[Freedombox-discuss] Some advice on moving Plinth forward?

[Mathieu Jourdan]

Le 16 février 2012 20:57, Alistair Davidson
<alistair.l.davidson at gmail.com> a écrit :
> On Thu, Feb 16, 2012 at 6:23 PM, Mathieu Jourdan <mathieu.jourdan at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> Hi Alistair,
>>
>> Le 15 février 2012 15:06, Alistair Davidson
>> <alistair.l.davidson at gmail.com> a écrit :
>> > So, let's move towards some user stories.
>> >
>> > I'm a coder but not so hot at routing etc, so I'm going to act like a
>> > dumb
>> > designer who is ignorant of technical limitations ;) Here are a few of
>> > my
>> > ideal stories, and some technical questions:
>> >
>> > Alice is concerned about privacy. She wants to buy a device that will
>> > automatically manage this for her. She buys a Freedombox, and following
>> > the
>> > instruction sticker on the plug, she plugs an ethernet cable from her
>> > modem
>> > to the freedombox, which then acts as a router using sensible default
>> > settings. (is this the correct process?)
>>
>> She also has to plug one more cable to link her freedombox to her
>> personal computer, in order to configure it.
>>
>> But other people may have multiple computers directly connected to a
>> switch-router-modem appliance, then routing may not be needed and DHCP
>> may be pointless.
>
>
> Could you describe the planned network topology a bit more? Does freedombox
> sit 'between' me and my router? Physically or just virtually? :)

Dreamplug has two ethernet plugs and one wi-fi access point, so that
makes a lot of possibilities. But freedombox software may be installed
on other tiny computers sometimes with only one network port.

> Does the computer need configured to proxy through freedombox or can we
> force that?

It may be intersting to have a look at WPAD.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Proxy_Autodiscovery_Protocol

>> > Bob is like Alice, but has a USB-only ADSL modem his ISP gave him. How
>> > is
>> > Linux USB modem driver coverage looking these days?
>> >
>> > Carol wants fine-grained control of her privacy. Following instructions
>> > on
>> > the sticker, she types "freedombox" into the address bar of her browser
>> > ( do
>> > we have control of DNS at this point?) This takes her to a top-level
>> > page.
>> > She clicks the "Privacy" button and is presented with a simple interface
>> > for
>> > controlling privoxy etc. An "Advanced" button allows her to access more
>> > complicated features when needed.
>>
>> If Carol's network topology is the same as Alice, I would say
>> freedombox could answer DNS requests in most cases. But for having
>> properly configured DNS resolution, Alice's computer may get network
>> parameters from freedombox DHCP, meaning she may have to (re)boot her
>> computer after plugging it.
>>
>> Anyway, having to configure privoxy is a pain. Configuring freedombox
>> shouldn't be more complicated than creating an account on any service
>> provider. I think Carol just wants to tell her box who she is, get her
>> data back from service providers and enjoy.
>>
>> Personnaly, I know lot of people having access to the Internet through
>> « a box », but no one except computer engineers having tried to
>> configure anything on it. Most people never heard about IP address or
>> domain name, while using it every day. Maybe freedombox could teach
>> them, I don't know, but it can't ask them anything about network or
>> security if we truly aim to rule the world.
>
>
> Progessive disclosure :) For example, if I click the wireless icon on my PC,
> I see a very simple list of networks to connect to. If I click on the
> network configuration option, I see a list of devices, and if I click to
> configure one I can force an IP or DNS server if I really want to. But the
> proverbial non-technical user never sees that in ordinary circumstances, and
> a modem-router their ISP gave them handles it all.
>
> I completely agree that our routing functions should Just Work (tm) with as
> close to zero configuration as possible.

For cases where configuration is needed, it would be easier to
understand if the interface provided a schema of the network
topoligie. Freedombox could guess what it is connected to, what kind
of computer client the owner uses, then generate a simple schema of
the logical network.

Then the user could choose for each service (dns, routing, backup)
which device to use (freedombox, ISP appliance, whatsoever) by
clicking on its picture. That's more or less to for Wi-Fi access, why
not for every basic services ?

Mathieu