Mailing List Archive

Cable Company Hotspots
Hey Gang,

How do the cable companies generally deliver this service? A friend insists it piggybacks off the WIFI radios of existing cable company subscribers. In other words, the cable company WIFI router in a flat is providing both a private link for the flat's subscriber, but also a public hotspot service.

I concede it is possible, but I am skeptical that the high quality of hotspot service we get here in Budapest could be achieved that way.




Roderick Beck

VP of Business Development

United Cable Company

www.unitedcablecompany.com<http://www.unitedcablecompany.com>

New York City & Budapest

rod.beck@unitedcablecompany.com

Budapest: 36-70-605-5144

NJ: 908-452-8183


[1467221477350_image005.png]
Re: Cable Company Hotspots [ In reply to ]
Rod, that’s exactly how they are delivering it. Unclear wether it’s over a separately provisioned bandwidth channel, or wether it shares the aggregate capacity of the HFC.

I tend to agree, as the only hotspot service, customer CPE is generally inadequate. However it can be a nice supplement, and some carriers are now experimenting with unlicensed CBRS chipsets in their CPE as well.

—L.B.

Lady Benjamin PD Cannon, ASCE
6x7 Networks & 6x7 Telecom, LLC
CEO
ben@6by7.net <mailto:ben@6by7.net>
"The only fully end-to-end encrypted global telecommunications company in the world.”
FCC License KJ6FJJ



> On Nov 20, 2020, at 3:26 PM, Rod Beck <rod.beck@unitedcablecompany.com> wrote:
>
> Hey Gang,
>
> How do the cable companies generally deliver this service? A friend insists it piggybacks off the WIFI radios of existing cable company subscribers. In other words, the cable company WIFI router in a flat is providing both a private link for the flat's subscriber, but also a public hotspot service.
>
> I concede it is possible, but I am skeptical that the high quality of hotspot service we get here in Budapest could be achieved that way.
>
>
>
> Roderick Beck
> VP of Business Development
> United Cable Company
> www.unitedcablecompany.com <http://www.unitedcablecompany.com/>
> New York City & Budapest
> rod.beck@unitedcablecompany.com <mailto:rod.beck@unitedcablecompany.com>
> Budapest: 36-70-605-5144
> NJ: 908-452-8183
Re: Cable Company Hotspots [ In reply to ]
Comcast does exactly that in the US. Some people turn it off though. I
can't recall if just the guest hotspot can be disabled on it's own or you
have to just turn off wireless completely and use your own kit.
Probably depends on the provided gear.

Slightly off topic, but the cellular providers here also sell femtocells to
customers that want better cellular service in their home or office. They
basically offload (and charge) their customers to expand the coverage over
the customer's own internet service.
*Brandon Svec*

*15106862204 <15106862204> voice|sms**teamonesolutions.com
<https://teamonesolutions.com/>*


On Fri, Nov 20, 2020 at 3:28 PM Rod Beck <rod.beck@unitedcablecompany.com>
wrote:

> Hey Gang,
>
> How do the cable companies generally deliver this service? A friend
> insists it piggybacks off the WIFI radios of existing cable company
> subscribers. In other words, the cable company WIFI router in a flat is
> providing both a private link for the flat's subscriber, but also a public
> hotspot service.
>
> I concede it is possible, but I am skeptical that the high quality of
> hotspot service we get here in Budapest could be achieved that way.
>
>
>
> Roderick Beck
> VP of Business Development
>
> United Cable Company
>
> www.unitedcablecompany.com
>
> New York City & Budapest
>
> rod.beck@unitedcablecompany.com
>
> Budapest: 36-70-605-5144
>
> NJ: 908-452-8183
>
>
> [image: 1467221477350_image005.png]
>
RE: Cable Company Hotspots [ In reply to ]
That is how Comcast (in the US) does it. They have a single gateway that
provides the subscriber services and then allows a public hotspot. Various
levels of authentication are used so only “customers” can access via their
login, or truly public. They have different QoS for the “subscriber” and
hot spot. In business environments they do the same ting, splitting the
business customers gateway into the customer and the hotspot traffic.



Now not sure about how this might be for Europe with local regulations, but
technically it is done all the time.







*From:* NANOG <nanog-bounces+sshali=pluribusnetworks.com@nanog.org> *On
Behalf Of *Rod Beck
*Sent:* Friday, November 20, 2020 3:27 PM
*To:* nanog@nanog.org
*Subject:* Cable Company Hotspots



Hey Gang,



How do the cable companies generally deliver this service? A friend insists
it piggybacks off the WIFI radios of existing cable company subscribers. In
other words, the cable company WIFI router in a flat is providing both a
private link for the flat's subscriber, but also a public hotspot service.



I concede it is possible, but I am skeptical that the high quality of
hotspot service we get here in Budapest could be achieved that way.







Roderick Beck

VP of Business Development

United Cable Company

www.unitedcablecompany.com

New York City & Budapest

rod.beck@unitedcablecompany.com

Budapest: 36-70-605-5144

NJ: 908-452-8183
Re: Cable Company Hotspots [ In reply to ]
I believe they use a separate GRE tunnel back into their network to keep it separate from the local customers traffic.

They also do this for other ISPs that they have agreements with, Coz customers can use the Comcast hotspots vice versa.



Sent from my iPhone

On Nov 20, 2020, at 5:38 PM, Brandon Svec <bsvec@teamonesolutions.com> wrote:

? *External Email: Use Caution*
Comcast does exactly that in the US. Some people turn it off though. I can't recall if just the guest hotspot can be disabled on it's own or you have to just turn off wireless completely and use your own kit.
Probably depends on the provided gear.

Slightly off topic, but the cellular providers here also sell femtocells to customers that want better cellular service in their home or office. They basically offload (and charge) their customers to expand the coverage over the customer's own internet service.
Brandon Svec
15106862204<tel:15106862204> voice|sms
teamonesolutions.com<https://link.edgepilot.com/s/ead55edc/XBL3I9uRaUeYA3wEeMuCow?u=https://teamonesolutions.com/>


On Fri, Nov 20, 2020 at 3:28 PM Rod Beck <rod.beck@unitedcablecompany.com<mailto:rod.beck@unitedcablecompany.com>> wrote:
Hey Gang,

How do the cable companies generally deliver this service? A friend insists it piggybacks off the WIFI radios of existing cable company subscribers. In other words, the cable company WIFI router in a flat is providing both a private link for the flat's subscriber, but also a public hotspot service.

I concede it is possible, but I am skeptical that the high quality of hotspot service we get here in Budapest could be achieved that way.




Roderick Beck

VP of Business Development

United Cable Company

https://link.edgepilot.com/s/5ea8ed14/sFrYHVe990GXCR1yAfigNg?u=http://www.unitedcablecompany.com/

New York City & Budapest

rod.beck@unitedcablecompany.com<mailto:rod.beck@unitedcablecompany.com>

Budapest: 36-70-605-5144

NJ: 908-452-8183


[1467221477350_image005.png]


Links contained in this email have been replaced. If you click on a link in the email above, the link will be analyzed for known threats. If a known threat is found, you will not be able to proceed to the destination. If suspicious content is detected, you will see a warning.
RE: Cable Company Hotspots [ In reply to ]
> How do the cable companies generally deliver this service? A friend
insists it
> piggybacks off the WIFI radios of existing cable company subscribers. In
other
> words, the cable company WIFI router in a flat is providing both a private
link
> for the flat's subscriber, but also a public hotspot service.
>
>
> I concede it is possible, but I am skeptical that the high quality of
hotspot
> service we get here in Budapest could be achieved that way.

Calix has this option on the 844G/E CPE. The G is used with fibre based
drops and the
E is used with cable modems.

It is called Community Wifi and is an option that can be enabled in both
units. It uses GRE tunnels
to backhaul traffic.

Never used it so have limited knowledge on actual workings, but have
deployed many
of both types of CPE's.
Re: Cable Company Hotspots [ In reply to ]
Hi,

Cable Cos do this in several ways.

Enabled hot spot on the cable provider cpe with separate ssid, sometimes the same channel sometimes dedicated radio and channel (I prefer the same channel as many areas have way too much noise). This hotspot service is using it's own docsis channels and generally a tunnel.

Also many are installing wire or poll mounted access points for outdoor coverage. These are not using anything at a customer location.

Harry

On November 20, 2020 4:26:33 PM MST, Rod Beck <rod.beck@unitedcablecompany.com> wrote:
>Hey Gang,
>
>How do the cable companies generally deliver this service? A friend
>insists it piggybacks off the WIFI radios of existing cable company
>subscribers. In other words, the cable company WIFI router in a flat is
>providing both a private link for the flat's subscriber, but also a
>public hotspot service.
>
>I concede it is possible, but I am skeptical that the high quality of
>hotspot service we get here in Budapest could be achieved that way.
>
>
>
>
>Roderick Beck
>
>VP of Business Development
>
>United Cable Company
>
>www.unitedcablecompany.com<http://www.unitedcablecompany.com>
>
>New York City & Budapest
>
>rod.beck@unitedcablecompany.com
>
>Budapest: 36-70-605-5144
>
>NJ: 908-452-8183
>
>
>[1467221477350_image005.png]

--
Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.
Re: Cable Company Hotspots [ In reply to ]
On 11/20/20 15:26, Rod Beck wrote:
> Hey Gang,
>
> How do the cable companies generally deliver this service? A friend
> insists it piggybacks off the WIFI radios of existing cable company
> subscribers. In other words, the cable company WIFI router in a flat is
> providing both a private link for the flat's subscriber, but also a
> public hotspot service.

That's pretty much it. The cable provider typically provides a
multi-function box that's a cable modem, NAT router, analog telephone
adapter, and wi-fi hotspot. In addition to the SSID for individual
customer use they by default have a generic SSID that is used by any
roaming Comcast customer within range. This has a nasty habit of landing
on the same channel as other devices and causing interference. The user
interface doesn't show this or have any way of disabling it.

They provided one of these for my sister and of course their box wasn't
exactly in the best place in the house for radio. I put in a proper
access point and it took several phone calls to tech support to get them
to turn off the radio in their box completely including the default
roaming SSID. I was this >< close to opening the thing up to figure out
which trace to cut when I finally got someone with enough clue to turn
it off.

--
Jay Hennigan - jay@west.net
Network Engineering - CCIE #7880
503 897-8550 - WB6RDV
Re: Cable Company Hotspots [ In reply to ]
----- Original Message -----
> From: "Rod Beck" <rod.beck@unitedcablecompany.com>

> Hey Gang,
>
> How do the cable companies generally deliver this service? A friend insists it
> piggybacks off the WIFI radios of existing cable company subscribers. In other
> words, the cable company WIFI router in a flat is providing both a private link
> for the flat's subscriber, but also a public hotspot service.
>
> I concede it is possible, but I am skeptical that the high quality of hotspot
> service we get here in Budapest could be achieved that way.

Spectrum, formerly Bright House, and I don't think they did it when they were
still Road Runner/TWC, does it by splitting the RF into a separate Surfboard and
a Ruckus AP; all they borrow from the business customer in question is a couple
watts of AC and a square foot of backboard -- if you have one; they'll put the
AP wherever is high enough and clear enough.

The tradeoff is you get to use all the other ones.

Cheers,
-- jra

--
Jay R. Ashworth Baylink jra@baylink.com
Designer The Things I Think RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates http://www.bcp38.info 2000 Land Rover DII
St Petersburg FL USA BCP38: Ask For It By Name! +1 727 647 1274
Re: Cable Company Hotspots [ In reply to ]
Sad that in some cases the extra WiFi usage results in higher electric bills for the consumer.... and cannot be opted out of.

--
J. Hellenthal

The fact that there's a highway to Hell but only a stairway to Heaven says a lot about anticipated traffic volume.

> On Nov 22, 2020, at 11:49, kwoody@citywest.ca wrote:
>
> ?
>>
>> How do the cable companies generally deliver this service? A friend
> insists it
>> piggybacks off the WIFI radios of existing cable company subscribers. In
> other
>> words, the cable company WIFI router in a flat is providing both a private
> link
>> for the flat's subscriber, but also a public hotspot service.
>>
>>
>> I concede it is possible, but I am skeptical that the high quality of
> hotspot
>> service we get here in Budapest could be achieved that way.
>
> Calix has this option on the 844G/E CPE. The G is used with fibre based
> drops and the
> E is used with cable modems.
>
> It is called Community Wifi and is an option that can be enabled in both
> units. It uses GRE tunnels
> to backhaul traffic.
>
> Never used it so have limited knowledge on actual workings, but have
> deployed many
> of both types of CPE's.
>
>
>
>
>
>
Re: Cable Company Hotspots [ In reply to ]
On 11/22/20 11:50, J. Hellenthal via NANOG wrote:
> Sad that in some cases the extra WiFi usage results in higher electric bills for the consumer.... and cannot be opted out of.

Power consumption is going to be miniscule, especially if the consumer
opts to use the cable company's built-in wi-fi themselves. If someone is
really that concerned about their electric bill they can unplug it when
not in use. Not practical if there's an ATA in it used for landline or
you have devices requiring Internet access 24/7 like security systems or
IoT. Of more practical concern is RF interference.

Typically the cable company puts their box in a convenient location for
access, either near where the cable comes in to the house or maybe
behind the TV. This often isn't the best place for radio coverage but
can create strong interference near the box.

If the customer doesn't use the cable box's wi-fi and installs their own
access point(s), there is no convenient way for them to turn off this
functionality. Many customers don't even know it exists. Most front-line
cable support techs don't either.

--
Jay Hennigan - jay@west.net
Network Engineering - CCIE #7880
503 897-8550 - WB6RDV
Re: Cable Company Hotspots [ In reply to ]
Once upon a time, J. Hellenthal <jhellenthal@dataix.net> said:
> Sad that in some cases the extra WiFi usage results in higher electric bills for the consumer.... and cannot be opted out of.

That's the worst argument against this. Of course you can opt out;
don't use the cable company's box. And adding an extra SSID to an
already-operating access point (and additional traffic when it used) is
going to be difficult to even measure as a power utilization difference.
If it increased power by an average of one watt (which I really doubt
it'd be that high), that's less than 7 cents per month where I live.

--
Chris Adams <cma@cmadams.net>
Re: Cable Company Hotspots [ In reply to ]
The dual purpose does explain why the gateways are so big relative to what the incumbent phone companies provide. It is great redundancy. My telco DSL Internet went down and I hopped onto free wireless cable service that I am entitled since most of properties have cable Internet.

-R.

________________________________
From: NANOG <nanog-bounces+rod.beck=unitedcablecompany.com@nanog.org> on behalf of Jay Hennigan <jay@west.net>
Sent: Sunday, November 22, 2020 9:48 PM
To: nanog@nanog.org <nanog@nanog.org>
Subject: Re: Cable Company Hotspots

On 11/22/20 11:50, J. Hellenthal via NANOG wrote:
> Sad that in some cases the extra WiFi usage results in higher electric bills for the consumer.... and cannot be opted out of.

Power consumption is going to be miniscule, especially if the consumer
opts to use the cable company's built-in wi-fi themselves. If someone is
really that concerned about their electric bill they can unplug it when
not in use. Not practical if there's an ATA in it used for landline or
you have devices requiring Internet access 24/7 like security systems or
IoT. Of more practical concern is RF interference.

Typically the cable company puts their box in a convenient location for
access, either near where the cable comes in to the house or maybe
behind the TV. This often isn't the best place for radio coverage but
can create strong interference near the box.

If the customer doesn't use the cable box's wi-fi and installs their own
access point(s), there is no convenient way for them to turn off this
functionality. Many customers don't even know it exists. Most front-line
cable support techs don't either.

--
Jay Hennigan - jay@west.net
Network Engineering - CCIE #7880
503 897-8550 - WB6RDV
Re: Cable Company Hotspots [ In reply to ]
?On Nov 22, 2020, at 12:42, Lady Benjamin PD Cannon <ben@6by7.net> wrote:
>
> Rod, that’s exactly how they are delivering it. Unclear wether it’s over a separately provisioned bandwidth channel, or wether it shares the aggregate capacity of the HFC.

It shares the aggregate bandwidth of the HFC but not your contracted bandwidth. Itmight be possible, but its extremely unlikely, to dedicate downstream or particularly upstream DOCSIS channels for this, and if you’re running docsis 3.1 “channel” takes on a rather different shade of meaning anyway.

This is done with “service flows” which are part of the docsis spec. They’re more like CAR with an ACL than DSCP. Your cable modem already has at least four service flows defined in its profile: one each for upstream and downstream, cablemodem management and contracted-bandwidth commodity internet. If there is a built in phone jack (NANOG would call this an ATA, but the cablelabs term for it is an MTA or eMTA) then add a couple of more flows to it for the voip. There could be still more; uses are up to your imagination.

I haven’t seen better than 10-20m service flows for guest wifi...

Shared vs dedicated wifi radio for guest would be dependent on the CPE. I believe they are mostly shared, but my information is dated at this point and radios have gotten stupid cheap in the meantime.

Likewise, backhaul technology is implementation dependent; L2TP is what I’ve generally seen, not GRE, but again that info is five years out of date at this point.

So in short, assuming minimal interference and good wifi config (which may be a lot to ask in some environments) someone running speedtest on the guest wifi should have almost no effect on your contracted network performance, modulo any timing effects of the docsis channel transmission time slot allocator.

HTH,
-r

Sent from my iPad
Re: Cable Company Hotspots [ In reply to ]
It is a lifesaver. It is a good back up to have if primary services fails as my telco service did Friday. Transmission rates up and down vary dramatically from as high as 40 megs down to as low 500K down. It is definitely shared bandwidth in the Last Mile. ????

-R.

________________________________
From: Rob Seastrom <rs-lists@seastrom.com>
Sent: Monday, November 23, 2020 2:55 PM
To: Lady Benjamin PD Cannon <ben@6by7.net>
Cc: Rod Beck <rod.beck@unitedcablecompany.com>; NANOG Operators' Group <nanog@nanog.org>
Subject: Re: Cable Company Hotspots

On Nov 22, 2020, at 12:42, Lady Benjamin PD Cannon <ben@6by7.net> wrote:
>
> Rod, that’s exactly how they are delivering it. Unclear wether it’s over a separately provisioned bandwidth channel, or wether it shares the aggregate capacity of the HFC.

It shares the aggregate bandwidth of the HFC but not your contracted bandwidth. Itmight be possible, but its extremely unlikely, to dedicate downstream or particularly upstream DOCSIS channels for this, and if you’re running docsis 3.1 “channel” takes on a rather different shade of meaning anyway.

This is done with “service flows” which are part of the docsis spec. They’re more like CAR with an ACL than DSCP. Your cable modem already has at least four service flows defined in its profile: one each for upstream and downstream, cablemodem management and contracted-bandwidth commodity internet. If there is a built in phone jack (NANOG would call this an ATA, but the cablelabs term for it is an MTA or eMTA) then add a couple of more flows to it for the voip. There could be still more; uses are up to your imagination.

I haven’t seen better than 10-20m service flows for guest wifi...

Shared vs dedicated wifi radio for guest would be dependent on the CPE. I believe they are mostly shared, but my information is dated at this point and radios have gotten stupid cheap in the meantime.

Likewise, backhaul technology is implementation dependent; L2TP is what I’ve generally seen, not GRE, but again that info is five years out of date at this point.

So in short, assuming minimal interference and good wifi config (which may be a lot to ask in some environments) someone running speedtest on the guest wifi should have almost no effect on your contracted network performance, modulo any timing effects of the docsis channel transmission time slot allocator.

HTH,
-r

Sent from my iPad
Re: Cable Company Hotspots [ In reply to ]
>It shares the aggregate bandwidth of the HFC but not your contracted
bandwidth

That's how I remember them being provisioned, they were on the same modem,
but using their own timing slots, so essentially the subscriber at their
own premises was never using the channels at the same time as the "roaming
subscriber" who was on their own SSID. This led to some... *interesting*
setups where you could increase your bandwidth decently, but with an
increase in latency. Depending on your use case, ymmv.

https://msol.io/blog/tech/how-i-doubled-my-internet-speed-with-openwrt/
<https://msol.io/blog/tech/how-i-doubled-my-internet-speed-with-openwrt/>

is a great example of a "creative setup"

- Thomas Scott | mr.thomas.scott@gmail.com


On Mon, Nov 23, 2020 at 9:12 AM Rod Beck <rod.beck@unitedcablecompany.com>
wrote:

> It is a lifesaver. It is a good back up to have if primary services fails
> as my telco service did Friday. Transmission rates up and down vary
> dramatically from as high as 40 megs down to as low 500K down. It is
> definitely shared bandwidth in the Last Mile. ????
>
> -R.
>
> ------------------------------
> *From:* Rob Seastrom <rs-lists@seastrom.com>
> *Sent:* Monday, November 23, 2020 2:55 PM
> *To:* Lady Benjamin PD Cannon <ben@6by7.net>
> *Cc:* Rod Beck <rod.beck@unitedcablecompany.com>; NANOG Operators' Group <
> nanog@nanog.org>
> *Subject:* Re: Cable Company Hotspots
>
> On Nov 22, 2020, at 12:42, Lady Benjamin PD Cannon <ben@6by7.net> wrote:
> >
> > Rod, that’s exactly how they are delivering it. Unclear wether it’s over
> a separately provisioned bandwidth channel, or wether it shares the
> aggregate capacity of the HFC.
>
> It shares the aggregate bandwidth of the HFC but not your contracted
> bandwidth. Itmight be possible, but its extremely unlikely, to dedicate
> downstream or particularly upstream DOCSIS channels for this, and if you’re
> running docsis 3.1 “channel” takes on a rather different shade of meaning
> anyway.
>
> This is done with “service flows” which are part of the docsis spec.
> They’re more like CAR with an ACL than DSCP. Your cable modem already has
> at least four service flows defined in its profile: one each for upstream
> and downstream, cablemodem management and contracted-bandwidth commodity
> internet. If there is a built in phone jack (NANOG would call this an
> ATA, but the cablelabs term for it is an MTA or eMTA) then add a couple of
> more flows to it for the voip. There could be still more; uses are up to
> your imagination.
>
> I haven’t seen better than 10-20m service flows for guest wifi...
>
> Shared vs dedicated wifi radio for guest would be dependent on the CPE. I
> believe they are mostly shared, but my information is dated at this point
> and radios have gotten stupid cheap in the meantime.
>
> Likewise, backhaul technology is implementation dependent; L2TP is what
> I’ve generally seen, not GRE, but again that info is five years out of date
> at this point.
>
> So in short, assuming minimal interference and good wifi config (which may
> be a lot to ask in some environments) someone running speedtest on the
> guest wifi should have almost no effect on your contracted network
> performance, modulo any timing effects of the docsis channel transmission
> time slot allocator.
>
> HTH,
> -r
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
>
RE: Cable Company Hotspots [ In reply to ]
With Comcast, the subscriber can disable the public WiFi hotspot gateway
through their on-line portal (at least when I had a comcast gateway you
could do this). Of course when you go to a customer-provided cable modem
and/or CPE WiFi AP the hotspot no longer exists as the MSO no longer
controls the prem device.




-----Original Message-----
From: NANOG <nanog-bounces+sshali=pluribusnetworks.com@nanog.org> On Behalf
Of Jay Hennigan
Sent: Sunday, November 22, 2020 12:49 PM
To: nanog@nanog.org
Subject: Re: Cable Company Hotspots

On 11/22/20 11:50, J. Hellenthal via NANOG wrote:
> Sad that in some cases the extra WiFi usage results in higher electric
> bills for the consumer.... and cannot be opted out of.

Power consumption is going to be miniscule, especially if the consumer opts
to use the cable company's built-in wi-fi themselves. If someone is really
that concerned about their electric bill they can unplug it when not in use.
Not practical if there's an ATA in it used for landline or you have devices
requiring Internet access 24/7 like security systems or IoT. Of more
practical concern is RF interference.

Typically the cable company puts their box in a convenient location for
access, either near where the cable comes in to the house or maybe behind
the TV. This often isn't the best place for radio coverage but can create
strong interference near the box.

If the customer doesn't use the cable box's wi-fi and installs their own
access point(s), there is no convenient way for them to turn off this
functionality. Many customers don't even know it exists. Most front-line
cable support techs don't either.

--
Jay Hennigan - jay@west.net
Network Engineering - CCIE #7880
503 897-8550 - WB6RDV
Re: Cable Company Hotspots [ In reply to ]
> Unclear wether it’s over a separately provisioned bandwidth channel, or wether it shares the aggregate capacity of the HFC.

In the Comcast network it uses separately-provisioned bandwidth in the access network.

- Jason