Connecting without using a phone line

I want to post this to find out how it was possible for my computer to be connected to the internet whilst I had my phone line disconnected. I have been having speed issues and upon contacting O2 who is my ISP they asked me to disconnect the line, remove the faceplate and then reconnect using the test plug, but before I reconnected the phone line I noticed I was still connected to the internet, although I believe it might have been a neighbours connection. The only thing I could think of was the powerline adaptor I use becasue after I turned it off I lost connection. Is it possible to connect through one of these to someone elses connection. Also prior to disconnecting, my O2 thompson router on access did report back that it was a BThomehub.

Your PC can only connect over wireless to the unprotected wireless network of someone else. You should be able to see this in your PC's Wireless Network Connections and it won't your O2 Box. I would thought it would 1st ask you to confirm.

In reply to a post by hoather64:

The only thing I could think of was the powerline adaptor I use becasue after I turned it off I lost connection. Is it possible to connect through one of these to someone elses connection.

If they use similar powerline adaptors to yours then it's possible, yes, but not common- usually neighbours are on different phases and there's enough cable and sundry kit between the wiring systems to prevent a decent connection.

But it can happen... and if you can "piggy-back" onto their LAN, they can in all likelihood piggy-back on to yours!

Most powerline adaptors have some sort of security systems that can be enabled to prevent this happening, it might be an idea to investigate yours.

I have seen quite a few where they are on the same phase ... not ideal but it happens. In some locations the power is fed to a building and split to the two meters and CUs which could be quite close.

In one case they were seeing their achieved speeds dropping drastically - but only when the neighbours were home. Turned out that the neighbours turned their "Plugs" off when leaving the house but as soon as they were running there was interference between the two sets.

My PC connects via ethernet to the router and other than the speed drop 18meg down to 0.5meg nothing looked different, still showed connected through my router with my router name in the network connections, it wasn't until I tried to access the router that I realised there was a problem. I entered the routers address and it displayed a BT home hub router, this router is in my list in network connections and is showing as secure so don't think I am connecting wirelessly. I will try the encryption security on the plugs, I thought I had but maybe not.

turn your wireless off and see what happpens