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Bruce Schneier runs an open wireless network

Bruce Schneier explains why he runs an open wireless network. I leave mine open as well, so it’s nice to know I’m in good company.

Tags: · security

1 Cameron Barrett // Jan 17, 2008 at 11:06 am

Mine is only open because I couldn’t get my AppleTV and Tivo Series 3 HD to recognize the WAP/WEP/Whatever password encryption I was using. I gave up trying and just left it open. I think I read a solution somewhere that required me to put a $ in front of the password but I never tried it.
2 Rafe // Jan 17, 2008 at 12:43 pm

That’s the actual reason mine is open as well.
3 acm // Jan 18, 2008 at 10:53 am

I leave mine open largely because I had to have my Airport hard-reset by customer service during some problems I was having, and I don’t know how to get it to ask for a password again. But I also like the principle of sharing access.

However, just this past weekend, somebody was using the network so hard (big download? running a huge simulation? can’t imagine) that it made simple web access unreliable, so we had to shut the network down for a day to shake them. Even then, I’d be happy if we could just ping the person and ask them to back off, rather than having to cut the cord…