A freind of mine has a wireless router in his dads house, which is used by 2 computers in that house, his girlfreind lives across the road, and she also uses the same connection wirelessly, but a few times ive been there and seen cars parked outside with reps using laptops as it a quiet area can they also piggyback on the same router, if its not a secure network.

Oh and does the number of computers using the network slow down the speed of the router, like opening the taps on a water tank.

If it’s not secure then anyone can use it.

I don’t think the no. of pcs will slow things down until the max download rate is reached.

The more people using the bandwidth the slower it becomes for everyone, though if the router has no/weak security i’d be more concerned with people using my connection to view/download dodgy material.

Using someone else’s connection without permission is illegal, though it obviously pretty daft of them to leave it completely unsecured.

If they are on a VERY limited contract, then bandwidth limits might kick in and given that most connections have limited upload speeds (compared to download), it’s pretty easy to swamp it in that direction, causing a bit of a slow-up all round.

Yes. Yes.

Why is it unsecured? Bandwidth usage aside, it’s fairly trivial to look at the existing network traffic to obtain, say, bank login details.

Enable WPA2.

Reps might be using BT fon or similar wifi hotspot which may be your mate’s dad’s or one of their neighbours. Either way, they’ve given their permissionn by signing up to fon.