
> On Jan 29, 2014, at 8:03 AM, Fred-List manager <fholson [at] cohousing.org>
> wrote:
>
> > 2.  That said, we did implement community-wide WiFi 5 years ago at
> > move-in.  It has been nothing but a bother.  It seemed a great idea and
> > probably helped a bit with marketing.  However, our homes are so
> > energy-efficient with coated windows and radiant barriers that each home
> is
> > basically a Faraday cage.  The community WiFi really only gives decent
> > signal outside.
>
> We have the same problem and have solved it to some extent by putting
> WiFis inside and using each others. We can get signals from apartment to
> apartment and basement up to the floors above, but not when the signal has
> to go outside and in again. I usually can't use the WiFi in the CH but can
> from apartments above and below. Most of our WiFi's use a common password.
>
> Sharon
> ----
> Sharon Villines
> Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
> http://www.takomavillage.org
>
>
>
>
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