Apologies in advance if this has been beat to death, and I just didn’t see it!
Easily the biggest thing Motorola could add to the Canopy units in terms of client-side functionality would be port forwarding for the standard services which clients use over the internet.
The ability to do VPN is great, and it tells me that the Canopy has the capability to add other similar services, just like any consumer-grade router off the shelf (i.e. Netgear, Linksys).
Right now, if one of our customers wants to do any protocol which requires port forwarding outside of a true IPSEC, they need to have a seperate router in place, and then have the NAT function in the Canopy disabled. This is an added expense for the client, obviously, and it also severely limits the ability of our technicians to inspect the traffic passing through the Canopy device (with the NATing off).
As a prime example, many of our clients take online classes, which use a form of Point to Point Protocol. Gamers, as well, often require port forwarding to play online games properly, and certainly to host a server. There really are endless examples, and there’s nothing quite so gruelling as having to inform a new client, after-the-fact, that their specific type of secure connection won’t work through the Canopy, so they have to shell out $50-$100 more for equipment (which, by the way, won’t work right out of the box Mr. Customer: You’ll have to call back so that I can tell you what IP address you’ll have to hard-code into the router. Are we having fun yet?)
I’m begging, pretty please, could we at least get some kind of manual port forwarding interface, even if we can’t get one with all the services nicely defined (as with the Netgear, etc.)?
The ability to forward ports through the Canopy NAT would be a HUGE step for the customers, and really help with speed and ease of deployment for all WISPs . … :roll:
Thanks in advance!
A feature request was submitted for review. Thanks for the participation.