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We do this exactly for large companies with many small offices that they don't want to manage individually. We limit the number of offices in a minimum order to

We do this exactly for large companies with many small offices that they don't want to manage individually. We limit the number of offices in a minimum order to 10. This was a hard lesson. We started off dreamy-eyed with onesies and twosies but were rapidly buried under a sea of "and it also has to...". We'll do smaller numbers if a customer really wants it but the price per month of any number of units 10 and under is $950/month. (So we bill for 10, even if they only use 2) The shocking truth we discovered about this market is that it doesn't matter if its one location or a thousand, one computer or 10k, each customer requires about the same amount of work on a monthly basis. If you control the router, you are the defacto first-call for any trouble in the office/home. They've outsourced their IT, and its you. For the curious, we deploy a custom baked read-only Centos distro on compact flash running on Soekris boards. When more oomf is needed, we move up to lanners. Wireless radios are 'CM9" A/B/G atheros. If you want to make a go of it, you can fully kit out at http://www.netgate.com http://www.netgate.com (1) Its not really a "startup" in our classical HN definition as it scales most linearly and only works as well as your best engineer, but I'd be happy to answer any questions from people who are interested in working this type of angle, or even doing some development for your own particular flavor. (2) (1) I don't have any affiliation with netgate beyond getting to know the guys down there and really appreciating all they did to help us get going. (2) I've been kicking around the idea of a home version coupled with a distributed VNC powered helpdesk for several years now but haven't found the right group of people/motivations to make a go of it yet. The numbers are hard (very), but the market would be limitless.

ismarc 17y ago
Hearing you describe this had me envisioning the following shrink wrap product: buy "Secured home router" plug in cables turn on launch web browser captive portal configuration screen configuration goes through common steps, advanced options buttons for those who know what they're doing, one of which is an option for 1 month free software upgrade/virus/malware/firewall administration, 3/6/9/12 month subscription rates and sign-up process. Actual functionality is: firewall provides reasonable QoS parameters for a shared internet connection and prioritizing traffic in a manner that benefits user-interactive applications (HTTP(S) over p2p, etc.), dns blackhole for known malicious domain names, updating firewall rules for blocking known bad IPs (stolen abandoned blocks, etc.), captive portal style page hijacking for sites known for malicious content (with an ignore this warning button), software updates, configuration backup to a central server. The main issue I can think of is that the end user wants to feel like they're completely uninhibited on the internet. The problem is that to protect against most real threats, there's trade-offs and you'll have a 5-10% error rate for blocking traffic the user really wanted. This means that support would be a difficult cost to overcome, but I think a url on the system that resolves locally to the router to provide a "what problem are you having yes/no" style troubleshooter could help prevent a large number of complicated call ins. All in all, this sounds like a really interesting problem with two sales domains: target the consumers directly and target ISPs looking to have another value-add to their internet products.
- ShabbyDoo 17y ago
  Yeah. This is pretty much what I'm thinking about. The core feature is, "I get to solve this 'want stuff to work in my house' problem and live my life without learning how to configure QOS, etc" >the end user wants to feel like they're completely uninhibited on the internet. People I know are more concerned that they're unsafe because of their set-ups. "problem with two sales domains" I hadn't thought much about the indirect sales model, and this might be where the money is long-term. I'd also argue that hard-to-use routers are likely the root cause of many telco consumer tech support calls. Perhaps the value in the telco reselling such a solution would be to reduce its own costs.
sandGorgon 17y ago
Could you elaborate on your setup ? In particular how does it compare to a modem feeding into a managed switch. Are you building a small-form-factor computer running pfsense (or something) with a wireless radio baked in ?
- noonespecial 17y ago
  By the time you get to managed switches, the cost of the device and the overhead to maintain it means that the location usually has an IT person to handle this. This is not our target demographic. A Soekris board is a very small Geode based i386 computer with 4 network ports. It has one usb 2.0, one minipci and one full sized pci. We use the pci for the "modem" device (T1 interface, cable modem, dsl card), the minipci for the wireless radio "bake in" and the usb for local storage. The OS boots and runs read-only from a compact flash card inside the case. pfsense was too limiting, we use 4 gig CF's with full centos 5 server distros for maximum utility. Here's the mainboard we use http://www.soekris.com/net5501.htm http://www.soekris.com/net5501.htm Here's where we get the broadband interface cards: http://www.sangoma.com/products/ http://www.sangoma.com/products/ All the wireless cards and antennas come form netgate, as previously mentioned. Hmmm. Sounds like I need a big blog post about bootstrapping this kind of business for those interested. Stay tuned.
ShabbyDoo 17y ago
Interesting. I had hoped (perhaps erroneously) that a lot of fixed-cost effort in building a great configuration system could significantly reduce the need for hands-on customer service. I have a Harmony remote. The software doesn't ask me about remote control protocols, or any other technical stuff. It just asks me what the model numbers are of the boxes in my family room. Then, it configures activities (Watch TV, DVD, etc.) based on that and configures the remote so that it works. The magic is the large database of A/V equipment so the user doesn't have to specify the details. I'd like the configuration software to observe my traffic and notice that a particular computer is talking to backblaze. It should ask me if I'd like to make sure backblaze can run really fast without affecting other activities and then just make it happen. I shouldn't have to configure QOS settings using an iptables script I found one a guy's blog (to that guy, thanks a million!).

ismarc 17y ago

Hearing you describe this had me envisioning the following shrink wrap product: buy "Secured home router" plug in cables turn on launch web browser captive portal configuration screen configuration goes through common steps, advanced options buttons for those who know what they're doing, one of which is an option for 1 month free software upgrade/virus/malware/firewall administration, 3/6/9/12 month subscription rates and sign-up process. Actual functionality is: firewall provides reasonable QoS parameters for a shared internet connection and prioritizing traffic in a manner that benefits user-interactive applications (HTTP(S) over p2p, etc.), dns blackhole for known malicious domain names, updating firewall rules for blocking known bad IPs (stolen abandoned blocks, etc.), captive portal style page hijacking for sites known for malicious content (with an ignore this warning button), software updates, configuration backup to a central server. The main issue I can think of is that the end user wants to feel like they're completely uninhibited on the internet. The problem is that to protect against most real threats, there's trade-offs and you'll have a 5-10% error rate for blocking traffic the user really wanted. This means that support would be a difficult cost to overcome, but I think a url on the system that resolves locally to the router to provide a "what problem are you having yes/no" style troubleshooter could help prevent a large number of complicated call ins. All in all, this sounds like a really interesting problem with two sales domains: target the consumers directly and target ISPs looking to have another value-add to their internet products.

ShabbyDoo 17y ago
Yeah. This is pretty much what I'm thinking about. The core feature is, "I get to solve this 'want stuff to work in my house' problem and live my life without learning how to configure QOS, etc" >the end user wants to feel like they're completely uninhibited on the internet. People I know are more concerned that they're unsafe because of their set-ups. "problem with two sales domains" I hadn't thought much about the indirect sales model, and this might be where the money is long-term. I'd also argue that hard-to-use routers are likely the root cause of many telco consumer tech support calls. Perhaps the value in the telco reselling such a solution would be to reduce its own costs.

sandGorgon 17y ago

Could you elaborate on your setup ? In particular how does it compare to a modem feeding into a managed switch. Are you building a small-form-factor computer running pfsense (or something) with a wireless radio baked in ?

noonespecial 17y ago
By the time you get to managed switches, the cost of the device and the overhead to maintain it means that the location usually has an IT person to handle this. This is not our target demographic. A Soekris board is a very small Geode based i386 computer with 4 network ports. It has one usb 2.0, one minipci and one full sized pci. We use the pci for the "modem" device (T1 interface, cable modem, dsl card), the minipci for the wireless radio "bake in" and the usb for local storage. The OS boots and runs read-only from a compact flash card inside the case. pfsense was too limiting, we use 4 gig CF's with full centos 5 server distros for maximum utility. Here's the mainboard we use http://www.soekris.com/net5501.htm http://www.soekris.com/net5501.htm Here's where we get the broadband interface cards: http://www.sangoma.com/products/ http://www.sangoma.com/products/ All the wireless cards and antennas come form netgate, as previously mentioned. Hmmm. Sounds like I need a big blog post about bootstrapping this kind of business for those interested. Stay tuned.

ShabbyDoo 17y ago

Interesting. I had hoped (perhaps erroneously) that a lot of fixed-cost effort in building a great configuration system could significantly reduce the need for hands-on customer service. I have a Harmony remote. The software doesn't ask me about remote control protocols, or any other technical stuff. It just asks me what the model numbers are of the boxes in my family room. Then, it configures activities (Watch TV, DVD, etc.) based on that and configures the remote so that it works. The magic is the large database of A/V equipment so the user doesn't have to specify the details. I'd like the configuration software to observe my traffic and notice that a particular computer is talking to backblaze. It should ask me if I'd like to make sure backblaze can run really fast without affecting other activities and then just make it happen. I shouldn't have to configure QOS settings using an iptables script I found one a guy's blog (to that guy, thanks a million!).