[chatmasta]

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned this in the thread but you can actually opt out of the xfinitiwifi thing. The deal is that you can use any of the hotspots if you have a comcast account and also share your router. If you opt out, you can no longer use the xfinitiwifi hotspots but nobody can use yours either.

[mintplant]

Have you tried opting out? When my dad did, he ran into a mess of broken links and incorrect support pages. Eventually he got someone to opt him out over the phone... only to have the "xfinitywifi" network pop back up the next day. It took a few more tries to have it actually disabled once and for all.

I imagine the less technically-inclined would have given up a lot earlier in the process.

[chatmasta]

Actually, that did happen to me and I ended up just forgetting about it. At the time I also wondered if it was intentional.

In fact I've noticed conveniently broken web pages from multiple large corporations. I've ran into this issue when attempting to access privacy policies and other disclosures.

There certainly may be something nefarious about this. Comcast could certainly get away with it.

[joezydeco]

I'm using my own modem, so no wifi hotspot in my home, but I've never been blocked from using another xfinity-wifi AP.

[pseudonym]

If they have that much trouble taking the flags off of people's accounts, it wouldn't surprise me to find out that there's no codified correlation between "has the AP running" flag and the "is running a Comcast router+modem" flag.

[joezydeco]

I honestly don't think there's a flag.

I set up service with my own equipment from the start, and after all the account setup I received a dozen notices that all these wifi points were available. It was never specified as a "must have a Comcast router" condition.

[simple10]

I've successfully disabled xfinity wifi on my router. You have to do it through your comcast.com account instead of through the router admin. After updating your account, Comcast will remote disable the xfinity wifi on the router.

http://customer.comcast.com/help-and-support/internet/disabl...

[toxican]

Not sure that this is the case. I guess it depends on what opting out is. I never called anyone to opt out, though I did turn it off in the modem itself. Then a few months later I bought a new modem entirely and returned the Comcast one. At no point then or now did I lose the ability to connect to other xfinitywifi's.

[grandalf]

If this is the case, then would it be more efficient to connect to your own router with the second connection and just allocate the extra channels to yourself?

[blfr]

Why would you want to opt out?

[driverdan]

Why would you want to opt in?

[blfr]

'chatmasta expects there to be a thread about how to opt out so I'm assuming there's some reason to do it. Otherwise, why would it come up?