Wireless internet free to use neighbors but cable company wants to charge me per computer?

Question

My wife just got a laptop and I am trying to figure out how to use the wireless internet card it has.

It lets me log onto my neighbors connection, but something seems wrong about that.

So I am trying to find out what I would have to do with my existing cable internet subscription in order to connect the laptop to our own connection, but it's all gibberish to me.

I'm reading the cable company's website and they keep talking about wireless internet fees PER computer. And that if I later want to add an additional computer to use this connection it will be another fee.

I don't understand this. Why is it free and simple and easy for me to just log onto someone else's connection, but to utilize my own I have to have someone come out and install something and then charge me multiple fees, including a per computer fee for each computer?

Answer 1

I never got charged per computer for internet usage??  You could get a wireless router at an electronics store and then have your laptop WIFI pick up your Network at home.  Ofcourse this means other people can get into your network from outside of your house if you dont secure this connection.  Cable company has no way of knowing you are using two computers.  It could be someone outside of the house leaching off of your network service.  How could they know?  It seems ridiculous to me that they would charge you per computer.  This never happened for me and I had 3 computers in the house prior to this residence.  You should definitely call them and question this.  I doubt you have both computers online at the same time anyways?

Answer 2

there is no Per Computer fee for wireless.  I think your cable company may stick that in the fine print just in case someone like your neighbor decides to allow everyone on the block free internet access through his system (or better yet, have all the neighbors pay him a monthly fee for it) LOL.

to set up your own wireless, just go down to Best Buy or Radio Shack or even Walmart and buy a wireless router.  Linksys is a popular brand and plenty of websites to show you how to hook it up if you can't figure it out from the directions.

Basically you run an ethernet cable from your modem to the wireless router.  It then broadcasts your connection out to your laptop.

One "suggestion" I have though is that once you have it all set up and working, you do 2 things.  #1 add a password to your wireless connection so that nobody can use your internet.  and #2 configure it not to "broadcast your SSID" (and change the SSID from the factory default to something else).  The SSID is the "name" of your wireless router.  You can tell the router to not broadcast the name to the world.  It's sort of like hiding the door.  Then if someone finds the door, they still have to have a key (password) to open the door.

So why do all that and not just let your neighbors use your wireless too?  Because everything they do on your connect gets traced back to you.  Neighbor into kiddie p**n?  It's traced to you. Neighbor into creating viruses or trying to hack computers? It gets traced back to you.  Whatever they do, gets traced back to your connection.  Why go through the potential hassle.  You pay for the system...let them get their own. :-)))

Sorry for the long winded answer...but to answer your question...there are no "per computer" fees.  The cable company has no way of knowing how many people are connected to your wireless router.

I think the wireless rates you just posted deal with accessing the internet using just road runner's wireless system.  If you already have your own cable internet connection, you just create your own wireless access with your own router.

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to secure the connection the router will have instructions on how to access it's settings (done through a web browser and usually going to a url of something like 192.168.0.0 or something).  Once you're into the router settings you'll find options to add passwords, etc.