4 ms·

I write code on the internet every day, and I understood 0% of that article. Abstraction is a powerful thing.

pmuk 7y ago
Adrian is very smart! I did a TCP/IP and Firebrick course with him a few (cough over 10) years ago and I learned more in a few days than I did in a year at college. He set up his own ISP in the UK, and built all the core routers himself, including designing the hardware and writing the router software - see www.firebrick.co.uk
walrus01 7y ago
One of the purposes appears to be to connect to the cruise ship's (expensive) wifi as client, as a single fixed MAC address, and rebroadcast a local wifi signal you control to more than 1 device. Because the cruise company wants you to pay per device. Also to have a small router you control to monitor the data usage per device, and cumulative data usage on the wifi-WAN-uplink interface. And to establish a whole-router VPN tunnel if you want.
- rahimnathwani 7y ago
  That's what I would have assumed, but he was explicit that he already pays per device: "To be clear, this is not stealing internet service - it is expensive and we pay for the premium, unlimited, steaming package for multiple devices."
- close04 7y ago
  > mostly holiday, but also some work > This is obviously somewhat overkill, so worth some explanation... The author doesn't make it immediately obvious why they chose the particular components and why the overkill, especially for something that is so rarely used and is not aimed at enterprise scenarios. It comes at quite the cost. The FireBrick alone is £500+VAT and as far as I can tell the 3 Aruba boxes together easily cost even more. That's at least $1500 worth of equipment in the Internet Box. Couldn't the same result (within reason) be achieved with something substantially cheaper? Like a travel router, maybe combined with a RPi if needed? Of course you wouldn't really get anything close to "enterprise" but then again the occasional vacation cruise doesn't seem to beg for such features.
  - rjsw 7y ago
    His company makes the FireBrick. Having one along on the cruise allows him to develop for it as well.
    - close04 7y ago
      For him I understand, I read the comment above that made this clear. I was wondering how much sense it makes for the rest of the readers. And it's not just the FireBrick but the entire setup that is vastly overspecced for the purpose, which would be "internet on vacation cruise" rather than "product development".
  - pfundstein 7y ago
    > Couldn't the same result (within reason) be achieved with something substantially cheaper Yep, for example this $20 router running OpenWRT can accomplish the same: https://www.gl-inet.com/products/gl-ar150/ https://www.gl-inet.com/products/gl-ar150/

pmuk 7y ago

Adrian is very smart! I did a TCP/IP and Firebrick course with him a few (cough over 10) years ago and I learned more in a few days than I did in a year at college. He set up his own ISP in the UK, and built all the core routers himself, including designing the hardware and writing the router software - see www.firebrick.co.uk

walrus01 7y ago

One of the purposes appears to be to connect to the cruise ship's (expensive) wifi as client, as a single fixed MAC address, and rebroadcast a local wifi signal you control to more than 1 device. Because the cruise company wants you to pay per device. Also to have a small router you control to monitor the data usage per device, and cumulative data usage on the wifi-WAN-uplink interface. And to establish a whole-router VPN tunnel if you want.

rahimnathwani 7y ago
That's what I would have assumed, but he was explicit that he already pays per device: "To be clear, this is not stealing internet service - it is expensive and we pay for the premium, unlimited, steaming package for multiple devices."
close04 7y ago
> mostly holiday, but also some work > This is obviously somewhat overkill, so worth some explanation... The author doesn't make it immediately obvious why they chose the particular components and why the overkill, especially for something that is so rarely used and is not aimed at enterprise scenarios. It comes at quite the cost. The FireBrick alone is £500+VAT and as far as I can tell the 3 Aruba boxes together easily cost even more. That's at least $1500 worth of equipment in the Internet Box. Couldn't the same result (within reason) be achieved with something substantially cheaper? Like a travel router, maybe combined with a RPi if needed? Of course you wouldn't really get anything close to "enterprise" but then again the occasional vacation cruise doesn't seem to beg for such features.
- rjsw 7y ago
  His company makes the FireBrick. Having one along on the cruise allows him to develop for it as well.
  - close04 7y ago
    For him I understand, I read the comment above that made this clear. I was wondering how much sense it makes for the rest of the readers. And it's not just the FireBrick but the entire setup that is vastly overspecced for the purpose, which would be "internet on vacation cruise" rather than "product development".
- pfundstein 7y ago
  > Couldn't the same result (within reason) be achieved with something substantially cheaper Yep, for example this $20 router running OpenWRT can accomplish the same: https://www.gl-inet.com/products/gl-ar150/ https://www.gl-inet.com/products/gl-ar150/