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Along those lines, Comcast/Xfinity for example has a defaultish setting on their routers to leave an open guest network available. If I connect to my neighbors guest network and download game of thrones, will my neighbor get the nastygram, or is it smart enough to know it is a guest network? Should I connect to my own guest network (not that I have it enabled) if I want to do illegal things?

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The xfinitywifi network requires you log your device into a Comcast account. It's not strictly a "guest network" for arbitrary devices, it's more of a roaming access to your own account.

Pretty sure they can nail you even harder for piracy on this than on your own network where it might be someone else's device.

Not only does it require login, but it is not like they are giving you full bandwidth. Good luck to anyone trying to do a lot of high-bandwidth downloads over an Xfinity guest network.

Every one I've ever connected to gave you free access for a new account for some limited period of time. But that was like 5+ years ago so maybe they've changed it.

Usually, these CPE guest networks have their traffic routed via an IP different from the main customer one, and have their own bandwidth/QoS class as well.

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