[Freedombox-discuss] FreedomBox as a home router to replace Cisco/Linksys
Jonathan Wilkes
jancsika at yahoo.com
Tue Jul 3 05:28:10 UTC 2012
----- Original Message -----
> From: Sean Alexandre <sean864 at pobox.com>
> To: Jonathan Wilkes <jancsika at yahoo.com>
> Cc: freedombox list <freedombox-discuss at lists.alioth.debian.org>
> Sent: Monday, July 2, 2012 9:15 PM
> Subject: Re: [Freedombox-discuss] FreedomBox as a home router to replace Cisco/Linksys
>
> On Mon, 2 Jul 2012 17:25:48 -0700 (PDT)
> Jonathan Wilkes <jancsika at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> [snip]
>> >> Is it a device that doubles as a dsl modem and wireless router?
>> >> (I forgot about those devices.)
>> >
>> > Yes, it's a device that doubles as a wireless router and, in my
>> > case, a cable modem.
>> >
>> >> How hard was putting it in "bridging mode"? Does Time
> Warner
>> > give
>> >> you the l/p for the device? And what exactly does "bridging
>
>> > mode" do?
>> >
>> > It was pretty easy actually. It came with a web admin app, that has
>> > a setting for "bridging mode." All I had to do was toggle
> the
>> > setting.
>> >
>> > Bridging mode causes it to work at layer 2 instead of layer 3. So it
>> > doesn't have an IP address anymore. It passes layer 2 traffic
>> > through to my own router, which now has the IP address assignment
>> > from Time Warner.
>> >
>> > I don't know much about cable modems, so don't know what the
> layer 2
>> > traffic looks like. Presumably it's based on MAC addresses, or
>> > something like a MAC address??
>> >
>> > Of course since the device no longer has an IP address, I can't
> get
>> > back to the web app to untoggle the setting. I'd have to do a hard
>> > reset.
>>
>> That definitely sounds like advanced setup then.
>
> I'm not seeing that. All a user has to do for bridging
> mode is navigate to a browser link and toggle a setting.
Well, I should explain that the audience I have in mind for that statement
can me described by the following skit:
Coping-Strategy-Guy: Yeah, I know, the gov't watches me browse the
internet, blah blah blah. But what do I care, I'm not a criminal, I've got
nothing to hide, probably everything I do looks boring to them...
Me: You know you can use a FB to start getting some privacy on the net, right?
Coping-Guy: FB? What's that?
Me: Here, just plug this in. Now click here. Now you're up and running.
Suddenly-Cares-About-His-Newfound-Online-Freedom-Guy: Wow
look at that, it really works!
>
> Granted, it's some configuration, but not a "ssh to your box
> and modify iptables with vi" :-)
>
Yes, I know, but my fear is that the "last chance" toggle is representative of the
types of user-unfriendly problems people will run into by trying to replace their
router with the FB. Anyhow if I have some time I'll try to go through at least a
few of the big ISPs using the link someone provided and see what kinds of
restrictions there really are.
-Jonathan
More information about the Freedombox-discuss
mailing list