As far as I'm aware your bandwidth is yours and should not be effected by someone using your Hub, it will cut them off before strangling you. As far as knowing if an unknown device is connected via your Hub, the Hub Manager software tells you every device that is connected but it would have to be running in the background for you to know. To my knowledge it doesn't flash a warning saying someone has signed on using your Hub, I would have to test that and report back.

Many thanks for all this detailed information.

I'm not paranoid, it's just that I live in a shared block of flats with loads of laptop-packing Japanese students.

I can imagine them all logging on to my HomeHub to watch piano-playing cats on YouTube all night long.

Only a portion of the available bandwidth is ever handed over, and if there is no-one logged on then this is not reserved.

The amount assigned I don't know, but it will always be smaller than what you as the hub user has access to.

My business hub has never had another user logged on to it but I have used plenty on my travels.

In my case the hub is located in a near fully screened environment and only a couple of place here can actually see it - solid copper roof above and other shielding. It then connects via a managed switch to three other WAPs - which are fully visible but protected.

The cost of an additional WAP to achieve this is a lot less than it would have cost me to pay for Openzone access!

http://btbusiness.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_...

and

http://www.btfon.com/support/faqs

both mention 512Kbps

You won't see many piano playing kittens on that.

Thanks again for all the info.

I decided to give it a try and opted in. A couple of hours later I was sitting in a cafe in the city centre that has a BT Openzone hotspot.

When I tried to connect to it in the normal way with my iPod I just got the BTOpenzone login page and could go no further, although I was logged into BTFON with the iPod app. I wasn't sure what username and password I needed to enter for Openzone and I didn't have my BTBroadband password to hand (although it was preconfigured in the BTFON app I couldn't see it).

So I used the BTFON app to search for a hotspot and it connected after a while. I surfed Amazon for a minute or two, then the signal became too weak to use. After that, I just got a: "Please move to an area of greater connectibility", message whenever I tried to connect with BTFON.

So my question is this: When I try to find a hotspot with BTFON is it equally likely to connect to a HomeHub or a BTOpenzone hotspot? Is there a way to connect to BTOpenzone for free (it's £6.00 an hour in Cafe Nero). Will I need to enter BTOpenzone login details every time I log on, or should the BTFON app which already has these details take care of all this.

I'm a little puzzled as to why the app didn't automatically log me into the cafe's BTOpenzone hotspot as - at £6.00 an hour - this was presumably the strongest signal in the area?

Sorry I'm not familiar with i pods and i phones, still stuck in the 20th century when it comes to phones. All I know is using a laptop it scans for "available wireless networks" and lists all the ones you are in range of whether it is BT FON or BT Openzone, gives you the signal strength and you choose which one you connect via, when you click on connect it takes you to a log on page where you enter your BT account details and your password and then you can launch a browser.
Maybe someone else can help with the i pod and i phone apps as I'm still a dinosaur when it comes to them

I use Openzone every day it is a fantastic bundled service. Anyone is more than welcome to use my hub's hotspot.

Don't have a fancy iphone but I log in with my aging BT2Go phone or laptop with my primary email address and password and never had a problem.

Most of the hotspots have a 'click here' if you are bt broadband customer on the landing page somewhere.

Initially I was only opted in and broadcasting an Openzone hotspot from my hub and I manually added Fon later so I am not sure if you have to have both, but if you use one you might as well use both.

Edited by deleted (Wed 08-Sep-10 19:04:42)

Does anyone using the FON logging into your hub use your monthly allowance? I do not use my computer a great deal but after being with BT for only a few weeks I had an email from them warning me I had use 7gigs of my 10gig allowance, I wondered if someone had connected to my hub and did some large downloads???

Anyone using the open services DOES NOT use your allowance.