Virgin Media Hot Spots Coming to Thames Valley Network July 20th

[Sirius]

Originally Posted by Taf

No, it's off when we go to bed or go out, and is very rarely in wifi mode anyway. So would our wifi being off be an indication to thieves that the house may be empty?

So if you turn off your hub now they will know when your in bed for instance or maybe out. This is no big deal just opt out.

[qasdfdsaq]

Originally Posted by blackthorn

Is this going to be only for those on Virgin mobile ?

It's only for those on Virgin immobile.

[Kushan]

Originally Posted by heero_yuy

I run my hub in modem mode so the wifi will be off anyway. No chance of ne'er-do-wells using my connection for nefarious purposes.

It sounds like virgin are doing this "properly". That is, the wireless connection will be dishing out completely independent IP's than that of your private connection. Should someone use it for nefarious deeds, it wouldn't ever come back to you. No different to BT today.

Some questions do remain:

• Will this work if you are in modem mode?
• If not, will this automatically opt me out?
• Will this affect the wireless ability of the hubs, as presumably it's running a "Guest" network alongside the primary network?
• What speeds will this give users? Virgin are capable of offering a substantially fast service with the way this is designed.

[qasdfdsaq]

Originally Posted by Kushan

It sounds like virgin are doing this "properly". That is, the wireless connection will be dishing out completely independent IP's than that of your private connection. Should someone use it for nefarious deeds, it wouldn't ever come back to you. No different to BT today.

Yes, indeed. I don't believe any commercial ISP has every done it non-"properly", the only ones that share the connection owner's IP tend to be crowdsourced solutions like the one FON grew out of.

Some questions do remain:

• Will this work if you are in modem mode?

• Interesting point. It's actually theoretically possible
  
  

  If not, will this automatically opt me out?

  Probably not. The amount of work required to develop a system to tell if you're running in modem mode or not is not worth the effort.
  
  

  Will this affect the wireless ability of the hubs, as presumably it's running a "Guest" network alongside the primary network?

  What wireless ability?
  
  

  What speeds will this give users? Virgin are capable of offering a substantially fast service with the way this is designed.

Also a good point. I'd expect something in the range of 10-20Mbps. But that's just my guess. It'll almost certainly be less than 50.

[muppetman11]

I've connected to my own BT HH 5 via the BT-Wifi-with-Fon and ran a speed test which gave me 20mbps download.

I'm on Infinity 2 and synced at full speed.

[Kushan]

Originally Posted by qasdfdsaq

What wireless ability?

Exactly, unless it's limited to SH2's only, it's going to cripple the performance of a device that already had crippling performance. Hopefully the SH3+ will have dedicated hardware for it (along with the VoIP stuff - which, incidentally, a Virgin Engineer called "VoF" the other day...).

Originally Posted by qasdfdsaq

Also a good point. I'd expect something in the range of 10-20Mbps. But that's just my guess. It'll almost certainly be less than 50.

It's possible it'll be dependant on which package you have. Realistically, Virgin could genuinely go for a sort of "Your broadband anywhere" thing where you get the same speeds on the guest networks as you do at home. Probably overkill though. Still, 20meg if they push it country wide would be a nice little bonus. 50 would be fantastic.

[Skie]

Oooh, awesome. Hopefully the 'guest' network will have a decent amount of bandwidth available, making it more useful than BT's efforts.

[johnathome]

Originally Posted by qasdfdsaq

It's only for those on Virgin immobile.

I see what you did there

But the question is still valid. I had a quick google and found an article about this from last year, VM first mooted this in 2011 but shelved the idea, it was for VM mobile customers only.
http://www.choose.net/media/guide/ne...ape-wi-fi.html

Will VM BB customers be able to use this and are there any other areas that are live?

[qasdfdsaq]

Originally Posted by Kushan

It's possible it'll be dependant on which package you have. Realistically, Virgin could genuinely go for a sort of "Your broadband anywhere" thing where you get the same speeds on the guest networks as you do at home.

That would be wayyyy too complicated.

---------- Post added at 04:52 ---------- Previous post was at 04:51 ----------

Originally Posted by johnathome

Will VM BB customers be able to use this and are there any other areas that are live?

As I already said, this is only for VM BB customers.

[johnathome]

Originally Posted by qasdfdsaq

That would be wayyyy too complicated.

---------- Post added at 04:52 ---------- Previous post was at 04:51 ----------


As I already said, this is only for VM BB customers.

Is this live anywhere else as a google doesn't turn up anything?

[DJSADERS]

nope Thames Valley is the testing network so won't be anywhere until they are happy to roll it out

[Ignitionnet]

If you go to http://whatismyip.com and see cpcxx-rdng in there for your reverse DNS you're going to be in this trial.

[DJSADERS]

Slight update...


It lauches on Aug 5th now

You need the Android / IOS app to connect to the system (Wifi Sharing App)

Both Cable and VM Mobile customers are able to make use of this.

[TAZMANUK]

Couldn't they just put a few shubs in the cabinets and do network from them, on my hub signal just gets to the garden that's it

[qasdfdsaq]

Originally Posted by TAZMANUK

Couldn't they just put a few shubs in the cabinets and do network from them, on my hub signal just gets to the garden that's it

If they were putting anything in cabinets it won't be Superhubs.