As you know – I’ve got a long bet on WiFi being the default transport for all our information exchange; voice, video, audio, email, web, everything. Everything.
Unfortunately – there’s an insidious group with a counter bet and planting FUD everywhere.
Thankfully, the EFF has declared the need and benefit for more open WiFi networks:
“…we’d all be better off if we all left our WiFi open, but we each benefit slightly if we close our WiFi. Our failure to work together prevents us from enjoying better, more widespread Internet access.”
“The best solution to this problem is to have WiFi routers which make it very easy to share a certain amount of bandwidth via an open network, but simultaneously provide an encrypted WPA2 network that gets priority over the open network. Some modern routers already support multiple networks like this, but we need a very simple, single-click or default setting to get the prioritization right.”
“If we want a future where anyone can watch high definition movies or make video calls from anywhere without wires, what we need is short-range networks with routers everywhere — like the one we’d have if everyone opened their WiFi.”
BTW – here’s my rule of thumb on protecting WiFi networks:
Don’t – it will inconvenience and irritate those you want to have access far more than those you don’t.
The “Thingelstad Guest” network is available to use anytime you are in my neck of the woods!
Meraki used to have some products specifically aimed at this objective, but it seems to have been phased out of their product line.