Dear Neighbor, Why Are You Still on My Wi-Fi? [Etiquette]

Last week, my next-door neighbor rang my bell and asked if he could use my Wi-Fi for the night. Sure! No problem! But he’s still poking around on my network instantaneously. Why are you still on my network, neighbor?

Let’s get some thing straight: I’m fully committed to being an outstanding neighbor. I confirm the guests at my bacchanalia don’t get too rowdy, I don’t leave my trash sitting out before trash day, and I play my music at a cheap volume. And while it’s in contrast to we nosh frequently, my neighbors and I always have a pleasant chat after we cross paths on the stairway. We’re friendly! So last week when Steve-we’ll call him Steve-told me that the thunderstorm raging outside had knocked his internet out and asked if he could use mine for the night, I didn’t hesitate to be in agreement. But things were already type of awkward! Let me back up a chunk.

Steve and his girlfriend had borrowed my internet for per week or so several months back once they switched from Verizon to DirecTV. It turned out that Steve worked from home, too, so I developed the vague and possibly unfounded notion that he was using up precious bandwidth as I went about my important Gizmodo business, but generally things went without incident. Steve and his girlfriend used my internet for roughly per week, bought me a six-pack of beer for my trouble, and that was that. Good neighbor mission accomplished!

But apparently the mission wasn’t over just yet. After the beer-gift have been given, I’d still see Steve’s MacBook pop up every now and then in my network’s list of Shared Places. I believed it was because of some inadvertent connection on his part, but his computer started showing up so regularly over the following couple of weeks that I made up my mind it had to be deliberate. And soon it had me pretty incensed! Like who was this guy, thinking he could just waltz on over to my Wi-Fi whenever he pleased? I imagined him determinedly switching to my network when it was time to download his dozen-gigabyte Blu-ray images or the weirder styles of porn he enjoyed. And while I was fine letting him visit my network in a time of need, I didn’t think that I must have handy him the keys to the entire goddamn castle. So I changed my password. That was that.

And then, a number of weeks later, I was the one that needed my neighbor’s network.

It was in the midst of some Apple event and we were blogging fast and furious and certain enough, because it always does once I need it most, my Time Warner connection shitted the bed. After a temporary but intense moment of panic, I ran next door and implored Steve’s girlfriend to let me use their internet. She was happy to oblige, in fact, and I got throughout the Apple event without incident.

But let me let you know, getting access to their internet connection had a wierd effect on me. My Time Warner service is reliably awful, and for a period of maybe six weeks my connection would narrow out everyday for approximately 15 minutes sometime within the early afternoon. After per week or two of what became an everyday ritual-restarting modems and routers, muttering under my breath, yelling at some hapless Time Warner call center employee-I gave in and directed my AirPort to Steve’s SSID. Out of some combination of frustration and laziness, Steve’s internet became my safety-net network. I never used it with a completely clean conscience, mind you, but I started looking on it with regrettable regularity.

Anyway, flash forward to last week. There was Steve, whose access to my Wi-Fi I had vengefully rescinded, guilty only of a criminal offense that I had gone on to commit myself, asking again to borrow my internet. How could I say no. And then came the awkward:

” The old password doesn’t look working any further…” he said, bringing our entire history of shared and stolen internet connections flooding into the hallway between us. Did he begrudge me for changing my password? Was he accustomed to my surreptitious usage of his network? How had I let the goddamn internet undermine my whole Be a decent Neighbor initiative?!

” Oh, just change the ‘a’ at the tip to an e,’” I told him sheepishly as I sneaked back in my apartment.

So now, one week on, watching his name pop up occasionally in my Shared Places, I’ve variety of come full circle mostly thing. I was perturbed when Steve overstayed his welcome on my Wi-Fi, but then, despite my best intentions, I had become the only overstaying mine. I suppose by some means the saga sheds some light on what a unusual place the net holds in our lives today. On one hand, I’m viscerally protective of my network-not necessarily because I worry about security or anything like that, but just because I believe of it as a personal space where I don’t want people lingering, like my bedroom. But there’s another sense wherein I think totally entitled to internet access wherever and however I will get it, love it’s sunlight or tap water or something. I suppose that’s why I kept on using Steve’s network even after my unspoken lease was up.

In reality, I guess the web really exists somewhere in between those two extremes. It’s like a 21st century cup of sugar-something you could and will ask your neighbor for while you need it, just not each time you might have a sweet tooth.

Source

This post is tagged: bacchanalia, girlfriend, good neighbor, neighbors, network neighbor, precious bandwidth, thunderstorm