We’ve discussed Wi-Fi before, and we’ve discussed routers, and though we told you to lock down your router so people couldn’t use your connection, there are times when sharing your connection can be a good thing.

A company named Fon has come up with a system where you purchase a router from them for $53, a reasonable price for a Wi-Fi router, the encourages you to let others share in your connection.  While this may seem like a scary concept security wise, the device is built to handle this by offering two channels of connectivity.

The private channel, the one you will use, is secured by you entering the router’s serial number as the password, so it is fairly unlikely that anyone will hack it.  The second channel is a public one that is unable to access any traffic on the private channel.

The public channel can be used in two different ways, either from people willing to pay to use your connection, if you so choose to do that, or by other people who own a Fon router.  That’s one of the side benefits of owning one of these is that it gives you the right to use other Fon routers anywhere in the world, which can be located by using this handy Google Maps mashup.  So if you’re traveling any where in the world, you can have free access to the Internet.

It is certainly not a perfect system, but if you are in the market to add Wi-Fi to your home or office, this is a handy way to do it with a lot of potential side benefits.