Is it against Spark's TOS to share a friends internet to my home via a Wireless link?

Forums › New Zealand Broadband › Is it against Spark's TOS to share a friends internet to my home via a Wireless link?

cjkbarnett

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#214585 18-May-2017 19:50

Hi all, i'm new here, just wanted to ask a few questions

Our current ISP is Lightwire (formerly NetSmart), and to say the least, our speeds are terrible. Not much we can do about it it seems. Can even load a YouTube video in 1080p without constant buffering. speedtest.net tells me i hit a max of around 1.5 Mbps off peak around midday, and get about .5 on peak between 6.30pm - 9pm

I was wondering if i used two of these (www.ubnt.com/airmax/powerbeam-ac-gen2/) to link share my mates unlimited internet connection (he lives along Cambridge road, Tauranga, about 20 meters away from the switch) and create a wireless link to my house (we live up on Belk Road South, approx 12km LOS), would i be breaking sparks terms of service?

And if i cant share his unlimited connection, is it possible to get a second vdsl line installed at one household, and then beam that? Or can you only have one connection per house?

Cheers, Cameron B

shk292

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#1784454 18-May-2017 20:02

My approach would be "how would they know?". If the kit you linked to is available and licneced for NZ, I'd go for it. You may be susceptible to rain fade or problems if it's really windy and the dishes move

michaelmurfy

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#1784457 18-May-2017 20:10

This has been answered before - this is in their T&C's:

Use the Services for your own personal, non-commercial use or, if you are operating a business, or doing business, from your residential home, for your own internal business purposes.

(from https://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=39&topicid=150701)

So that excludes sharing a connection with another household. Technically they couldn't tell if you were using it however in order to abide by the T&C's of the connection it may be better to sign up with your own internet connection on a 2nd connection and use that instead.

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DarkShadow

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#1784463 18-May-2017 20:20

cjkbarnett:

is it possible to get a second vdsl line installed at one household?

Sure. There's usually two pairs leading to each house and you can have a DSL connection on each pair.

cjkbarnett

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#1784466 18-May-2017 20:28

Thanks for the help and quick responses guys! Much appreciated

Zeon

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#1784500 18-May-2017 22:51

If its really that important to you maybe get a connection installed there for your use and then exclusively send that over the wireless link?

Speedtest 2019-10-14

michaelmurfy

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#1784503 18-May-2017 23:12

Putting a Draytek DV130 into bridge mode and sending that over the wireless link then using your own router at your house set up with PPPoE will be the way to go. That way, you've only got a dumb bridge at the other end meaning less to go wrong. This will involve installing your own connection however that's easy to do since most houses have 2 lines to the ETP.

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DonGould

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#1784704 19-May-2017 12:51

Cameron, short answer is 'yes', as others have said. It breaks a pile of rules, so if you want to be 100% on the right side of the issue then 'ya...'.

But my experience is that no one really cares because there's a massive pile of social, economic and geopolitical issues that also come into play. The sort of stuff that is the reason Kim Dotcom is still here in NZ and not in the US in a jail.

I suggest to you the key issues really are:

* You build it, you own it... don't go calling spark and complaining that the net is slow anywhere because you've now got a WAN that's way beyond what they can support, and this is the primary reason why they don't allow this stuff in their ToC. I remember in Australia when ADSL first came out, we weren't allowed to even hook it to a network... like who have a network in their house?!?! computers are way to expensive for anyone to have more than one, right?!?!?

* Consider network isolation. It's just polite not to set up something that means you can see your friends computer and he can see your. Nothing more annoying than your mum printing out her 30 pages on your mates laser printer.

* Consider interception. If you start googling 'how to get the materials to..." and emailing the suppliers then someones going to come knocking on your mates door first. This is another driver for carriers like Spark to put these things in their terms. They understand about this stuff, you might not have even thought about it. Personally I just don't worry about this stuff. I know that the carrier can see all the NAT records if they choose and can reasonably quickly figure out what computer is offending long before they knock on anyones door, but then we're also back to privacy.

* Privacy - if the police decide that they do need to be looking at your stuff then you've just built a network that's going to mean that they end up looking at your mates by mistake too.

Do you start to see why they put these things in the terms?

But don't let any of this stop you from smashing out a link and hooking up some fast nets... just be mindful of it, understand it and think about what respect you need to show your hosts.

Lastly, shout out if you need help in any way, there's a bunch of us here on GZ who's been down this road for exactly the same reasons! Myself, I was in a suburban black spot of good data and I built a network across 3 suburbs to get me the net I wanted. Having said that, I've just installed a fibre at the original back spot site.... and the carriers understand this too. They do understand that it's more than likely that your network will not last for ever and you'll be back on a fast new network, that they built and own and on the right side of their T&C's!

Happy times!

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ZSasha

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#1784879 19-May-2017 17:09

DonGould:

...
* Consider interception. If you start googling 'how to get the materials to..." and emailing the suppliers then someones going to come knocking on your mates door first. This is another driver for carriers like Spark to put these things in their terms. They understand about this stuff, you might not have even thought about it. Personally I just don't worry about this stuff. I know that the carrier can see all the NAT records if they choose and can reasonably quickly figure out what computer is offending long before they knock on anyones door, but then we're also back to privacy.

Hi DonGould,

could you explain please, how you think it is possible?
What do you mean by saying "see all the NAT records" ? Do you mean they can distinguish between two raw IP or even TCP sessions both originated from two different computers behind NAT ?? Very curious to know it is possible :)

Thanks.

DonGould

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#1784882 19-May-2017 17:24

ZSasha:

DonGould:

...
* Consider interception. If you start googling 'how to get the materials to..." and emailing the suppliers then someones going to come knocking on your mates door first. This is another driver for carriers like Spark to put these things in their terms. They understand about this stuff, you might not have even thought about it. Personally I just don't worry about this stuff. I know that the carrier can see all the NAT records if they choose and can reasonably quickly figure out what computer is offending long before they knock on anyones door, but then we're also back to privacy.

Hi DonGould,

could you explain please, how you think it is possible?
What do you mean by saying "see all the NAT records" ? Do you mean they can distinguish between two raw IP or even TCP sessions both originated from two different computers behind NAT ?? Very curious to know it is possible :)

Thanks.

I had a vague recolection that it was in the IP frame header, but I could be wrong on that, I was just googling it. I also recalled that there's stuff in HTTP headers too, but I was just looking at my PHPINFO output too.

But getting to the bottom of where traffic is coming from really isn't that hard if you really want to put a mind to it I suspect. I'm not an expert, but I've just seen enough noise in my own systems to realise that creating good scripts in HTTP traffic could well show up any amount of stuff.

For example, just put a cookie in the path and see where it ends up. How do you think that all the targeted advertising gets to you? You google stuff on your desktop and then your phone is showing adds for the same stuff hours later.

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Marmalade

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#1804303 20-Jun-2017 20:18

Hi — I only just came across your post. I have been doing exactly what you describe for over 2 years now, to a friend 1km away with 100MB fibre. My perspective from that experience is just do it! The ubiquity gear I chose (Nanobeam 5ac's) have been rock solid. I'd buy them again in a heartbeat.

I reckon (and it's obviously a "colloquial" interpretation) is that the ISP T&C's are there to make sure you won't complain to them when your weird wireless stuff breaks, and also (to a much lesser degree I'd wager) to stop you using unfair amounts of data.

My biggest question for you would be: why choose Spark? Other ISPs don't have any clause like that — I checked several before I did it. My situation is slightly different in that I pay the full bill and the host would probably never have signed up for UFB themselves, so arguably it's my connection anyway.

I suppose it depends if you're the kind of person who is willing to stray into the wild side of life where the grass is so much greener lol