FCC Giving Away Wi-fi Routers For Broadband Tests 196
An anonymous reader writes "The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will be giving away 10,000 Wireless-N routers as part of their program to perform a number of broadband tests, for the benefit of a better connection in the future. They are striving to work on improving a number of issues including latency, packet loss, connection speeds and much more."
Re:caps! (Score:5, Insightful)
Making sure everyone has fast, reliable access available is great; but the FCC also has to worry about internet caps! Now that AT&T is cutting people off after a certain amount of bandwidth use, someone with the power to stop this monopolistic abuse needs to flex some muscle. What is the FCC doing about internet caps?
I'm just guessing, but perhaps it would be wise to first measure and document what the carriers do, as opposed to what they say?
Re:stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:$50 for your privacy (Score:3, Insightful)
My privacy is worth much more then a crappy router that will accidentally send all my browsing information.
They're the Feds. If you won't turn your browsing activity over for a free gadget, they'll just go to ATT and get it from them.
Re:$50 for your privacy (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm involved with this (Score:5, Insightful)
It is a simple program. I plugged in the Netgear router in between my firewall and my cable modem and configured it as a bridge. It analyzes the traffic and sends the information to the FCC.
I love how some people here are whining about privacy. I think those people will whine about anything. What is the alternative? The data needs to be collected. Either you want the government to step in and regulate the telcos, or you don't. If you don't, then STFU and stop whining about the crappy service they are giving you. If you do, then realize you have to be part of the solution. Whining about it never fixed anything. At some point, someone has to collect some data.
If you don't want to participate in the program, don't. On the other hand, I'm happy to know that the FCC is getting some real data to show that when I fire up my VPN client from home to do some work, everything else on the network (NetFlix, et al) gets throttled back to next to nothing. I'm happy to be a guinea pig so that the FCC an see that the supposedly "faster" connection that I'm paying for is not really any faster than the basic package.
If you're doing something with your internet connection that the government cares about, they already know about you. Participating in some research is not going to suddenly put you on their radar. Your browsing history is a lot less interesting to most people than you think it is. The country is involved in two wars and the economy is crumbling around us. Do you really think the government cares if you want to wank off to www.fatmomfetish.com, or whatever other "super secret private" stuff you are doing with your internet connection? Running a Tor exit node? Seeding the latest movie rip? Ooooo, you crazy rebels you!
Re:$50 for your privacy (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, the FCC is sending out routers to ten thousand random people because the FCC wants to spy on, uh, ten thousand random people. The government is out to gitcha! RUN! Fucking moron. The government does tons of terrible shit, like giving all the wealth generated by the middle class to about 400 well connected guys, but guess what? This is not one of those terrible things. When you act like a paranoid schizophrenic, and tell everyone the government is ALWAYS out to screw EVERYONE over, ALL THE TIME, you are doing the work those 400 well connected guys want you to do. They want everyone to mistrust the one thing, the only thing that can possibly stop them: the power of people working together, i.e. government. So thanks for that. You do know that even if you were to fellate them 24/7 for the next fifty years, they won't let you into their little club, right?
Re:"It's a trap!" (Score:4, Insightful)
Once it is yours (after the test) just nuke the custom firmware and load your favorite WRT flavor. I mean, unless you are paranoid enough to think they have custom hardware in there just to spy, and if you are that paranoid, you probably already think they have it in commercially sold routers.
Re:$50 for your privacy (Score:5, Insightful)
So... What type of sites do you browse that you don't care for the feds to know about?
All of them.