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Comment by azurelogic | Hacker News Reader

I'm skeptical of the app based setup. This thing is dripping with a nice glossy coat of "made for non-technical users". I sure hope they have provided means for reserved IPs and custom port forwarding for when people need it. Bonus if it can update dynamic DNS for me.

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You are probably not the intended market for this device. Not every piece of hardware has to accommodate the needs of every demographic within the market.

It looks like they're targeting the group of people who want their home network to just work.

Why would APs need to do any of that stuff?

People are going to expect this system to also do routing/firewalling/etc.

Those same people expect their fridge to make them coffee.

... or they simply expect it to do what their existing WiFi AP/router combo already does?

Just because their existing router had the capabilities to do it, doesn't mean that the average person is using or needs that capability.

Doesn't almost everyone use the NAT functionality in their home router? It's hard to even find a consumer AP that isn't also a NAT router. This strongly implies that any consumer AP better also include NAT.

They're not really hard to find. Here's one I found in 10 seconds from my neighborhood electronic shop: http://www.futureshop.ca/en-ca/product/d-link-d-link-unified...

While, I get what you are saying with regards to most people expecting wifi and routing in an all-in-one package, this is clearly not what Eero is meant to do. If someone buys this expecting it do everything, then they will probably be able to return it for a full refund.

In a world where most common fridges already make coffee, that's not so unreasonable.

I wouldn't say most common fridges make coffee. It's more like "some high-end fridges" make coffee. If you're in the market for a fridge that makes coffee, you can easily find one, but most people are going to be getting a normal fridge, perhaps with a water dispenser at most.

In this context, pretty much all "fridges" have the capability to "make coffee" built in. Most owners aren't aware of this, but that doesn't change that the features are still there.

Maybe I'm not exactly understanding your context, but how, exactly, do most fridges have the capability to make coffee? Because my fridge doesn't make coffee. And I'd wager most don't either since http://money.cnn.com/2015/01/18/technology/innovationnation/... is a news article from last month under the category "Innovation Nation".

It's a metaphor. The "fridge" is a wireless AP and "making coffee" is firewalling and routing functionality.

Most wireless APs can and do have those features.

You could also treat it as an abstract "access point" blanket, throw a dedicated router in front of it (like a Ubiquiti EdgeRouter Lite), and get some separation of concerns bonus points.

That only works if it supports bridging rather than forcing you to use NAT.

It appears to automatically detect and bridge: https://support.eero.com/hc/en-us/articles/204144995-Can-I-s...

> your modem's built-in router will continue to manage the network unless you can turn off the routing functionality. That means that eero won't manage your firewall, your NAT or your DHCP settings.

I'd guess if it gets an RFC 1918 address from upstream it turns off NAT and DHCP.

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