[Freedombox-discuss] FreedomBox as a home router to replace Cisco/Linksys

Jonathan Wilkes jancsika at yahoo.com
Tue Jul 3 05:28:10 UTC 2012


----- Original Message -----

> From: Sean Alexandre <sean864 at pobox.com>
> To: Jonathan Wilkes <jancsika at yahoo.com>
> Cc: freedombox list <freedombox-discuss at lists.alioth.debian.org>
> Sent: Monday, July 2, 2012 9:15 PM
> Subject: Re: [Freedombox-discuss] FreedomBox as a home router to replace Cisco/Linksys
> 
> On Mon, 2 Jul 2012 17:25:48 -0700 (PDT)
> Jonathan Wilkes <jancsika at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
> [snip]
>>  >>  Is it a device that doubles as a dsl modem and wireless router?
>>  >> (I forgot about those devices.)
>>  > 
>>  > Yes, it's a device that doubles as a wireless router and, in my
>>  > case, a cable modem.
>>  > 
>>  >>  How hard was putting it in "bridging mode"?  Does Time 
> Warner 
>>  > give
>>  >>  you the l/p for the device?  And what exactly does "bridging 
> 
>>  > mode" do?
>>  > 
>>  > It was pretty easy actually. It came with a web admin app, that has
>>  > a setting for "bridging mode." All I had to do was toggle 
> the
>>  > setting.
>>  > 
>>  > Bridging mode causes it to work at layer 2 instead of layer 3. So it
>>  > doesn't have an IP address anymore. It passes layer 2 traffic
>>  > through to my own router, which now has the IP address assignment
>>  > from Time Warner.
>>  > 
>>  > I don't know much about cable modems, so don't know what the 
> layer 2
>>  > traffic looks like. Presumably it's based on MAC addresses, or
>>  > something like a MAC address??
>>  > 
>>  > Of course since the device no longer has an IP address, I can't 
> get
>>  > back to the web app to untoggle the setting. I'd have to do a hard
>>  > reset.
>> 
>>  That definitely sounds like advanced setup then.
> 
> I'm not seeing that. All a user has to do for bridging
> mode is navigate to a browser link and toggle a setting.

Well, I should explain that the audience I have in mind for that statement
can me described by the following skit:

Coping-Strategy-Guy: Yeah, I know, the gov't watches me browse the
internet, blah blah blah.  But what do I care, I'm not a criminal, I've got
nothing to hide, probably everything I do looks boring to them...

Me: You know you can use a FB to start getting some privacy on the net, right?

Coping-Guy: FB?  What's that?

Me: Here, just plug this in.  Now click here.  Now you're up and running.

Suddenly-Cares-About-His-Newfound-Online-Freedom-Guy: Wow
look at that, it really works!

> 
> Granted, it's some configuration, but not a "ssh to your box
> and modify iptables with vi" :-)
>

Yes, I know, but my fear is that the "last chance" toggle is representative of the
types of user-unfriendly problems people will run into by trying to replace their
router with the FB.  Anyhow if I have some time I'll try to go through at least a
few of the big ISPs using the link someone provided and see what kinds of
restrictions there really are.

-Jonathan




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