Hi all,
I've been using the ASG software for personal use for a week or so and think it's great! I'd like to thank Astaro for letting home users try the system for free.
However, I'm already hitting the 10 user limit even though there's only 2 people in the house (dogs and baby excluded). Part of this is because I've been reconfiguring my home network to work with the ASG (switching fixed and DHCP addresses around, etc) so some devices have got counted twice. From threads that I have read, I guess I need to wait a week for the old IP's to time out (suggestion: a refresh option would be useful).
My bigger problem is that I have more than 10 IP's on my network: 2 work laptops (one for me and one for my wife), 1 personal laptop, 1 media server, 2 media clients, 1 Dish Network DVR, 1 Roku NetFlix player, 1 XBox, 3 wi-fi access points (yes, I need that many without rewiring my house), 1 VoIP access point, 1 DSL router, 1 wi-fi enabled personal media player. I'm also going to add a webcam in the baby's room and hope to add more VoIP phones soon.
So, that's 15 on a day-to-day basis and I could be up to 20 by the end of the year. I'm an IT enthusiast, so from time to time I'll have other equipment on my network as I "play" with it. But this is all legitimate personal use, for 2 "real" users (mainly 1!).
So, first I have a polite request that the personal use license is increased to, say, 20-25. Most (all?) people who are using ASG, an enterprise class system, at home are IT enthusiasts. These people mostly have a large number of IP addressable devices. With VoIP, DVR's, wi-fi printers and Internet TV devices now mass market products, even the average person is approaching 10 IP's at home.
These IT enthusiasts, many of whom are in the industry, are the people who recommend Astaro products as a result of their personal use. Surely, that's why Astaro grants a personal use license (that and the free support and beta testing)? It makes business sense, and I'm sure that I will be recommending Astaro once I've had a chance to give it a real test drive. However, after only a few days of use it now seems obsolete and I'm unfortunately faced with decommissioning my ASG before I've even tried many features.
The 10 IP license is now an outdated limit for personal use. It was perhaps appropriate when first introduced, but I believe that it is now time to revise it.
My second request (as a fall-back if the first cannot be granted), is that I understand how the "users" are counted. I obviously now understand that a "user" is an IP address, and not a person as originally thought. Not all of my devices need to access the Internet, and if I don't use the ASG as a DHCP server then some don't need to talk to it at all.
So, what triggers the ASG to count an address as one of the "users"? If 20 devices are all on the same LAN segment as the ASG, does the ARP cache in the ASG mean that the ASG will "see" all 20 and count them? Does responding to an ARP request trigger the count, even if that's all that happens? Does it monitor the network in promiscuous mode and count addresses between parties other than its self? Or, do the devices need to try and route traffic through the ASG to be counted? Or is there some other method in use?
I need to understand this better so that I know how to isolate the devices that don't need to use the ASG. For example, I might construct separate VLAN's. However, my devices need to talk to each other, so I want to minimize the isolation.
Of course, all this added complexity is time consuming, overly complex, may require additional equipment (switches, etc) and is very frustrating. Hopefully Astaro will differentiate between legitimate personal users who want to explore the ASG functionality on their home networks, and businesses trying to get around licensing restrictions.
I'm aware of the additional licenses granted to power users of this board, but honestly I don't have much time for that any more (time with family has now replaced the IT all-nighters that I used to spend when I was younger). Like may other home users, I'll contribute by spreading the word in the industry.
This is a great product. Astaro - please let us home users explore it fully. You'll be helping us help you.
Thanks for listening.
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