Wireless laptop using my broadband?
Excuse my ignorance about all things wi fi (and networking) but here goes...
Had a friend over staying with me last night who has a new Acer Travelmate laptop with wireless connection. Now my flat has broadband ADSL at 512k through a USB "modem" and has done for a while. My pc is running Windows XP Pro and has zone alarm (free fire wall) set at the default values that it comes with. XP is up to date with the latest updates and SP's etc. Although my pc has the A7N8X-E Deluxe mobo I have NOT installed the wifi aerial (still in its box) and also in network properties the marvel software which I think enables (?) the wifi is showing a red cross so I guess that means it ain't configured properly too.
So anyway we are sitting in the lounge and my friends laptop auto detects a wifi connection to "conexant" network. No username or password is required and he is able to connect at something like 4 - 11 mbps I think it was.
Now my broadband modem is based on the conexant chipset. Do you think it is possible that somehow he was able to connect to my broadband without me even setting up wifi on my home pc?
The thing that threw me though was that when I disconnected from my ISP he was still connected to the internet and browsing ok. That made me think that in fact he was connected though someone else and not
Any ideas on things I should check and do in order to stop people being able to piggy back off my connection if in fact you think it is possible with the fire wall already installed etc?
Thanks in advance.