[Freedombox-discuss] Sunday HackFest

[ian at churchkey.org]

On 02/21/2011 06:29 AM, Bob Mottram wrote:
> 2011/2/21 Bjarni Rúnar Einarsson <bre at pagekite.net>:
>> Hmm, as one who has vocally opposed the idea that FreedomBoxes would be
>> REQUIRED to be routers, I think that some of the features will best be
>> achieved when FreedomBoxes are ABLE to be routers.
> 
> From a consumer point of view having the FB as a router may introduce
> additional problems and possible ISP support issues for non tech-savvy
> users. 

Playing devil's advocate here, no matter how locked down your
cable/dsl/etc box is, it would be no more difficult to plug a freedombox
into one end than it would to plug in any other wireless AP and ISP
troubleshooting already falls back to "disconnect all devices and plug
your computer directly into the ISP provided box".

Having your freedombox work as an AP not only makes a number of project
goals easier to achieve, i.e. proxying, filtering, security monitoring,
etc, it also makes for a compelling reason to get a freedombox in the
first place by replacing a piece of electronics people already need. If
we're going to talk about what might cause problems for the non
tech-savvy members of our community, we should also give some weight to
the things that will motivate these people to buy new hardware or run
new software in the first place.

-Ian "not expressing official views of the foundation" Sullivan