[Freedombox-discuss] Some advice on moving Plinth forward?

[Alistair Davidson]

On Thu, Feb 16, 2012 at 6:23 PM, Mathieu Jourdan
<mathieu.jourdan at gmail.com>wrote:

> Hi Alistair,
>
> Le 15 février 2012 15:06, Alistair Davidson
> <alistair.l.davidson at gmail.com> a écrit :
> > So, let's move towards some user stories.
> >
> > I'm a coder but not so hot at routing etc, so I'm going to act like a
> dumb
> > designer who is ignorant of technical limitations ;) Here are a few of my
> > ideal stories, and some technical questions:
> >
> > Alice is concerned about privacy. She wants to buy a device that will
> > automatically manage this for her. She buys a Freedombox, and following
> the
> > instruction sticker on the plug, she plugs an ethernet cable from her
> modem
> > to the freedombox, which then acts as a router using sensible default
> > settings. (is this the correct process?)
>
> She also has to plug one more cable to link her freedombox to her
> personal computer, in order to configure it.
>
> But other people may have multiple computers directly connected to a
> switch-router-modem appliance, then routing may not be needed and DHCP
> may be pointless.
>

Could you describe the planned network topology a bit more? Does freedombox
sit 'between' me and my router? Physically or just virtually? :)

Does the computer need configured to proxy through freedombox or can we
force that?

> Bob is like Alice, but has a USB-only ADSL modem his ISP gave him. How is
> > Linux USB modem driver coverage looking these days?
> >
> > Carol wants fine-grained control of her privacy. Following instructions
> on
> > the sticker, she types "freedombox" into the address bar of her browser
> ( do
> > we have control of DNS at this point?) This takes her to a top-level
> page.
> > She clicks the "Privacy" button and is presented with a simple interface
> for
> > controlling privoxy etc. An "Advanced" button allows her to access more
> > complicated features when needed.
>
> If Carol's network topology is the same as Alice, I would say
> freedombox could answer DNS requests in most cases. But for having
> properly configured DNS resolution, Alice's computer may get network
> parameters from freedombox DHCP, meaning she may have to (re)boot her
> computer after plugging it.
>
> Anyway, having to configure privoxy is a pain. Configuring freedombox
> shouldn't be more complicated than creating an account on any service
> provider. I think Carol just wants to tell her box who she is, get her
> data back from service providers and enjoy.
>
> Personnaly, I know lot of people having access to the Internet through
> « a box », but no one except computer engineers having tried to
> configure anything on it. Most people never heard about IP address or
> domain name, while using it every day. Maybe freedombox could teach
> them, I don't know, but it can't ask them anything about network or
> security if we truly aim to rule the world.
>

Progessive disclosure :) For example, if I click the wireless icon on my
PC, I see a very simple list of networks to connect to. If I click on the
network configuration option, I see a list of devices, and if I click to
configure one I can force an IP or DNS server if I really want to. But the
proverbial non-technical user never sees that in ordinary circumstances,
and a modem-router their ISP gave them handles it all.

I completely agree that our routing functions should Just Work (tm) with as
close to zero configuration as possible.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/attachments/20120216/4a68918d/attachment.html>