WIFI Security Option

My Internet cable runs right along my Apartment and it would be very easy for someone to cut and disable my Wyze Alarm. I hope you “Wyze Guys” are reading this.
So I have a little Chrome Box running Ubuntu Linux which is very easy to configure
a Hotspot on, (Uses 6w).
As I have Xfinity and there are a couple of Xfinity Wifi Hotspots around, I setup
my Linux box to connect to the Xfinity Wifi as the source connection, (Signed in of course),
and setup a USB Wifi adapter as the Hotspot which my Wyze Hub, Wyze Camera and phone are connected to. All of this running on a UPS. So I can monitor connection status via my phone, Xfinity’s whole system would have to go down to lose connectivity. The Xfinity Hot Spots only work on equipment you lease from Xfinity .

So it is a safe bet the Xfinity Wifi Hot Spot you connect to is someone just using as a basic internet connection. (Will usually be plugged in and working).
Do this at your own risk however.

Follow up with some background information and how the big Telecom’s came up with
their hotpots for subscribers.

Their was a company from Spain called “Fon” and they created the “Fon Movement”
The way it worked is you purchased an Access Point ($30) and connected it to your
Home internet connection. You created an account with “Fon” and shared your Internet.
For those without “Fon” at home you could purchase a day pass for 3 euro for access and “Fon” would split the profit if your Access Point was the purchase point. If you Hosted a
“Fon” access point at home you could access any “Fon” hot spot for free.

Very successful in Europe Their Hot spots were everywhere and soon caught the attention
of the Big Telecom’s KPN and BT- British Telecom. “Fon” eventually partnered with the
European Telecoms and if you subscribed with KPN or BT you would have access to all
the “Fon” hot spots. In the USA it seemed to go straight to the telecoms with as an example
Xfinity. They just deployed it with their leased equipment. If you are not an xfinity subscriber you can purchase a Pass and get access, same thing, except of course they are not splitting the revenue with the subscriber.

So what is the point? Well no one is going to install those cool decals from Wyze on
their windows advertising cut my internet cable to disable the alarm, However maybe the "Wyze Guys"might read this.

Perhaps they might think, we should just create our own Wyze Access point and sell them to our user base and they could all share their Wifi for our alarms.

Great Idea! But wait, Wyze is an Amazon subsidiary that charges shipping, (Maybe).
You know now that I think about it there must be a Gazillion Echo dots installed already
and all we would need to do is enable them to share the Echo’s Wifi the same way that
“Fon” did.

You guessed it that is what the Echo neighborhood thing is about, (Probably).
I tested it does not work yet unplug your router and the hub just says offline.

However “Wyze Guys” if you have not planed this already now would be a good time to start.

For now the user base can figure out how to repeat Xfinity’s Hot Spots.
Thanks for your time, Let me know what you think!

P.S. This is a great product and I love it!

(rant) Oh that data cap is infuriating. “Thanks for paying for unlimited internet for all these years. Now, as a bonus to our loyal customers, you can have unlimited internet for only double what you’re paying for unlimited internet! Don’t worry… Here at Xfinity, we’ll get your TV money one way or another…”

Really Comcast?..95% of your users don’t go over the cap, but you’ll go through all this rigamarole? Yeah, right. Maybe they know that streaming a single 4k movie will use roughly 5% of your quota… Or that downloading one large Xbox game will use 10%. (/rant)

Rad sounding setup with redundancies! Great thinking. Have you tried some trial runs? Cut the power to the house, or at least to the systems in question?

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I hate the Xfinity cap too. I had to pay the extra $50/month for the Unlimited-unlimited option a while ago because we had tenants who ran the TV in HD 24/7 on multiple systems. They also made it nearly impossible to work from home. I eventually had to install a Gargoyle router and set a bandwidth cap (both per second and per month) on all their IP addresses just so I could work and make sure we weren’t going over the 1TB limit (before we got the unlimited unlimited), because xfinity charges a ridiculous amount for overage. It was something like $10 per extra GB over. And their DNS crashed all the time. I hate Xfinity.

Anyway, back on topic, this is a really interesting idea as an alternative to cellular backup. It’s not likely a person is going to cut the wires of every single neighbor. Only risk is when power goes out &/or Xfinity has an outage (which is WAY too common), but it is definitely better than just relying on your own SSID alone.

I thought Xfinity told me that I had a small monthly limit for using the hotspot connections though.

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