My Internet connection

[formulaone]

so i dont confuse people il try and start from the begining, we moved in this flat last year its an old house split into 2 flats , we have the ground floor but when we viewed this flat we had a look at upstairs flat because it was empty at the time and i noticed the box for virgin media conected to the wall, in the back bedroom where you screw your cable in for your modem , so anyway we took the ground floor and got virgin media to set us up from our old flat to this one , they didnt install a fresh box or moved the box from the upstairs into our flat just used the cable thats connected already for the ground floor, which as i know of comes out of the wall from upstairs flat. where i mention i saw the box inside the back bedroom , now there is new tennants in the upstairs flat and i was wondering if they could use my connection i pay for just by screwing a modem in the box on the wall because i have had slow connection speed at times and they have had delivery of dvd's from internet shops , yet i have not seen any service provider bills in there name, could they be stealing my connection , and is it possible if the box that is suppose be in my flat in in the upstairs flat

[BenMcr]

Although they may be able to use the same cable, they won't be able to use your internet connection. Access to that is by your modem's serial number (MAC Address).

The only way they can 'steal' your connection is if you have a wireless router without any security on it

[formulaone]

thanks for that it puts my mind at rest a little ...

[Jonnymeg]

thanks for that it puts my mind at rest a little ...

A lot of people worry about this but in fact there is no need to. Every house on your street eventually runs to the same cable so whether your signals merge at the house or the street cabinet doesn't really matter.
The only thing to worry about is the power levels. As long as there is sufficient power reaching the property to support the amount of splits you will be fine. If the levels are low then it is better to run a separate cable from the street cabinet to run your flat.

Go to http://192.168.100.1 and login in with root / root.
Check the downstream power levels. Anywhere between +5 and -5 and you will be fine. The level can be further out than this but somewhere within that range should be fine.