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Tell HN: I want a managed router for my house
It's rare for anyone to connect a broadband modem directly to a single computer anymore. Almost everyone plugs his modem into a consumer-grade WiFi AP/Router device which costs < $50. The basic stuff works well enough, but it's fundamentally broken for many reasons:
A WiFi router connected to the 'net is both the riskiest and most important piece of my house's network security. Does my firmware have an exploitable bug? Is my firewall properly configured? I'm a developer, and I'm not entirely certain that my own routers are configured properly. What are my parents supposed to do? Router manufacturers rarely update firmware to fix bugs or provide additional functionality, and there have been many cases where even publicly available security issues went un-resolved. Must I buy a new router every few months?
More and more devices are competing for limited bandwidth. I had to do a bunch of Googling to find a script to give a low QOS to backblaze.com traffic. Had I not done this, initial back-up of my desktop computer would have taken WEEKS longer. Grandma doesn't want to understand iptables. When a router was used so two computers could be used to browse the web, little configuration was required. But now...
Here's what I want....A router where maintenance, configuration, and continuous security are not afterthoughts. I'm imagining a WiFi router that looks pretty much like any other consumer-grade router except that, instead of providing a crappy web interface for configuration, it phones "home" to StartupX's router management service. I go to startupx.com and use the nice, helpful configuration utilities to tell my router what services it ought to be providing. And, by service, I don't mean "forward UDP/TCP to port X locally" -- I mean "I use Skype from my desktop computer, so make it fast please." Oh, and I use backblaze, so make it fast as long as it doesn't hinder anything else. And, help me pick the right kinds of wireless security for the devices in my house. Could the router also have a continuously-updated active firewall? Could I teach it which device is my Droid just by pulling up a special web site when commanded by the management site? Oh, and I use BitTorrent.....can you make sure I don't screw that up royally?
From a touchy-feely standpoint, I want to be confident that I'm not exposing myself to security risks I'm unaware of. And, I just want this problem to go away. I'm willing to pay not only for the device, but I'll pay per month for management, updates, and support.
I did some brief Googling and couldn't find anything like this for consumers. Various ISPs are selling managed routers for businesses, but nobody is in the consumer space. Am I off my rocker? After spending a few hours over the holidays updating the routers in my house, I started thinking about alternatives. I'm posting this here because this is something I want to buy, but it's not a business that I think I'm well-suited to start.
Edited shortly after initial posting.
- patrickgzill 17y agoPfSense or m0n0wall for something basic, you supply the hardware. There is untangle.com also, they may have something closer to what you are looking for.
- ShabbyDoo 17y agoUpvoted for untangle. This seems like a business version of what I envisioned. The distros are nice, but my relatives aren't going to get past the homepage. The product I want isn't for me so much as for the people whose routers I've set-up/managed over the years.
- macemoneta 17y agoYou want one of the routers that can run a third party Linux router distribution. Take a look at: http://www.myopenrouter.com/ http://www.myopenrouter.com/ The Netgear WNR3500L with DD-WRT firmware is as close as you're going to get for a reasonable price (about $100 USD). Edit: The feature list for DD-WRT is here: http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/What_is_DD-WRT%3F#Features http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/What_is_DD-WRT%3F#Featu...
- ShabbyDoo 17y agoI don't doubt that there are many solutions that are great feature-wise. What I want is something easy that works. It's now mindless to connect a Windows 7/OSX/whatever computer to a WiFi network, but setting up such a network in one's own home in a secure way is too much to ask of my relatives. The innovation isn't in features, it's that you don't have to work in IT to have enough knowledge to configure it. Home networking is not a problem most people want to think about. They just want it to work. We have a "dual fuel" HVAC system. It switches between electric and gas for heat depending on the outside temperature (electrical heat is very efficient in fall/winter given our relative fuel costs). The HVAC guys had all sorts of suggestions on how to tweak out additional savings by adjusting various parameters (temp for fuel cross-over, +/- range allowed in home, etc.) and were very excited about the possibilities. I just wanted the control unit to figure out what some reasonable settings were and to monitor performance.