[Freedombox-discuss] Lessons from a FreedomBox alternative - Tonido

[ian at churchkey.org]

On 06/27/2011 06:15 AM, Bob Mottram wrote:
> For an initial release trying to replace routers may not be the best
> option.  In my experience routers are often supplied pre-configured by
> the ISP, and replacing that with a freedombox could result in many
> problems, because there are a wide diversity of routers and ISP
> configurations.  If anything goes wrong the ISP is unlikely to be able
> (or willing) to tell you how to configure the freedombox.  Using a
> freedombox as a router replacement is likely to be an option which only
> the more technically confident users will attempt.

You can still use your freedombox as the primary router on your home
network even if your ISP is bundling similar functionality into your
cable modem. There are a number of advantages, like being able to
transparently proxy web traffic, monitor the activity of other boxes on
the network for bot activity, etc, that we can do automatically when the
freedombox is a router but that will require active configuration and
maintenance on client machines if the freedombox is just another machine
on your network.

The fact that ISP's are increasingly moving towards these all-in-one
devices is an important point though, since this is a new layer of
network management/restriction that we will have to take into account
when figuring out our mechanisms for routing traffic to/from the rest of
the world.

-Ian