I've been attempting to explain to an ex-roommate of mine, who isn't particularly technical, how to improve his home network. Currently, his router/WiFi/firewall box is in the basement and isn't adequately reaching the entire house.

So far as I can tell, the distinction between "router", "switch", and "access point" are sufficiently indistinct that it's a real nightmare for a non-technical person to understand. Ideally, this sort of technology should be no more complicated than "you need another box; run a wire from your old box to your new box". Once there's more than one color of box, all of this fails.

Today, most "routers" cannot dumb themselves down to the point of being just a switch and an access point (at least, not without third-party firmware and a lot of know-how). Yet, it's generally cheaper to buy an all-in-one router/firewall/NAT/WiFi box than to buy more specialized boxes.

Conjecture: there's probably a market out there for "home network boxes", all the same (although hopefully not made out of ticky tacky), which automatically sort out everything, and I do mean everything. Plug them in and they sort out their local topology, figure out which one might have an external network connection, and even do WDS without requiring you to do anything at all. I mean really, truly zero configuration effort. Maybe even go the extra step of putting an LCD display on every one to say what your WPA2 password should be.

The only commercial product that seems to even come close is Sonos's home theater distribution system, but that's WiFi-only.

Am I missing something? Is there any reason that this couldn't happen?

I have my home network (such as it is: two computers, a printer, an internet phone, a cable modem, a router w/wi-fi, and a second router rebroadcasting the wi-fi signal from the first router) and it is all set up and functioning properly.

I haven't a clue how it works or why. For the initial setup I followed comic-book-like instructions ("Connect an Ethernet wire from the cable modem to the "HOME" port on the OOMA...", with accompanying line drawings), and Mark Lord set up and pre-configured my repeater router (WRT54g) for me and mailed it to me from Canada.

Why the repeater? Because there is so much steel in this over-built house that my primary router wi-fi signal cannot penetrate the floor to my downstairs neighbor's computer 10 feet away. The signal has to go out my window to the repeater on her deck, then from the repeater through her window to reach her computer. She gets internet and telephone access that way.

From personal experience I can attest to your idea that a device such as you propose would be useful. If I weren't already set up, I'd be standing first in line to buy such a device, and wouldn't even blink at $100 per box.

tanstaafl.

I think there would be limits to the utility of this sort of thing. You haven't really outlined how this auto-discovery and topology-mapping process would work, but how would two sets of these boxes running in two neighboring apartments (within range of each other) know that they shouldn't all be part of the same network? Are you counting on all of the boxes being wired to each other to do this sort of handshaking? That's fine, but you'd lose the ability to wirelessly link different segments, which would seem to be a common reason for adding another device.

Why is your ex-roomate's box in the basement now, and why can't it just be relocated upstairs? I assume there's a cable/DSL/FiOS modem down there that it needs to hook up to? If so, running phone/cat5/coax as needed to get the wireless AP upstairs might be enough to improve his signal, and you'd avoid the throughput loss from WDS hops.

Can't an Apple AirPort and AirPort Express do this for you ??? It's pretty much plug and play.

The AirPort works out of the box as the main router/access point and then you can just set the AirPort Express' to extend the rage around the house. All done via one simple application on one PC/Mac connected to the network either wired or WiFI.

Cheers

Cris

It's not quite as simple as what Dan is wanting, but yes, setting up Airport devices is pretty trivial. I don't know the underlying technical details on how Apple does it, but Airport Utility will sense unconfigured units on wired or wireless networks, and will temporally join the wireless network if needed to then send the configuration to the Airport unit.

Airports also broadcast out an SOS of sorts when problems arise, triggering Airport Utility to open on a machine that was previously used to configure it. I've had Airport Utility pop open when my cable network goes down for more then just a few moments.

Does the AirPort use a typical web interface? We noticed that one of my friend's router was broadcasting the admin port number in the open, but she said there wasn't a web interface to easily configure it. That doesn't sound right to me.

The AirPort does not have a web interface at all. Has to be configured via a tool builtin to OSX, a Windows app or (new in iOS 5, not out yet) with an iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch.

I guess what I'd really like to see is something akin to how "dumb" switches work. You plug them together and they automatically sort out the network topology and packets "magically" get where they're going. This doesn't scale well to giant corporations, but it's perfect for home networks. The challenge is to do this in a zero-config way for the generic consumer.

As TonyC points out, there's a security problem in making it too easy, namely that it now becomes too easy to blow your security perimeter. There are no lack of ways to address that. Maybe NFC wireless is the way to to go (e.g., just tap them together and they'll pair using short-range radio; for extra zing, use an accelerometer so you don't even need buttons).

Once paired, everything else should "just work." If you have to launch a web browser and connect to a goofy IP address, or if you have to run a proprietary configuration tool (Apple Airport), then that's already too hard for too many users.

Maybe I'm just dreaming here, but if my ex-roommate, who's a perfectly competent computer user, can't suss this out properly on his own, then there must be a ton of people who are in even worse shape.

They already have ways of effortlessly connecting wireless clients to certain routers, so I don't see why they couldn't do something similar with another router and it could still be secure. You could simply press a button on the two routers and have them pair with each other, with no need for NFC, which would add a lot of cost for something you'd rarely use.

This is similar to one of the reasons I got rid of my X10 system. With X10's RF transceiver, there was absolutely nothing stopping anyone with a remote from turning my lights on and off. Well, nothing other than 16 different house codes, but that could take no more than a minute to figure out. Z-Wave products, which I have now, create their network by putting the central remote in pairing mode and pressing a button on the Z-Wave device. From that point all the devices are in a mesh network and communicate with each other until they all get the signal.


Dan, while I think what you're proposing is possible, there's one thing I'm having trouble thinking of a way to get past: WDS. I don't know how you'd add a second wireless access point to a home network without using WDS, whether the user had to set it up or not. This would mean halved performance for anyone connecting to the second access point. That is, unless this access point had two radios in it, with one handling the connection to the main router and the other handling connections. That would add cost, though.


In the end, you can get a router that's supported by Tomato online for under $50, and I guarantee you can make a router get to that top floor of his home. No, it's not easy to do for the novice, but that's when you get a friend like you to set it up, or hire someone like me who comes to your home to do it for you

Uhhh... yeah. What he said.

I am nowhere near the competence level of you computer gods who hang out here on this bbs, but I have had more than 35 years of hands-on computer experience, and among the people I hang out with I am considered to be at least a minor deity.

That said, when it comes to networking and internet connectivity, I am a complete moron. I would welcome something like Dan describes.

tanstaafl.

I'm my crazy vision, first you do some "pairing" of the network boxes. (Perhaps you buy a set of them, pre-paired from the factory.) At that point, you plug them in and they do WDS by default unless they happen to notice that they're connected by a wire. Ahh, then let's use the wire. This should be automatic.

Cost is an interesting thing. To pick on one vendor, a D-Link DAP-1522, introduced in May 2009 and still for sale, has a four port gigabit switch and a built-in access point. It presently costs $72 (at NewEgg). So far as I can tell, nobody else builds a product anything like it. D-Link routers, often with far more capable hardware, cost roughly the same. Why? Volume.

Presumably, the one-box-for-everybody solution wouldn't need to be any more expensive than any of these other router boxes. It would just need a serious overhaul of the software to target painless usability for more sophisticated configurations.

If there's one thing that people around here can agree on, it's that quality software makes all the difference in the world. And the firms building these routers, with the perhaps notable exception of Apple, aren't particularly known for software quality.

Anyway... random thoughts for the day.

No offense, but I was confused because that sounds like a standard wireless router. Seeing the description, it looks like it's exactly what I was describing in my last post, where there are two access points in one device, one handling WDS and the other distributing the wireless to other clients, so you could avoid the loss in performance. That's pretty neat, and I'll have to keep an eye on that product. WDS is definitely not something that the average consumer is going to be able to set up manually, so something automatic would be necessary.

*edit* Okay, I looked at that thing again, and now see that it's a wireless bridge, and the "Duo" that caught my eye was just for selectable dual band (which is not as good as simultaneous). I have to imagine that this device would still suffer from halved performance in a WDS setup, which is how I assume it works. */edit*


As far as I can see, there's a primary obstacle to everything you're describing: your ISP. It's funny, but today I long for the days when they'd come into your home and drop a modem somewhere, then it was up to you to do something with it. Of course, initially it was mainly to charge you for every computer you wanted to add to the account, but as people added routers I'm guessing they had a lot of support calls and eventually decided that the most sure-fire way to minimize those calls is to install an all-in-one modem/wireless router. As a result, it's occasionally VERY hard to use your own equipment. My Fios router, for example, is not designed to let it become a mere bridge. I had to do a hell of a lot of stuff to it to get it to the point where I could attach my own router. It's extremely annoying...

So unless the ISP's got on board, none of this will be possible.

Yeah, once you add some sort of pairing process, you can get most of what you want -- though your users will soon find that what they gain in better signal from more APs they probably lose in WDS overhead, especially once you go up to 3 or more of them. Probably not noticable if they're just browsing the web and downloading a file or two, but if Dad's watching Netflix, Mom's downloading iTunes, and junior is gaming, it might be an issue.

Any response to my question about why your friend can't just move the existing router (and whatever modem is connected to it) upstairs? Even if he has to run some cable, he would avoid spending money on another box, and keep the simple network topology.

Re: the crappy software quality on home routers, it's always surprised me that one of the big vendors hasn't worked out an arrangement to ship with a DD-WRT or Tomato fork. Imagine if Cisco or D-Link hired or contracted one of the big open firmware gurus to develop a more consumer-friendly Tomato or DD-WRT build for them. Heck, TomatoUSB is mature and stable enough right now that you could hide a bunch of the glitzy features behind an "advanced mode" checkbox and ship it as the factory firmware on nearly any router out there. Why they would insist on sticking with their generally crappy firmware that people end up replacing anyway is beyond me.

I'm totally with you on the FiOS thing. I love the Internet and TV services, but the Actiontec wireless router they want you to use is a nightmware to configure. The performance is okay, and has the many of the advanced things you'd want on a router, but the administrative interface is so goddamn clunky that it's hard to make simple changes.

So, like you, I've tried to make it do the bare minimum for my network, but it's a giant hassle. The recommended solution for getting all of the services including on-demand video and remote DVR scheduling requires you to use *three* routers - the Actiontec, your primary router/gateway box, and a third router that just sits between them and serves up your external DHCP address to the Actiontec. That is apparently the *only* way to get remote DVR working unless you're okay with the Actiontec being the primary router. What a pain!

The interface is enough reason to switch to something else, but the main reason I wanted to use something else is that the Actiontec is 802.11g with 10/100 ports. I wanted the 5GHz channel which is far less crowded in my complex, and I wanted 802.11n for HD video streaming.


Ugh, that's just awful. I didn't even care about VOD because I'm using a Tivo, and I still need to have another router attached to my Actiontec. I should be able to replace it fully if I want to.

Yeah, a lot of people end up wanting to use 802.11n and/or the 5 GHz band, but it's actually relatively easy to do that and still use the Actiontec as the primary router -- you just set the gateway on your own router and you're done.

It only gets really ugly when you decide you want something else to be the primary, at which point you have to reconfigure the Actiontec to act a bridge instead of a router, or run CAT5 to your FiOS ONT (if it's not already) and feeding that into your router's WAN port. But then your set-top boxes still want to be on the coax ONT connection so they can get guide data, VOD, and lord-knows-what-else. So it gets ugly really quickly, and the three router solution is actually the simplest one that a bunch of smart people have arrived at, which is *scary*.

Ahh, you are correct. And I forgot you were going over coax. That's one advantage to being a "Multi-Dwelling Unit" customer, the only method they have is to go over ethernet to the WAN port, but it means I actually have DSL to the ONT, and the only annoying part about that is explaining to Fios phone support that I'm having trouble with my Fios connection because of my DSL modem. Those calls are extremely frustrating.

So I still have three boxes at the center of my network. I actually had to move them to the first floor of my two-story condo because all combined they added too much heat to my office!

Anyway, sorry to take the topic off track, Dan...

Off topic? Here? Never!