Can I faraday cage my ISP-issued router in order to use my own?

Shortstack@reddthat.com to Technology@lemmy.world – 51 points –

I have a family member living on my property in a separate but adjacent living space, close enough together to share my router's wifi. She likes to let her youtube app endlessly autoplay talking head news videos at full volume due to her hearing loss, and this goes on for a few hours in the mornings. The sound through the walls is annoying but headphones block enough that it's a non-issue as long as I can load something to play through them. The real rub is that I also would like to do something on the laptop during breakfast and her neverending news autoplay eats up all the bandwidth I am paying for when I want to use it. I can't cut off her internet, but I could prioritize my traffic over hers in the morning so that I can load an episode of something and listen through headphones. Yes I know this would be a bit unscrupulous but I have already suggested she not doomscroll via youtube all morning, to no avail.

Setting up a separate ISP account for the adjacent space isnt an option for the time being. The router/modem combo is ISP-issued and locked down by default due to too many service calls from people breaking stuff in settings. As far as I know it is not able to be swapped out to an off-the-shelf due to this being fiber optic internet, plus I'm only so-so in tech knowledge.

Which leads me to the title, can I put the ISP-issued router in a faraday cage, connect my own router via ethernet and be able to control settings via that route? Any reason I shouldn't/couldn't?

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You have fiber yet not enough bandwidth to support more than a single YouTube video? What awful ISP is that?

Also to answer your question, it won't work if you can't set the ISP router to bridge mode if you want to run your own router.

when the telco here ran fiber out to the edge of town where the schools are, they moved all the customers along that route to the new fiber (and disconnected them from the copper network at the same time). they offered internet speeds starting at '10 meg' (10mbps), going up to 1 gig (1000mbps). many customers chose the slowest and cheapest option (dsl over copper was topping-out at about 15mbit at the time), even though it was only like $20 more to get 100mbit.

to this day, over a decade later, there's still customers on that 10mbps plan. and because the telco does telco things. those customers are paying the same rate (or more) as a new customer signing up for 100mbit (or the comparable 'fastest available' dsl on the copper lines, which is 60mbit these days). no automatic speed bump up, no discount for the slower plan, and zero communication about rates and options. the money flows in regardless, why tell the person giving it to you that they're getting shafted.

I'm always amazed at how much you pay for internet in the US and Canada. Here in France, fiber vs copper is usually the same price maybe a 5-10 euros/month difference depending on the ISP

It is a monopoly issue. In the US, the companies have the monopoly on political control, not the people. That is the main reason ISPs are so f-ed up. The literally outlawed competition.

Am in US, it's probably just area dependant, u see a similar price discrepancy where I am at.

I don't know the full history of my isp but this sounds about right, looks like I could pay a little more for a good bump in speed.

I'll probably just go ahead with that but set up my own router anyway because there's other benefits besides prioritizing traffic

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Could be some rural area or a budget plan with low bandwidth. Both are fairly common among people I'm acquainted with.

Bridge mode isn't necessary as long as you make sure the IP of the new 3rd party router is different than the ISP router's. Although bridge mode would be best, in OP's case, they said that the router is locked down and they don't have access to it.

Also to answer your question, it won't work if you can't set the ISP router to bridge mode if you want to run your own router.

Just use the new router in AP mode, or just buy an AP.

Now that a day and the annoyance have passed and many replies have pointed out, there's clearly better ways to solve this.

One being I should probably pay a bit more for the not hugely throttled connection speed, or ask the ISP to set their router to bridge mode. But probably both.

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You could probably buy another cheap router and connect it to the first one using an ethernet cable. Set the second router to access point mode, and disable wifi on the first router (some routers have a physical button for that). You'll be able to connect only to the second router using wifi, but still use the first router with a physical connection.

Or have the router point DNS at a pinhole and blackhole YouTube in the early hours.

Through a faraday cage? I mean, maybe… but have you checked if you can just turn the wifi functionality off on the ISP device? Most will let you do this and it would be way easier/cleaner.

I mean, you’re not wrong, but I reached that breaking point where you’re just annoyed enough to start looking how to fix the annoyance, and it’s a Saturday when the isp office is closed. I’ll probably just call them Monday morning and see if the suggestions from other replies will do the trick

The intent was to only faraday cage the isp router, not my own

Lol yeeesssss. It's not exactly the healthiest mentality in my opinion... But I 100% sympathize with you here. "I have energy and opportunity today to fix a thing so let's do whatever I can do today to solve it." Unfortunately, that does lead to some "creative" solutions like a Faraday cage around your modem (ahahaha 😂). But it sometimes you just any solution!

Let it be known that I have provided your 2nd upvote.

All the ISP's here allow what's called *verified l bridged mode", where their device just passes the connection on to your own router/firewall. I do this because the ISP's devices generally suck in terms of quality for anything but passing on traffic, and use my own firewall+router.

You can get devices which run OpenWRT and should be able to manage the connections decently without costing too much

See if your ISP can set their router to bridged mode, then you should be able to use your own while plugged into their equipment. It will turn all the functionality off on it so you won't be doubled natted and traffic should flow properly.

Alternatively, if you are a bit tech savy, you could explore see if there is a DMZ setting, which should also allow you to use an alternative router with the ISP's one.

Just a note to OP: a Faraday cage would block all WiFi signals from what I understand. If that's the result you're after, there should be a setting to cut off WiFi in the router, it's pretty standard. This is for when you want to only use wired internet.

Also, if you want to prioritize your traffic over theirs, you couldloonk for a QoS setting (quality of service).

Buy new router, connect via Ethernet, disable ISP's router Wifi to avoid radio interference, share wifi access to family member.

Set QoS rules on your new router to get a higher priority/bandwidth for YOUR devices.

QoS was my first thought as well. OP is ready to build a faraday cage to brute-force this common 3rd party router feature!

This is what I intended to do, but the ISP's modem/router wont let you change any settings and has no antennae that i can remove. But then again, I got the 'that does it, im solving this' itch to solve the problem on a Saturday when their customer service line is closed. The real solution is going to be waiting til monday and asking nicely to change a setting or two.

You have every right to be “a bit unscrupulous”. You’re paying for the service. By ignoring your perfectly reasonable request, she’s being very rude and selfish.

Suggestion: once you’ve found a solution, don’t tell her what you’ve done. If she complains about a slow connection, blame it on the ISP for throttling your service or something. I’d suggest blaming her computer, but that could backfire if she asks you to fix the damn thing.

"We were throttled because we use too much data. They said this happens when people stream videos a lot."

Can’t you throttle the MAC address of their device in the router admin panel? QoS policy or something like that.

Buy her headphones

Have tried that one. They are now collecting dust on a shelf somewhere. She got used to just letting it blare when she lived alone and doesn't seem willing to change that now that she's not. I tolerate it because she's family and like her otherwise.

How does that solve the bandwidth issue?

He won’t have to have TV blasting all the time on his side as well. Also for the bandwidth I wrote another answer. TP link wifi routers can create profiles, and you ca restrict bandwidth per profile. If he renames the new wifi network with the same name and password as the old one she won’t even know it has changed.

Yes, a faraday cage does work. But note that modern wifi uses high frequencies, which means fairly small waves (edit: of about 5cm). That means your faraday cage needs a meshing of maximum ~~~2cm~~ 1.25cm. The tighter the less signals it will let through.

Essentially, any mesh storage box should do the trick.

5Ghz has a wavelength of 60mm. You need to block 1/4 waves, so the biggest gap needs to be lass than 15mm.

6 GHz is around 50mm iirc

You can’t even change your WiFi password?

Shockingly, no. I was floored that I can't even change this on my own.

With this ISP you have to tell them over the phone, letter by letter, what you want your new password to be. Hell, when setting up service you have you write out your info including password on paper then drop it off at their office. This is what I get for going with the local fiber internet ISP. The alternatives around here are basically cell data powered internet or starlink.

Welcome to rural america.

I just took the antennas off and plugged mine into it with a network cable. That said, I no longer do that after they replaced the router with a better one and let me pick the password.

Fiber comes in a few different flavors; if you have fiber-to-the-home, you may have a separate box where the fiber terminates. That box will be connected via either ethernet or coax to your router. If that's the case, you can probably replace the ISP's modem without much issue. If the connection is ethernet, you can probably just plug it in. If it's coax, you may be able to screw in a cable and have the device make a connection right away, or you may have to call and have your provider whitelist your router.

If it's fiber-to-the-pole, your "last mile" wiring in your home is probably coaxial, in which case you can probably still call them and see if they'll authorize your own equipment. I can only speak to the US, but most providers here will (albeit begrudgingly) allow you to use your own equipment if you agree to a boilerplate "we can't really help you with your own equipment" spiel. I believe the EU has a regulation requiring carriers to allow bring-your-own equipment, so that may work in your favor.

Here FTTH is directly plugged to the ISP router, no copper intermediary in between. It's great.

My TP link router you can create profiles and assign devices to each profile (via MAC address). Then you can profitize each profile and even define which priority (video, gaming, browsing…)

You can definitely just buy your own modem. Or buy your own Wi-Fi router. The company has to let you put their ISP modem into bridge mode. Then you can have way more control over the family members usage of the internet

Ditch your router and install something that you can control, like a Raspberry Pi. They have ethernet and WiFi interfaces. The instructions for setting up an access point are straightforward. You can plug a monitor, etc, into the Pi and use it as a desktop computer or log into it remotely, as you would with a conventional router.