La Fonera 2.0 gets demoed on video
By Donald Melanson 
posted February 7th 2009 11:06AM
posted February 7th 2009 11:06AM
Developers have been able to get their hands on a Fonera 2.0 for some time now, but others haven't been able to do much more than stare at their current Fonera and imagine all the USB devices that'd be so much better connected to it. Now folks can at least get a pretty good idea of what's in store courtesy of a demo video from Fon CEO Martin Varsavsky himself (available after the break), which provides a decent overview of the device and includes a couple of new details. From the looks of it, the router delivers as promised, with it able to get along nicely with a whole host of USB devices including hard drives, printers, or a 3G modem, and make use of plug-ins for everything from Flickr to BitTorrent. What's more, while Varsavsky didn't offer too many specifics, he did throw out €50 or €60 as a possible price point, and said that it should be launching in the next 60 days or so.
[Thanks, estqwerty]
[Thanks, estqwerty]
I want one! I hope they ship to Mauritius. And I hope I can use it instead of my stupid Orange Livebox.
I hope they ship me to Mauritius!
Endorsed by Vuze (P2P service) as well? Interesting...
'Fon' is the backbone architecture inherent to the UK's 'BT Openzone' program isn't it? If so I wonder whether we'll be offered a shiny new HomeHub that incorporates all of these new frills. I've read that a printer can be connected to the current iteration of the HomeHub but requires no small amount of tinkering to actually work.
Proper support for functions such as printer sharing and NAS would be fantastic.
No it isn't. Openzone is the public wifi spots that cost a fortune. If you buy broadband from BT (why?) then as part of a deal you can use fon hotspots as well.
Openzone is also tied to the HomeHub. We have enabled ours to broadcast an Openzone secondary signal from our house and as such now benefit from being able to login through other users Openzone signals up and down the country using our login details.
For third parties with no BT contractual affiliation it probably does cost a fortune to use them in a 'Pay As You Go' style.
sabnzbd plugin :)
you can already buy a fonera 2.0 BETA here, for 39 euro :O
i hope it wont die constantly like the previos generation. id also hope that their support would keep tickets and stop bugging me.
It's a router. It works. It does some stuff on its own. The guy hordes a pile of unsightly stuff by the wall under his TV. Is any of this really interesting? 8:20, seesh!
It was interesting enough for you to take the time to claim otherwise.
Yeah, I guess so. Probably crossing a line in the "so irrelevant it actually starts to demand some attention again" department.
I hope I can get one of these free; I got the first Fon free..
And hopefully I can load DD-WRT on it like the first one.
How?
It's certainly a cute little toy, but with only one LAN port, does anyone seriously want to make this the center of their home network? The dual-SSID trick of the Atheros chipset aboard it, still causes severe problems for many wifi adapters with power save modes enabled. Fon has long given up making money by selling wifi access (which itself is donated to Fon by it's members), and now sells merchandise like the La Foneras. I also question the appropriateness of the bells and whistles of this little marvel, when the purpose of the Fon Network is to sell wifi to the public, and share wifi among members. It's simply out-of-character for the Fon Movement, and provides nothing of use to the Fonero Community, who needs better tools like setting their own locally competative prices, realistic profit-sharing plans, truely personalizing their hotspot login pages, accurate and timely useage statistics, compatability with more router hardware, and encryption (probably via VPN) of their UNSAFE wifi connection. Fon has lost credability with me, in generating membership and useage statistice via shady means, ignoring the Fonero Community to the point of disgusted stagnation, and making sudden changes in TOS without warning, always to the detriment of their once-loyal Fonero members. I write an independant blog about Fon called elfonblog.fondoo.net
I like that Vuze logo on it.
You do not get it - the right word here is plug-in .
You get one LAN port to plug LAN switch and use whatever You wish.
You get one USB port to connect what you wish.
The main thing here is this module architecture of open software - You do not wish to install DDWRT because You can not use plug-ins.
This is the new thing here!
I only thing I pray is that fonera 2.0 will use faster cpu than this in beta version - or may be there will be several versions of the hardware?
No mater what hardware they use everything is open source I thing , so this will be THE change in the way we use our routers.
http://www.addonics.com/products/nas/nasu2.asp
about the same, but a opensource version is always nice :)
or ill just wait untill they make one with a atom...
Sorry guys, but La Fonera 2.0 will not continue indefinetly as "open source". Fon takes the most liberal definition of this. They publish only the first variation (of OpenWRT) which they modify, then that is it. The current LF 2.0 firmwares are for the 1000 built as of this time, for volunteer developers. The regular version will be locked. Again, the flexibility of the current LF 2.0 firmware is ONLY for the volunteer developers. After this, you will need to download approved, code-signed plugins from Fon. There will be no hardware difference in the production model. The CPU and RAM that you see here is what you get. The La Fonera Plus is exactly like the 2.0, but has blank spaces where the USB hardware was left out.
Hi all,
First of all, thanks to all for the interest and the comments.
AustinTX, I'm not gonna comment on your sayings specifically, just generally: I don't understand why you lie or invent and why you sometimes are nice and others evil, but I don't care. I keep my version the same, as always.
Just as a note for the rest: the Fonera 2.0 is totally opensource, we release the code of everything we can and it will always be like that. There will be NO SUCH restricted applications for a closed system. All Foneras 2.0 will come with a plugin system where you can install only FON signed software but a SINGLE CLICK will be enough to remove the restriction and install anything you wish from any sources. This limitation is so that users that don't want to install untrusted software, are safe with the out of the box device. If someone wants to open it, install any other operating system, break it, brick it, hack it... whatever. They're totally free to do so and FON will not prevent that at all.
As for different HW flavor: we are of course thinking of future devices. F2.0 is more a firmware than the HW itself. We willreuse this nice piece of work in the future :)
Disclaimer, just in case it wasn't clear.
I work for FON. I'm the firmware manager, meaning I am in charge of all the devices at FON (Fonera, Fonera+, Fonera+-UK and Fonera2.0).
FON does not only take the OpenWrt firmware and release it. A significant number of OpenWrt developers have a professional relationship with FON and all the work done for FON is handed to OpenWrt if it's interesting for them.