Securing Your Home Wi-Fi: A Cautionary Tale of Sharing with Neighbors

In an attempt to be a good neighbor, I recently agreed to allow a young teenager who just moved in next door to access my Wi-Fi. However, after some reflection, I began to question the wisdom of this decision.

Here’s the backstory: The neighbor’s grandson, around 15 years old, recently moved in with his grandparents who haven’t invested in internet service. Since I have a reliable fiber optic connection boasting unlimited 50Mbps download and upload speeds, I felt it would be gracious to share. The teenager even offered to pay for access, but I declined and requested that he simply use the internet responsibly and adhere to legal guidelines.

As I mulled over the situation, I realized that I may have opened the door to potential security issues. Reflecting on my own teenage years, I recalled a mischievous program known as “Netbus,” which allowed users to wreak havoc on connected devices. Despite being an innocent gesture on my part, I suddenly felt concerned about the access I’d granted this young boy—not just to the internet but to my entire network.

To mitigate the risks involved, I started brainstorming ways to isolate his connection from my home network. One strategy I stumbled upon is wireless isolation. This involves configuring network settings to limit how connected devices interact with one another, but I wanted something more robust. Given my setup, which consists of a Bell HomeHub 3000 connected to a Netgear Nighthawk R7000 router that’s been flashed with DD-WRT (v3.0), I realized that I could take additional steps.

One potential solution is to repurpose a spare router I have. The idea would be to hardwire this new router and place it in a window facing the neighbor’s property. By configuring it on a separate subnet, I could restrict any access between his devices and my main network. But this approach raised some questions about effectiveness and what additional measures I should implement to ensure my network security.

To all home network enthusiasts: Have you ever found yourself in a similar situation? What are the best practices for isolating a shared Wi-Fi network from personal devices? Your insights would be greatly appreciated, as I navigate this precarious balance between neighborliness and security.