And no, I'm not talking about pirating on the internet, I'm talking about getting your internet connection to the outside world without paying or having a subscription or license. Something like a mesh network with your neighbors with the exit node being one person's high-speed fiber line, or even an exit node through a free public wifi network that you've hidden a little repeater device within range of... something like that could be interesting. I've been thinking lately of a world where decentralized networks become more common, and where people can freely use the internet without paying an ISP. What are your thoughts?

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[–] Bags@piefed.social 56 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

Many many years ago in the paleolithic era when 2.4GHz was king, a neighbor in the next unit over had an unsecured wifi network... I connected my old laptop, figured out where the connection was best (turned out to be beside the stove in the kitchen?), piped the connection out the ethernet port and into the WAN port on my router, and set up my own "secured" network lol. I'm fairly certain anyone with a straight-up unsecured wifi network doesn't have the skills or knowledge to detect someone leaching their bandwidth. I did that for like 3 years without a single hiccup until I moved and finally had to start paying.

[–] selokichtli@lemmy.ml 25 points 1 day ago

Ah, yes, the WEP key passphrase era. I was a student then, and you could find me on the roof trying to get a stable signal to inject and capture data packets. Otherwise, no internet for me.

[–] albert180@piefed.social -1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Or he believes in sharing his internet like the Freifunk People do.

Not everyone who is sharing something for free with you is a moron you're taking advantage of. Pretty disgusting worldview

[–] MachineFab812@discuss.tchncs.de 15 points 1 day ago (1 children)

They said "pretty sure", not certain. Statistically, they were right, until routers started shipping with "secured" wifi settings by default. Nowadays, its the reverse.

[–] Bags@piefed.social 6 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

It wasn't super relevant to the story, but yeah, I could just browse the files right on their PC, definitely a "Not intending to share it for free" kind of situation, completely devoid of any authentication or security.