NetworkWorld's Bob Brown reports on new technology developed at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to help people share Wi-Fi access with their neighbors.

"Haiyun Luo, an assistant professor of computer science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, says that the technology he created with graduate student Nathanael Thompson would encourage people to share their bandwidth without having to worry about security or privacy issues," Brown writes.

And Luo suggests the Practical End-host collaborative Residential Multihoming (PERM) software could actually be great for ISPs.

"ISPs have attempted to restrict certain uses of their broadband services, such as by discouraging freeloaders from accessing the 'Net via unsecured Wi-Fi routers, but acknowledge it is difficult for them to actually monitor such abuse," Brown writes. "PERM uses flow-scheduling algorithms to choose the best connection available and gives subscribers priority when it comes to their own Internet connections. The software also alerts subscribers if their connection is being misused."