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Re:Unpatched routers being used to build vast proxy army, sp... by christophilus on Thursday September 06, 2018 @11:02AM (#17926767)
Anyone here used Plume[0]? A friend of mine recently suggested it, and it sounds interesting but also... a bit scary. I suspect it has a centralized attack point (get into the Plume infrastructure, and you can probably automatically roll a virus out to all Plume routers in the world).

[0] https://www.plume.com/

Re:Unpatched routers being used to build vast proxy army, sp... by ac29 on Thursday September 06, 2018 @12:33PM (#17927460)
Plume got a pretty icy reception here when they launched their subscription-based pricing model: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17293078

If you really need a mesh (you probably don't), there are other solutions. If you know at least a little about home networking and WiFi, just setup a Unifi system and be done with it.

Re:Unpatched routers being used to build vast proxy army, sp... by crestfallen on Thursday September 06, 2018 @03:47PM (#17929031)
Let me first say that I am not a super network dude. I know enough to be dangerous.

The newer story @ Ars has some updated stats and thoughts: https://arstechnica.com/features/2018/06/exclusive-plumes-ne...

Part of the improvement is the hardware. The latency improvement is awesome, for example. But part of it seems to legitimately be the optimization that their software is doing re: signal strength, which backhaul to use, auto updates, the level of customer support, and other stuff.

I don't know how it compares, but it seems it may be better than people were initially thinking.

Re:Unpatched routers being used to build vast proxy army, sp... by shawn on Thursday September 06, 2018 @11:12AM (#17926831)
I read their entire website and still have no idea what precisely Plume is or what they're selling.

"What makes Plume different from my traditional Wi-Fi router or extender?

Single router Wi-Fi systems can give you the speed you need as long as you’re close enough to the router. Wi-Fi extenders or repeaters can improve coverage, but are often complicated, unreliable, and degrade performance. Plume is a cloud coordinated Wi-Fi system that replaces your current router and gives you stable and consistent Wi-Fi coverage and speed in every room within your home using blazing fast tri-band SuperPods coupled with auto-channel hop technology."

If I understand this word salad correctly, it's a router which uses a cloud service to auto-configure itself.

Re:Unpatched routers being used to build vast proxy army, sp... by SpikeDad on Thursday September 06, 2018 @11:24AM (#17926933)
More accurately a mesh router system which uses a cloud service to auto-configure itself.

Mmm. Love some word salad with mesh dressing.

In the end, it's just hardware with some online configurator which will most likely render the whole system unusable if the online service shuts down.

Great for anyone that doesn't stop to think for a minute how dumb this idea is.