My FON Router Experience
So I received my FON router last friday and I just wanted to quickly let the world know what my experience was. The thing is that it is a real first adopters device, so beware if you want to order one.
In the box is a short documentation of what you have to do and that is the first thing. It is really short and you really only have one option. Set-up the router behind your normal router, because the thing has to be online very fast. You boot it up, it gets its IP from your earlier router, you are connected to the FON router with your system though. Then you quickly launch a browser and it loads a FON registration page. There you will have to enter your user information and you will get an eMail allowing you to authenticate yourself as the owner of that router, or rather his MAC address. All this has to happen in 5 minutes or your Router will have to be turned off and on again. It worked after the third try. Finally online with my FON router.
But I could not access the router interface anymore. This is where you have to find out that they added some security patches to the system and now you can only open the interface of the system on the FON router via a network port and not via the WiFi interface. Oh well, once that was found out, I could get in. The interface is nicely done but a little low on features. It does allow you to set up PPPoE though and so I did. Here you should remember that saving those setting doesn’t suffice, but you will need to also Apply them. Then again, that didn’t do much good because I did not get the router to dial in via PPPoE. It might be trying, but I wouldn’t know because there isn’t a log anywhere to be found and I couldn’t connect via SSH to it anymore to look through the file system.
So I am back using two routers, which does work, but seems a bit stupid. I am hoping to eventually get some feedback from FON through the Forums. Mailing them at info@fon.com has not had any result for another question and the people in the forum say they weren’t really successful either. The Forum seems to be filled with users and not much else. All in all, FON seems to have fallen victim to their own success and are probably trying to hire like crazy. They seem to be getting sales people on board quickly but I’d really like them to hire a very good support guy that manages their call center or at least monitors the Forum.
The price for the router still comes out great and if you are wondering if you can use it without being with FON, it seems that you can hack your FON router (source) to make it ping FON periodically to say you are still using their system. We’ll see how long that works and it’s probably not something you really want or need to be doing. The system seems to work great as it is and I am looking forward to the software in Version 1.0, as it’s still 0.6, signifying at least a certain degree of beta status.
We’ll see how that story continues.
Technorati Tags: Customer Support, FON, Hacking, LinkSys
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First of all, thanks a lot for joining FON. We are very happy to see that people all around the world have an interest on FON.
Regarding the issues you had; we are working very hard on making FON as simple to use and configure as possible. As you said, we really had an incredible growth that we couldn't expect and we are managing it the best we can. Obviously we are hiring people and already have a vey good team. Engines are starting to work harder now and will be at cruise speed soon.
Certainly we are working a lot on easing installation and use both in a technical way and by documenting it much more detailed.
About hacking FON; it can obviously be done, though we spect people not to need so. It's a free software, intended to fit people's need and fully unintrusive. We want people to like our software and that's one of the reasons we are delivering two versions of it; a lightweight one for users that don't need or don't want fine tuning of the firmware and an advanced version with many more features. The ones ready to use the advanced version shall be able to install it by themselves, that's why we deliver the routers with FONbasic by default.
Regarding the PPPoE issue, feel free to contact me, but just to let you know, you should be able to access the linksys by ssh; it's enabled and working!
Thanks a lot for you review and don't hesitate to contact FON for any assistance or feedback!
Iurgi Arginzoniz
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note to everyone out there, having a well trafficed blog can do wonders for being contacted :)
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I wonder if you could help me. Bit of a long shot but I'm desparate. I too have a Fon but I can't activate the MyPlace option which means I have to do all my surfing on the Social. Why am I asking you? because I have had no response for eight days from the Fon team.
I'm using a MacBook Pro, Airport, the WPA password from the underneath of La Fonera doesn't work. I've tried the Mac Address (because I'm not exactly sure what I should be doing) as well. I've changed the router password and the WPA password on the consol but still nothing.
Any clues?
Cheers
Stevino
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sadly I have to say that I have an old linksys and buffalo router here. I have no experience with la fonera yet, meaning I haven't played with the 2 SSID bit.
But if you are already logging in with a WPA password, then I would say you are already using the private network, because otherwise you wouldn't need a WPA key.
Oliver
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I almost lost my nerves with this LaFonera-router. Everything works almost fine. When I first time plug my new router to my cable modem the MyPlace shows up and then also FON_AP. I connect to FON_AP and open my browser but Access portal won't shows-up only my default start page and it seems connection works ok but if I try to wifi.fon.com address I get blank page and cannot register my router.
Both side private and public works fine and I can surf around but if I try to register my router in wifi.fon.com I get this blank page. I send support request with my LaFonera-router MAC-address but didn't get any reply.
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