What’s this xfinitywifi network and why do I keep connecting? (2016)(jimmymacsupport.com)
jimmymacsupport.com
What’s this xfinitywifi network and why do I keep connecting? (2016)
http://jimmymacsupport.com/whats-xfinitywifi-network-keep-connecting/
9 comments
What’s worse is that these companies are tracking you using your phone wifi connections to these networks & selling that data on. (If you’re lucky, it’s only sold in aggregated form, but I bet personal data is available to insiders).
In iOS 11+ you can disable this behavior.
How? By manually ignoring the Network or by deactivating WiFi in Control Center? Or is there an option I'm missing?
The only way I’ve managed to avoid my iPhone connecting to random wifi is to go to settings:wifi and set “ask to join” to true. And now it just bugs me with prompts a hundred times every train ride.
Ifaik there’s no other way to stop autoconnecting to wifi that matches certain conditions, and it drives me up the wall.
Ifaik there’s no other way to stop autoconnecting to wifi that matches certain conditions, and it drives me up the wall.
Have you tried leaving "ask to join" off, and forgetting the problematic network? If you rarely if ever need to connect to it, it's better that you don't save it to your list of known networks.
The other way I see from the other comment is to view that SSID in your wifi menu, click the (i) button next to it, and toggle "auto-join".
The other way I see from the other comment is to view that SSID in your wifi menu, click the (i) button next to it, and toggle "auto-join".
I tried this initially but new wifi networks kept springing up with such frequency that the whole thing became a game of whack-a-mole. Maybe they rotate names frequently here? I might give it another shot though. There can’t be that many wifi networks between here and Roppongi...
My iPhone only ever connects to networks I've used -- never unknown open networks. I know it's possible to enable automatic asking (I think, via "ask to join network"?), but that seems like an annoying feature.
Yeah, I think it’s trying to connect to networks that are somehow “partners” with my provider, and for some reason there seems to be hundreds of these scattered around Tokyo.
>The only way I’ve managed to avoid my iPhone connecting to random wifi is to go to settings:wifi and set “ask to join” to true. And now it just bugs me with prompts a hundred times every train ride.
Ever considered just turning wifi off?
Ever considered just turning wifi off?
I do this occasionally. I just wish Apple made it easier to turn off and on permanently - as is right now you have to go into the settings page and flick a switch.
Though, given my terrible memory this particular solution sometimes comes back to bite me in the bum: Usually when I turn off wifi I forget to turn it back on again until I’m at work and I’ve already downloaded a few hundred megs of music, all the whole stupidly ignoring the 4g connection icon.
Though, given my terrible memory this particular solution sometimes comes back to bite me in the bum: Usually when I turn off wifi I forget to turn it back on again until I’m at work and I’ve already downloaded a few hundred megs of music, all the whole stupidly ignoring the 4g connection icon.
Go to Wi-Fi settings and click the "i" beside the problematic network.
You have two options that should solve the problem. Either:
a) Tap "forget this network", or
b) Toggle "auto-join" to off
You have two options that should solve the problem. Either:
a) Tap "forget this network", or
b) Toggle "auto-join" to off
This is my solution too. I rarely use "public" wifi, but if I do, I ALWAYS turn "auto-join" off.
Also, from time to time, I go in and reset my network settings, which erases any networks I've forgotten to forget.
Also, from time to time, I go in and reset my network settings, which erases any networks I've forgotten to forget.
paulcole(2)
Comcast piggybacked an xfinitywifi hotspot on the Comcast Business router they installed for me.
When I asked Comcast to turn off the hotspot, they told me to disable xfinitywifi using the Comcast Business web-based administration page. However, toggling the options on the page failed to disable their hotspot.
Comcast said that I had discovered a bug, and that as a workaround they could disable the hotspot manually from their end. This also failed to work.
In the end, I had them replace the router with a much older wired-only model.
When I asked Comcast to turn off the hotspot, they told me to disable xfinitywifi using the Comcast Business web-based administration page. However, toggling the options on the page failed to disable their hotspot.
Comcast said that I had discovered a bug, and that as a workaround they could disable the hotspot manually from their end. This also failed to work.
In the end, I had them replace the router with a much older wired-only model.
Seriously had the same experience.
This is especially annoying when it hops onto a 1 bar xfinity WiFi that barely works at all, or one that I just passed by at 60 mph, instead of just using 4G. I could never get my S6 to stop connecting to them, even after doing "forget this network". Thankfully I've replaced it.
I understand what they're going for, but I'd rather have some kind of app manage it in such a way that it requires a certain strength and for me to be in the vicinity for more than a microsecond.
I understand what they're going for, but I'd rather have some kind of app manage it in such a way that it requires a certain strength and for me to be in the vicinity for more than a microsecond.
Note for comcast customers: the default on your setup is devote one fifth of your modem capacity to general xfinity wifi. So the general public can surf porn at your expense. Xfinity has settings to turn this off. However like Facebook privacy, comcast continuously turns this back on.
Can you show where this is true? I’ve been trying to get the WiFi part enabled. Have had a hard time on current and last router. The opposite of it being enabled by default.
Does this apply if you're using your own modem/router?
No. (Source: I've used my own modem & router with Comcast. There's no physical way they can force your router to host an xfinitywifi SSID.)
I bought my own modem and router specifically to not deal with this garbage.
This is misleading. It doesn't share bandwidth on the cable with your internet connection. Removing it wouldn't make your interest faster.
Where is the bandwidth coming from? Coax in general is sharing bandwidth between the whole neighborhood, hence the piss poor upload speeds and latency.
Obviously all bandwidth is shared at some point, but the extend to which coax is is ridiculous in my experience. They sell individuals hundreds of megabits download, 5 “megabit” upload, when the whole neighborhood might only have a few hundred megabits download capacity total.
It’s a joke compared to symmetric fiber connections, and that they share even more of your connection with their xfinitywifi adds to that. Hence why one should always buy and use your own cable modem.
Obviously all bandwidth is shared at some point, but the extend to which coax is is ridiculous in my experience. They sell individuals hundreds of megabits download, 5 “megabit” upload, when the whole neighborhood might only have a few hundred megabits download capacity total.
It’s a joke compared to symmetric fiber connections, and that they share even more of your connection with their xfinitywifi adds to that. Hence why one should always buy and use your own cable modem.
This is a little bit off. Looking at an actual comcast channel map: https://pickmymodem.com/ofdm-sub-carrier-ranges-on-docsis-3-.... The 24 DOCSIS 3.0 channels are about a gigabit in the aggregate, and the 94 MHZ OFDM channel is about another gigabit. Compared to 2.4 gbps down for GPON. (GPON is a decade older tech, so not surprising.)
There will be more people on a cable node than on a GPON (which is typically 16-32). But Comcast is N+0 on its DOCSIS 3.1 footprint (which is 75% of its network). That means they’ve removed amplifiers that extend the signal of the cable over distances, because those amplifiers get in the way of more aggressive techniques used in DOCSIS 3.1. That requires pushing fiber deeper into the network, and has the side effect of reducing how many subscribers are in each shared bus.
The upload limits are more an issue of legacy channel maps than insufficient bandwidth on the wire. The upstream/downstream portions are separated into different portions of the RF spectrum, and for historical reasons the split is heavily biased toward downstream. But symmetric DOCSIS is around the corner. There is also a lot of headroom left in DOCSIS 3.1. Compatible cable modems must support a minimum 192 MHz OFDM channels, which is almost 4 gbps. 10 gbps is possible if all the bandwidth on the coax is used for data rather than TV.
There will be more people on a cable node than on a GPON (which is typically 16-32). But Comcast is N+0 on its DOCSIS 3.1 footprint (which is 75% of its network). That means they’ve removed amplifiers that extend the signal of the cable over distances, because those amplifiers get in the way of more aggressive techniques used in DOCSIS 3.1. That requires pushing fiber deeper into the network, and has the side effect of reducing how many subscribers are in each shared bus.
The upload limits are more an issue of legacy channel maps than insufficient bandwidth on the wire. The upstream/downstream portions are separated into different portions of the RF spectrum, and for historical reasons the split is heavily biased toward downstream. But symmetric DOCSIS is around the corner. There is also a lot of headroom left in DOCSIS 3.1. Compatible cable modems must support a minimum 192 MHz OFDM channels, which is almost 4 gbps. 10 gbps is possible if all the bandwidth on the coax is used for data rather than TV.
This is spot on. I do quite a bit of DOCSIS engineering work and this is a very good explanation.
It is going to vary quite a bit depending on your MSO and location but the "neighborhood" in modern DOCSIS deployments is getting smaller and smaller with Remote-PHY and N+1/N+0 deployments. What was traditionally 200+ customers on a node is shrinking down to much smaller numbers (dozens vs hundreds).
One guideline that is often thrown around is that the node will have at least twice the bandwidth of the highest speed tier and capacity is often added in excess of that based on usage and node size. You can also get fancy with dedicating channels to specic packages, so some of that bandwidth might only be "shared" with other customers on the same tier service as you.
It is going to vary quite a bit depending on your MSO and location but the "neighborhood" in modern DOCSIS deployments is getting smaller and smaller with Remote-PHY and N+1/N+0 deployments. What was traditionally 200+ customers on a node is shrinking down to much smaller numbers (dozens vs hundreds).
One guideline that is often thrown around is that the node will have at least twice the bandwidth of the highest speed tier and capacity is often added in excess of that based on usage and node size. You can also get fancy with dedicating channels to specic packages, so some of that bandwidth might only be "shared" with other customers on the same tier service as you.
Appreciate the information regarding specs. My observations are from repeated exposures on east and west coast of US to Comcast cable connections, which are noticeably slower in the evening when there is more network congestion, and have terrible latency. Various speed tests give me only a fraction of advertised bandwidth, and even then, it won’t be sustained. It feels like they’ve programmed the system to allow new connections to have a burst of bandwidth, and then taper it down.
I have yet to experience a coax internet experience as reliable and pleasant to use as a symmetric fiber connection. I presume it’s because Comcast is overselling their capacity, because they’re Comcast.
I have yet to experience a coax internet experience as reliable and pleasant to use as a symmetric fiber connection. I presume it’s because Comcast is overselling their capacity, because they’re Comcast.
Your feeling is spot on. They definitely burst to a higher speed at the beginning of a transfer. What’s really amazing is that they’re proud of it! https://corporate.comcast.com/comcast-voices/what-is-powerbo...
Apple and Intel seem pretty proud of their burst speeds too. (And battery life, which is quoted based on running the CPU at short bursts and then going idle.)
And why shouldn’t they be? Consumer tech is properly optimized for burst usage. The network delivers the 10MB home page in a burst, then goes idle. The CPU bursts to 4 GHz to render it as fast as possible, then goes idle. The battery delivers 35W for half a second, then drops down to 5W. The whole system is designed around that usage profile.
And why shouldn’t they be? Consumer tech is properly optimized for burst usage. The network delivers the 10MB home page in a burst, then goes idle. The CPU bursts to 4 GHz to render it as fast as possible, then goes idle. The battery delivers 35W for half a second, then drops down to 5W. The whole system is designed around that usage profile.
The difference is that CPUs burst above the speed they can sustain. The alternative would be running slower all the time.
Comcast, in contrast, just lets you use more of their otherwise idle capacity, then throttles you. The alternative would be getting the full capacity of their network all the time.
Comcast, in contrast, just lets you use more of their otherwise idle capacity, then throttles you. The alternative would be getting the full capacity of their network all the time.
Looking at the description in the article:
> This team discovered that at any given time there was some unused capacity in our network that could be used to temporarily enable faster connection speeds. PowerBoost was born.
TurboBoost notices there is additional thermal/power headroom, and boosts until that headroom is gone. PowerBoost seems very similar, except it's based on using unused capacity. The tapering is necessary, because PowerBoost uses up that excess capacity. The network tapers users off after the boost so there is excess capacity for other users to have a higher boost.
> This team discovered that at any given time there was some unused capacity in our network that could be used to temporarily enable faster connection speeds. PowerBoost was born.
TurboBoost notices there is additional thermal/power headroom, and boosts until that headroom is gone. PowerBoost seems very similar, except it's based on using unused capacity. The tapering is necessary, because PowerBoost uses up that excess capacity. The network tapers users off after the boost so there is excess capacity for other users to have a higher boost.
It’s only a zero-sum game when their network is at 100% capacity. If they were playing games to optimize usage at peak times I might not care (although they should increase capacity in that case) but when they do this at 5AM it’s clearly bullshit.
I don’t understand why you’re carrying Comcast’s water here. Nobody else does this nonsense. My FiOS connection is a gigabit all day every day. This isn’t a clever bit of network management that gives them an edge. It’s a clever bit of marketing which also allows them to cheat on speed tests.
“The tapering is necessary, because PowerBoost uses up that excess capacity.”
What the heck!? The network isn’t some kind of battery. There’s no buffer that gets filled up after 20MB on a TCP stream and they have to slow down to let it drain. I know you’re smarter than this.
I don’t understand why you’re carrying Comcast’s water here. Nobody else does this nonsense. My FiOS connection is a gigabit all day every day. This isn’t a clever bit of network management that gives them an edge. It’s a clever bit of marketing which also allows them to cheat on speed tests.
“The tapering is necessary, because PowerBoost uses up that excess capacity.”
What the heck!? The network isn’t some kind of battery. There’s no buffer that gets filled up after 20MB on a TCP stream and they have to slow down to let it drain. I know you’re smarter than this.
> It’s only a zero-sum game when their network is at 100% capacity. If they were playing games to optimize usage at peak times I might not care (although they should increase capacity in that case) but when they do this at 5AM it’s clearly bullshit.
I don't know exactly how PowerBoost works. I'm going off the description in the article you linked. The article says that PowerBoost uses up excess capacity on the network when it's available. It follows that you can't PowerBoost everybody, even at non-peak times, without lowering the maximum amount of boost.
> I don’t understand why you’re carrying Comcast’s water here. Nobody else does this nonsense.
No offense, but to most people on HN the physical network is an abstraction that magically delivers bits from point A to point B, and they say crazy things like "networks shouldn't be oversubscribed." I spent my engineering career sitting around layers 2/3, so reading this stuff tends to put me into rant mode.
I don't know exactly how PowerBoost works. I'm going off the description in the article you linked. The article says that PowerBoost uses up excess capacity on the network when it's available. It follows that you can't PowerBoost everybody, even at non-peak times, without lowering the maximum amount of boost.
> I don’t understand why you’re carrying Comcast’s water here. Nobody else does this nonsense.
No offense, but to most people on HN the physical network is an abstraction that magically delivers bits from point A to point B, and they say crazy things like "networks shouldn't be oversubscribed." I spent my engineering career sitting around layers 2/3, so reading this stuff tends to put me into rant mode.
The article I linked is a PR piece. Don’t get technical details from it. I linked to it just to show how they’re proud of their bullshit.
Here’s some better info: https://www.dslreports.com/faq/14520
Relevant quote: “PowerBoost provides bursts for the first 20 MB downloading and the first 10 MB uploading of a file respectively on select Comcast High-Speed Internet services.”
Surely you admit that there is no sensible technical reason for a magic 20MB per-file limit on this.
Here’s some better info: https://www.dslreports.com/faq/14520
Relevant quote: “PowerBoost provides bursts for the first 20 MB downloading and the first 10 MB uploading of a file respectively on select Comcast High-Speed Internet services.”
Surely you admit that there is no sensible technical reason for a magic 20MB per-file limit on this.
I’m not as knowledgeable about technical specifications as you are, but in my experience when I buy and use X Mb symmetric fiber connection, I actually get it all day every day, and I get it with sub 10ms or 5ms pings, and I have no problem streaming high def movies, multiple simultaneous FaceTime video calls, and downloads.
When I use Comcast (and I’m sure all other coax internet providers are the same, at least for residential users), what’s advertised is some nonsense like 200Mbit, but the upload is never mentioned because it sucks, and you only end up downloading things at a few Mbit anyway. Ping times are frequently in the hundred milliseconds, and multiple simultaneous streams/Facetime video/video games will slow everyone down.
In my mind, the 200Mbit Comcast is advertising is bullshit, at least since I know what a real 200Mbit up and down fiber connection feels like.
When I use Comcast (and I’m sure all other coax internet providers are the same, at least for residential users), what’s advertised is some nonsense like 200Mbit, but the upload is never mentioned because it sucks, and you only end up downloading things at a few Mbit anyway. Ping times are frequently in the hundred milliseconds, and multiple simultaneous streams/Facetime video/video games will slow everyone down.
In my mind, the 200Mbit Comcast is advertising is bullshit, at least since I know what a real 200Mbit up and down fiber connection feels like.
The last mile tech itself is largely irrelevant; Verizon FiOS is utter garbage where I live, and Comcast is reliable and fast. I know that’s heresy around here, but it’s not like Verizon is exactly any better than Comcast.
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Comcast is offering 2 Gbps up AND down with supposedly no usage caps for $299/month in my area. Any idea what technology it uses?
Answer: Free WLAN for Comcast customers (USA cable telco).
Just like KPN Fon, Ziggo, EMS Hotspot, and Wifi in de trein in The Netherlands, and very likely a plethora of other countries and businesses have such a feature as well.
Use with a VPN, and you can make it secure. With Wireguard, you can make it reliable. Other than that, I'd be careful for MITM attacks.
Just like KPN Fon, Ziggo, EMS Hotspot, and Wifi in de trein in The Netherlands, and very likely a plethora of other countries and businesses have such a feature as well.
Use with a VPN, and you can make it secure. With Wireguard, you can make it reliable. Other than that, I'd be careful for MITM attacks.
One of the main reasons I bought my own modem rather than using the one Comcast provides is to avoid broadcasting this terrible xfinitywifi network. It's not worth the liability.
xfinitywifi is free for anyone who already have xfinity at home. its extemely useful when you have a local internet outage.
they are great because they authenticate with login/password only once and then remember the mac addr, you dont have to log in ever again.
hope they wont start charging for this.
they are great because they authenticate with login/password only once and then remember the mac addr, you dont have to log in ever again.
hope they wont start charging for this.
So, someone can just spoof that mac address and have their activity logged as yours? What could possibly go wrong?
Yep! Last I checked (which admittedly was a while ago), 00:00:00:00:00:01 was valid for xfinitywifi
I feel like it could also have bad legal consequences to have your MAC associated with an xfinity account. What if somebody spoofs your MAC and does sketchy illegal things? Similar to anecdotal stories I heard about people running TOR relays and subsequently hearing from law enforcement.
Thinking about this again, there's a bit of difference: most people running a Tor exit node probably made a conscious decision to take this risk.
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Agreed with this.
Comcast is a terrible company in pretty much every way, shape, and form, but xfinitywifi has been useful to me many times now as a usable fallback when nothing else is available.
Better OS-level tools to manage these connections (i.e. intelligently not connect and flag as degraded) when the signal or backing network is extremely weak would be a huge boon though.
Comcast is a terrible company in pretty much every way, shape, and form, but xfinitywifi has been useful to me many times now as a usable fallback when nothing else is available.
Better OS-level tools to manage these connections (i.e. intelligently not connect and flag as degraded) when the signal or backing network is extremely weak would be a huge boon though.
It’s also great for iot devices. Gives them access to the internet with no access to other devices in your home. You do have to spoof their mac address on a device with a browser to get them online though.
If you have decent routers you can do that too. For example you can create a separate ssid with different IP space and NAT.
But that’s still giving an iot device access to my router and allowing it to connect to the internet with the same public ip address as the rest of my devices. I would rather not take the chance.
> you dont have to log in ever again.
That isn't my experience. Every so often I visit a few locations and hop on the xfinitywifi, and I need to authenticate each time.
That isn't my experience. Every so often I visit a few locations and hop on the xfinitywifi, and I need to authenticate each time.
>Users aren’t reducing your internet speed any more than a new neighbor signing up for Comcast. The technical capability of their cable network is far faster than the speed Comcast doles out to you, since you pay for a throttled speed tier. The xfinitywifi network users aren’t included in your throttled speed.
Is this actually true? I mean sure, DOCSIS 3.1 is capable of gigabit speeds in theory. But are the CPU and other resources on the modem/router actually _fully_ isolated? And coaxial cables that were laid decades ago, are they actually capable of reaching speeds fast enough to totally isolate you from bandwidth issues? Some people fail to hit their advertised speeds as is.
My guess is that the reality is, you do lose some performance and gain some latency if there's a lot of xfinitywifi traffic going through your router.
I am a Comcast customer, reluctantly, as pretty much any other Comcast customer, but I use my own hardware always. I don't like what Comcast is doing here, especially because they're not really telling you about it. Of course, as you would expect, you don't get any discount for what you are doing for them either, it's just part of life if you rent equipment, which eventually costs more than it saves anyways.
But even if you buy your own hardware, trying to feel in control can be very hard. I used to use a MikroTik hAPlite as a router, but it got hacked a couple of times, and many more vulnerabilities eventually turned me off of MikroTik products despite how nice they were to use. Then I moved to one of the actually-kinda-expensive Linksys AC2600 and boy did that stuff piss me off royally. On top of the annoying 'smart' features, including a click through EULA and requiring online registration to access my own router's configuration menu, it honestly performed terribly. Being in an apartment, I connect my desktop via WiFi, and this thing couldn't even keep a stable connection for that. Some devices wouldn't connect at all, and I never figured out why, after hours of looking through logs and troubleshooting; the hAPlite had no such issues.
So... I gave in. Surfboard SB82000 modem, Ubiquity Unifi AC and USG, and Cisco switches. It isn't cheap, and frankly it's completely ridiculous overkill. It's gotta be like, $500 worth of crap new, and it does require some additional setup, like having a machine setup to act as the controller. But, I rest a lot easier, and I have literally not had a single issue since configuring everything. Which is definitely more than I can say for any Comcast-installed equipment I've had to deal with. Good riddance.
I hope some day there's a 'sane' option for people who just want good performance, good security for home use cases, but right now I'm wondering if there will ever be anything aimed at consumers that isn't trying super hard to exploit the crap out of them. The situation with consumer internet equipment has left me very jaded, especially because I remember running DD-WRT on a WRT54G and having a great time.
Edit: It is worth noting that I never tried any of the whole home mesh WiFi solutions. I’ve heard good things, but apartments seem like unideal places to install them.
Is this actually true? I mean sure, DOCSIS 3.1 is capable of gigabit speeds in theory. But are the CPU and other resources on the modem/router actually _fully_ isolated? And coaxial cables that were laid decades ago, are they actually capable of reaching speeds fast enough to totally isolate you from bandwidth issues? Some people fail to hit their advertised speeds as is.
My guess is that the reality is, you do lose some performance and gain some latency if there's a lot of xfinitywifi traffic going through your router.
I am a Comcast customer, reluctantly, as pretty much any other Comcast customer, but I use my own hardware always. I don't like what Comcast is doing here, especially because they're not really telling you about it. Of course, as you would expect, you don't get any discount for what you are doing for them either, it's just part of life if you rent equipment, which eventually costs more than it saves anyways.
But even if you buy your own hardware, trying to feel in control can be very hard. I used to use a MikroTik hAPlite as a router, but it got hacked a couple of times, and many more vulnerabilities eventually turned me off of MikroTik products despite how nice they were to use. Then I moved to one of the actually-kinda-expensive Linksys AC2600 and boy did that stuff piss me off royally. On top of the annoying 'smart' features, including a click through EULA and requiring online registration to access my own router's configuration menu, it honestly performed terribly. Being in an apartment, I connect my desktop via WiFi, and this thing couldn't even keep a stable connection for that. Some devices wouldn't connect at all, and I never figured out why, after hours of looking through logs and troubleshooting; the hAPlite had no such issues.
So... I gave in. Surfboard SB82000 modem, Ubiquity Unifi AC and USG, and Cisco switches. It isn't cheap, and frankly it's completely ridiculous overkill. It's gotta be like, $500 worth of crap new, and it does require some additional setup, like having a machine setup to act as the controller. But, I rest a lot easier, and I have literally not had a single issue since configuring everything. Which is definitely more than I can say for any Comcast-installed equipment I've had to deal with. Good riddance.
I hope some day there's a 'sane' option for people who just want good performance, good security for home use cases, but right now I'm wondering if there will ever be anything aimed at consumers that isn't trying super hard to exploit the crap out of them. The situation with consumer internet equipment has left me very jaded, especially because I remember running DD-WRT on a WRT54G and having a great time.
Edit: It is worth noting that I never tried any of the whole home mesh WiFi solutions. I’ve heard good things, but apartments seem like unideal places to install them.
Mesh wifi’s are a godsend. Happy Eero user since its Kickstarter.
> I hope some day there's a 'sane' option for people who just want good performance, good security for home use cases
That used to be the Apple AirPort range...
Personally I eventually just ended up getting the router at the big box store with the biggest numbers. And it worked out fine. I get a wireless iperf result of 900 Mbit while in the same room, 300+ out in the living room. No stability issues (even with flakey chinese IoT crap on there). No intrusive features. It seems like the luck of the draw with consumer brands though. http://www.aterm.jp/product/atermstation/product/warpstar/wg...
That used to be the Apple AirPort range...
Personally I eventually just ended up getting the router at the big box store with the biggest numbers. And it worked out fine. I get a wireless iperf result of 900 Mbit while in the same room, 300+ out in the living room. No stability issues (even with flakey chinese IoT crap on there). No intrusive features. It seems like the luck of the draw with consumer brands though. http://www.aterm.jp/product/atermstation/product/warpstar/wg...
> Is this actually true?
Yes, it is actually true. The speed of WiFi relative to coax is puny. There's no way WiFi can come close to taxing it.
I suppose you are using a bit more WiFi spectrum, but your neighbors do that too.
Yes, it is actually true. The speed of WiFi relative to coax is puny. There's no way WiFi can come close to taxing it.
I suppose you are using a bit more WiFi spectrum, but your neighbors do that too.
Oh of course, WiFi alone isn’t enough, at least probably not until the next generation of WiFi. Consider also wired traffic, though. The xfinitywifi hotspot is hosted on modem/router devices of all sorts, including Comcast Business devices.
iOS:
While in range of the xfinitywifi network, tap Settings > Wi-Fi.
Tap the (i) to the right of the xfinitywifi network.
Tap “Forget this network”
I recall this being a fact when I had an iPhone some time ago.
> Is it still the case that you can't 'Forget' a Wifi network on iPhone devices unless you're in range of the network?
AFAIK, yes. The only exception is if you have a Mac logged into the same iCloud account, you can forget it on the Mac which does have a full list (and WiFi credentials are synced)
AFAIK, yes. The only exception is if you have a Mac logged into the same iCloud account, you can forget it on the Mac which does have a full list (and WiFi credentials are synced)
Yeah. AFAIK there's no way to access a list of all known networks.
One day my phone browsing was interrupted by a starbucks terms-and-conditions webpage. wtf? Turns out my phone had auto-connected to an attwifi access point in range.
What's more disturbing is that companies work with "smart device" manufacturers so they can connect this way without you ever knowing.
What if your smart tv, only ever plugged into HDMI, was connecting to your neighbor's xfinitywifi without you knowing it?