Paper Reading #14 - Eden: Supporting Home Network Management Through Interactive Visual Tools

Comments

Jacob

Kevin

Reference

Eden: Supporting Home Network Management Through Interactive Visual Tools

Jeonghwa Yang, W. Keith Edwards, David Haslem

UIST 2010 - New York

Summary

Networking the home is a complicated task for most users. Unfortunately, as more and more network connected devices enter the world, the requirement of a networked home becomes more and more evident. Users often express a wide range of frustrations with attempting to network a home. Eden attempts to provide a visual interface for managing home networks. A user study was conducted to first determine the needs of home network users, a panel of mostly novices and a few experts were surveyed. From this, an interface for managing a home network was implemented. The interface shows network connected devices in the frame of a house and allows visual groupings, shown as rooms, of the equipment. It also allows user to place restrictions or privileges on connected devices using visual badges. The system was implemented as a custom router with a web interface designed in Adobe Flash. In a comparison against other network management software the Eden software performed favorably.

Analysis

While I appreciate the efforts of this paper, I felt that it was lacking many details concerning the technical implementation and the complexities that arise in real world networking scenarios. Additionally, the paper cited that many users have trouble understanding DHCP versus static IP address assignment, yet this system does not account for that error (as it does nothing at the client, where that mistake is usually made). The implementation details also gloss over how new devices are detected and communicated to by Eden to before they are allowed onto the network. Overall I think there are some security concerns. Additionally, the testing was done in the lab with known devices--- this weakens the claim of a real world implementation. Finally, I didn’t think the interface grouping devices by room was very wise -- it’s too definite for wireless devices which roam around and gives users the wrong idea.