Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

OK, so let's look at the second of those, since the first is consumer level and not really our target market for professional grade networking equipment.

Your original contention was that it's hard to implement a single pane UI without putting a bunch of logic in the cloud. If our hypothetical one admin person with some idea of what they're doing, together with any automatic assistance the relevant devices provide, can set up enough local networking that all of those devices can reliably access the Internet and support cloud-based configuration, then a similar process can set up those devices to support single pane configuration using the LAN only.

At that point, looking back to the four "hard problems" you enumerated a few comments ago, I still don't see a strong argument for needing the cloud dependency.

The risks around network setup and reliability don't seem any worse for LAN-based configuration than cloud-based. In fact, LAN-based clearly has an advantage by not relying on any external infrastructure. It also has the advantage that if you want to get more serious for a larger deployment, you can run independent cabling and create a dedicated management network for control signalling, while most places aren't going to have an independent second Internet connection for management traffic if you accidentally break your configuration so your main data network loses Internet access.

Managing multiple sites is probably a non-issue at this level of the market.

Remote access for IT/support people is easily provided if necessary by having safe and easy VPN setup as part of your user-friendly interface. This has the added advantage that your tech people can also reach any other parts of the network they need, and so you might have required this functionality anyway. And if it's locally configured, you can always quickly shut that VPN access off again in case of any security worries, without needing anyone else's remote systems to be working properly before you can secure your own in an emergency.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: