Subnostr

today i learned that a new trend in internet service is to provide you with routers that you can't turn off the wifi

the Altice GR241AG optic fibre IPTV/VoIP router has a "smart wifi" feature enabled which works with mesh wifi network systems and you have to call the damn provider to actually turn it off

i even popped open this box and disconnected what looked like typical wifi antenna sockets and the damn wifi is still detected at nearly half strength by my phone

probably will have to do some research but i am pretty sure i should be able to get some typical standard optical ethernet router that doesn't have wifi in it at all...

on the bright side, nothing is connected to it... but on teh other side, it's sending out a beacon 10 times a second or something to advertise its existence

part of the reason why this is really dumb is that some people have their own infrastructure requirements, and these baked in settings mean that you can literally get a degradation of the function of your own hardware because of the interference on the channel

even before you put into the formula that someone might actually NOT WANT ANY MICROWAVE RADIO aside from the unavoidable GSM in a dumbphone

hell, i'd love to even ditch that and just have a voip line and when i'm out, tough shit, call back later, leave a message jackass

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ᴛʜᴇ ᴅᴇᴀᴛʜ ᴏꜰ ᴍʟᴇᴋᴜ 1y ago

best solution makes use of the microwave oven i don't want to use - put it inside it, unplugged of course. the interior of the microwave is designed to contain this kind of radiation, though probably not 5ghz so well

ᴛʜᴇ ᴅᴇᴀᴛʜ ᴏꜰ ᴍʟᴇᴋᴜ 1y ago

and, i can even close it almost fully closed without kinking the wires up too much and no more visibility of it... here's proof

you can also see that it is normally only connected via ethernet (the <--> symbol next to the battery charge indicator), and it has NFC enabled but that's it

also i wanted to show this because if you use amethyst you can see my status message and one of my neighbours has this as their SSID on their wifi, probably the neighbour up the hill with the two cats

banjo 1y ago

Hmmm...interesting...

Right now, I'm running a passthrough to an #OPNSense router and using #OpenWRT for APs...but if you can't turn off the ISPs AP that's a problem...

I can see the wanting to mesh to enhance their services--see Amazon Sidewalk https://www.amazon.com/Amazon-Sidewalk/b?ie=UTF8&node=21328123011

Segmenting your internal network will help, but I agree--I don't like them "providing" an AP that's always on / not configurable.

#privacy

ᴛʜᴇ ᴅᴇᴀᴛʜ ᴏꜰ ᴍʟᴇᴋᴜ 1y ago

yeah, it's just fucking rude and shitty

and they aren't the only ISP locking this on with this device, most of the info i found about people trying to disable it and sometimes effective were on an ISP called Optimum, and MEO portugal is the one doing it here

so glad i was able to find a workaround though... probably can rig something more reasonable as a faraday cage that still lets the thing breathe (the microwave will allow the heat to dissipate also) but EVEN WITH THE ANTENNAS UNPLUGGED it was able to see and connect to it... mind blowing... the signal is so strongly sent through the wires that it transmits even without a proper configuration of antenna

banjo 1y ago

Yeah, that's pretty concerning. Wonder if you could ground out the antenna somehow (although that might risk frying something).

Is there any alternative? BYOD?

ᴛʜᴇ ᴅᴇᴀᴛʜ ᴏꜰ ᴍʟᴇᴋᴜ 1y ago

yeah, i will investigate whether i can get my own non-wireless, ethernet only optical router

putting it inside the microwave and closing the door is effective... the wires are not being squashed that badly because of the way microwave doors at the bottom meet at a right angle of the base so there's no overlap or other ding pushing at them, it's working, no hotspot detected, that will do for now, not gonna use either the wifi or the microwave (for similar reasons)

the only thing to worry about is i need to put those antennas back on right, i didn't photograph them before unplugging them... i suppose their range will be simply not so good, as it's a 4 antenna MIMO array

ᴛʜᴇ ᴅᴇᴀᴛʜ ᴏꜰ ᴍʟᴇᴋᴜ 1y ago

but yes, if i had some alligator clips and wires attached to an earth pin on the power system it would kill the radios... i don't see how it could lead to current going into it unless my place got struck by lightning or something, current goes where the strongest positive potential exists, which is earth... it's also a hassle, the case comes apart with clips easy enough, but to put earth through to silence all those antennas would mean leaving the case open

this way now is safer, just put em inside a faraday cage, gone