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This software has been written without any concern for security, and it listens on the network by default. This dawned on me when I intended to switch over to

This software has been written without any concern for security, and it listens on the network by default. This dawned on me when I intended to switch over to FIOS due to problems with my cable internet connection. I moved all of my media and gaming devices first, then abruptly stopped, wondering why I would want to share a network with a bunch of devices I had no reason to trust. I know I can isolate them on my home network, and may eventually get around to it, but in the meantime, I'm using separate connections to different ISPs (which provides other benefits, as well).

Silhouette 12y ago
...wondering why I would want to share a network with a bunch of devices I had no reason to trust. I know I can isolate them on my home network... Unfortunately, it's actually quite difficult to do that properly with a typical broadband/WiFi box as supplied by most ISPs (at least here in the UK) by default. You need to step up to business-grade gear in most cases, which is both more expensive and beyond the technical knowledge of most consumers, and even then some otherwise respectable devices are regrettably lacking in flexibility when it comes to VLAN configuration and the like. I'm looking forward to the day when standard home user boxes allow you to do things like isolating certain physical ports or wireless networks by default, so hopefully running untrusted devices on independent networks becomes routine. Even then, there's still the problem that if you want to watch some sort of streaming content off the Internet, whichever device(s) have that external connectivity could also pose a privacy risk if they have access to whichever devices are acting as home media servers. DLNA seems like a step in the right direction for connecting up home media devices, but I haven't seen much evidence of a robust security model being implemented so far.
rossjudson 12y ago
You'll want to get interested in the advanced configuration capabilities on that FIOS router. There's quite a bit under the hood there that will let you, with an annoying level of difficulty, get things into good shape.

Silhouette 12y ago

...wondering why I would want to share a network with a bunch of devices I had no reason to trust. I know I can isolate them on my home network... Unfortunately, it's actually quite difficult to do that properly with a typical broadband/WiFi box as supplied by most ISPs (at least here in the UK) by default. You need to step up to business-grade gear in most cases, which is both more expensive and beyond the technical knowledge of most consumers, and even then some otherwise respectable devices are regrettably lacking in flexibility when it comes to VLAN configuration and the like. I'm looking forward to the day when standard home user boxes allow you to do things like isolating certain physical ports or wireless networks by default, so hopefully running untrusted devices on independent networks becomes routine. Even then, there's still the problem that if you want to watch some sort of streaming content off the Internet, whichever device(s) have that external connectivity could also pose a privacy risk if they have access to whichever devices are acting as home media servers. DLNA seems like a step in the right direction for connecting up home media devices, but I haven't seen much evidence of a robust security model being implemented so far.

rossjudson 12y ago

You'll want to get interested in the advanced configuration capabilities on that FIOS router. There's quite a bit under the hood there that will let you, with an annoying level of difficulty, get things into good shape.