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Unsecured wifi network for oldies?

Started by Dex Sawash, May 01, 2021, 07:52:08 PM

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Dex Sawash

Thinking about changing my mother's wifi to no password so I don't have to drive over there every time her smart tv, etc gets booted or whatever. She has a google speaker, smart tv, and we may add a facetime-type device.
She can't navigate a password input on a tv remote.

She's in an old people apartment and it is unlikely anyone would host kiddie porn through her network.

She has a pc that is always off except when my sister occasionally looks through the bank transactions with mother (normally sis just manages it from her house w/o involving mother at all).

Terrible idea or just a slightly bad idea?

Sebastian Cobb

Are you sure wifi is the problem?

My firestick occasionally suffers amnesia and makes me re-login to apps but it's never wifi that's the issue. In fact when changing routers I usually change the ssid/password on the box rather than updating everything. For abouy a decade the ssid was the surname of one of my best friends, a housemate initially (we only lived together about 3 years), then they moved out and later died.

If it is wifi that's unusual and perhaps her router is a pile of shite?

canadagoose

I'd tend to agree with Sebastian here, devices don't usually forget things like that. Is it possible the router is losing connectivity to the Internet intermittently? Maybe there are some stats you can check?

If that's no good you could suggest using WPS, so you just have to press a couple of buttons to reconnect.

olliebean

If it's a decent router, you should be able to lock it down so that even if it's not password secured, only known devices can connect.

Endicott

Unsecured wifi in old people's home, what could go wrong?


Endicott

Does sound weird though, I've only even had to enter the wifi password on my TV the once.

Dex Sawash

It's hypothetical at this point. Haven't been inside in a year and all her stuff has quit. Definitely a shit router/modem combo from her provider.  I don't know much about this stuff. Going next weekend to set up new tv and get everything working again.

Just grasping at straws to try to make it easier to manage, she is 80.

Sebastian Cobb

Obviously might need a bit more diagnosis from you but it sounds like the router is the problem then. A well regarded one won't be that expensive (and will save you a lot of time) if you can get the credentials out the old one or can switch it to "modem mode" and chain them both together.

My ISP router is atrocious, it seems to have a dumb healthcheck inside it that reboots the thing if it notices the connection drops which would be fine but the software is so shit and bloated it then takes the best part of ten minutes to boot up.

Zetetic

I've no idea if there are devices that refuse to connect or stay connected to unsecured networks yet, but I imagine there might well be at some point.

You should be able to set the password to "aaaaaaaa". That's 8 "a"s. Is that more tolerable?

Sebastian Cobb

If things are all automatic I doubt it's a problem but I had some havoc with my current router when I statically defined some ip's manually and it turns out the router's inbuilt (dhcp) ip allocation didn't pay any attention to manually configured addresses and caused collisions and erratic behaviour as a result of the misallocation.

There's nothing in the dchp spec that means they have to do that, mind, and it was lazy, bad practice on my part expecting it to. But every other router I've owned has managed.

Dex Sawash

Her telly sits on the table next to the internet gear ffs.
Never occurred to me to just plug the fucking thing in.

katzenjammer

Just to warn you that some IOT devices won't connect to an unsecured WIFI network

MojoJojo

Quote from: Sebastian Cobb on May 02, 2021, 08:09:23 PM
There's nothing in the dchp spec that means they have to do that, mind, and it was lazy, bad practice on my part expecting it to. But every other router I've owned has managed.

I don't think it's really dhcp's fault - it would have to try pinging the address or do arp to see if something was using the address statically. In general it's not a solveable problem, as how is DHCP supposed to know about devices that are turned off with statically assigned IP addresses? I imagine where you've had it work before it's because dhcp was handing out addresses in a range you weren't using.




Zetetic

Quote from: katzenjammer on May 04, 2021, 04:08:56 PM
Just to warn you that some IOT devices won't connect to an unsecured WIFI network
Well that answers my question. Do you have some examples, just for future reference?

Which is why I'd suggest "aaaaaaaa" as an alternative.

katzenjammer

Quote from: Zetetic on May 04, 2021, 06:30:50 PM
Well that answers my question. Do you have some examples, just for future reference?

Only this which my parents have and by design it won't connect. I've no idea if this is a common 'feature'