Residential Gateway Devices

[f1assistance]

I just read the article "Hot Boxes: The Explosive Potential for Residential Gateway Devices" and the idea of cable cos. offering a "Residential Gateway" and having a set-top-box as "the primary point of entry into the digital home" bothers me greatly! For this same reason I install an Untangle Firewall (router) between the ISP and my LAN. I want a demarcation point under my control. Untangle needs to aggressively show a presents in this market for all the added service and security it provides which I believe is the best perimeter solution for the digital home...

[Solignis]

I don't see a reason to be alarmed about anything you were gathering from that article. For the cable company to have a residential gateway actually makes from sense to me. From a security stand-point it is about as un-safe as it is now. The thing I have learned from talking to people who think they can hide from their ISP, YOU CAN'T!. They are the connection to the internet they can see all traffic going in and out of that "modem" anyway. Allowing them centralized management from a cable "router" sounds like it would be similar to what the phone companies do already with T1 customers that have voice and data on the same link.

And about having an Untangle between the LAN and the WAN. That is good practice anyway. No matter what connection you have, you should always have a firewall or a UTM in between you public internet and you private network.

As it stands the demarcation point for residential is the box that hangs on the side of your house. The one on our house has two sides. "customer" side and "provider" side. How much more of the connection do you want to fall into your responsibility? Anymore and you will be buying spools of telecomm cable. Not the 2 pair stuff, the stuff on the poles.

[sky-knight]

Besides, even if you do get roped into a managed gateway, you use an Untangle bridge for your filtering needs and you're still covered.

This magic product works in both worlds, and it works today.