Young Rudolph passed away…
Hi all,
Some of you might have noticed that Rudolph has been removed from the location it was made publicly available at. Many wonder why… well, Rudolph had a congenital illness: the FON Hotspot did not work and also, it registered a wrong MAC address on FON’s system.
Anyway, you can still compile the image from svn if you want to use the rest of the benefits.
We are working hard, even if it is Christmas and will try to release a new fixed RC asap.
Also, 2.3.5.0 will be available for the Fonera 2.0g too. A bit later than for the 2.0n, but it will come.
Thanks for understanding.
December 22nd, 2009 at 12:36 pm
You release a Release Candidate with such blatant bugs? Don’t you know how to set up a testing environment with standardised tests? This lack of basic functionality should have been caught by you.
No wonder the Fonera firmware keeps being so buggy. I work in software too, and I think your development sucks.
December 22nd, 2009 at 12:56 pm
Schunz, where is the mailing list and the blog where I can praise your most perfect software?
December 22nd, 2009 at 4:06 pm
all these months and you have not made it. I need fon needs a change. It seems that all the expectations are lost now… and about the webcam… well just forgotten
what are you developing the goneme?
And by the way you should expect all this blaming as you own to your customers who only have this right, to be upset… after all you only offer 2 pieces of hardware, one to mend the other one which is even worse. YEah lets have 2 pieces of silly hardware by the great offer you mailed us. You should tal to your fonera g providers to clear them all right now.. Oh wait maybe you knew that it would’t work but thought you could work it out
December 22nd, 2009 at 9:42 pm
Thank you to finally communicate on 2.0g version. Knowing that we can also expect some improvement is really appreciated even if it’s not for tomorrow.
December 23rd, 2009 at 11:28 am
@burton-ng
I understand your upset, but fw of other router change frequently like fon 2.0 does? for other router or access point you’ve to wait for month, for nothing …
and if u’re a good programer u can do the job by your self
December 23rd, 2009 at 10:04 pm
I wish Young Rudolph a prompt recovery! Maybe it wasn’t a good RC but anyway keep going… The next one will be better. Thank’s for using free software!
December 24th, 2009 at 6:30 am
GREAT GREAT thanks for a 2.0g release. And Merry Christmas!!
December 27th, 2009 at 12:58 pm
when will the voip restart bug be addressed on 2.0n?
December 28th, 2009 at 8:08 am
Keep up the good work on you innovative product. More functionality needs more work and can bring some bugs. And as you all have seen, 2.3.5.0 is a release candidate (RC) and not a official version
January 1st, 2010 at 11:45 pm
sorry to hear that,
i will never ever use those..
but as i understand it, rudolph was already born badly wounded… so it´s for his best i think.
if i had the time to dig into this, i would compile my own fimware just to get rid of those annoying “picasa etc” uploader buttons
please - when compiling - think of those who just want to have a stable router.
if you can add funktions via the build-in downloader, why don´t you offer a basic / almost naked firmware and let the people install just those things they want via this installer ?
please give it a thought!
keep up the (most of the time) good work, make the 2n´s wlan stable and everyone happy - don´t let us wait ´til 2011!
January 4th, 2010 at 3:27 am
@Simon
I like the idea that all extra functions available as plugins. But currently the plugins folder is badly organized, hope a better organization if the idea comes true.
regards.
January 4th, 2010 at 8:47 am
How is the developement of a firmware that makes my router usable going? 2.0n with not losing connectons? Plz keep us informed! More posts on your status! Many people are waiting for their router to work properly!
January 4th, 2010 at 10:24 pm
Yes, I agree. Please focus on stable basic router first. A stable router with a few buggy add-ins is better than an unstable router with a multitude of unwanted fancy features.
January 6th, 2010 at 10:47 am
Hi friends!
Are there any news about an uptdated Young Rudolph firmware version?
Regards, Kyros
January 6th, 2010 at 6:40 pm
hey there,
i just wanted to let you know that for 2 days now, my fonera 2n (with the rudolph RC firmware) has a stable wlan-signal. but i can´t connect to the GUI when typing “fonera” in my browser anymore
the gui seems to have crashed somehow when i plugged in a usb-stick … i don´t care, surfing works great and no disconnects with icq anymore, i take this as a good bargain for now.
hopefully, the router doesn´t reboot until the new firmware is out…
January 7th, 2010 at 9:31 am
This is so embarrassing for FON. Now their customers are even glad, their expensive product does ONE of the things they bought it for.
Get off your lazy asses already and deliver on your promises. Rudolf is already a month later than you promised in december. I bet there won’t be a stable release until march.
I won’t buy any more FON products. I’ve had enough.
January 8th, 2010 at 7:28 am
I have the same problem, i have to type in the IP to connect to the fonera, the only thing i changed was plug in a harddisk. UPNP doesn’t work anymore, with nothing changed. It just stopped after a week or two. Had the harddisk with me over christmas so maybe if you reconnect the same disk after a long time its a problem? I don’t know. Since i turned OFF the FON Spot, the other wlan works without problems.
January 9th, 2010 at 9:49 am
What did ASAP mean when you said that you would even work at christmas? When can we expect a working WLAN router software?
January 9th, 2010 at 11:10 am
Has anybody still got an image of the 2.3.5.0 RC2 Firmware? I missed the download while it was available and need the bridging functionality desperately. If somebody could send me the image to mike at kellyburger dot com, I’d be very grateful!
January 10th, 2010 at 12:18 pm
Good work!
)
January 10th, 2010 at 2:46 pm
LOL ^
January 10th, 2010 at 7:17 pm
Since young rudolph still has problems, where can i get the original non-release-candidate firmware to download and set back my fonera 2.0n?
January 11th, 2010 at 1:16 am
@Norman: pls. follow http://wiki.fon.com/wiki/Fonera_2.0n, the reflash should be made by the book. Find latest image at http://download.fon.com/LATEST (choose correct F2 model)
January 11th, 2010 at 9:34 am
http://download.fonosfera.org/LATEST/
January 11th, 2010 at 9:53 am
Thnx a lot
January 11th, 2010 at 1:38 pm
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I’m running Rudolph… half-dead I don’t care as long it runs with my iPhone.
January 13th, 2010 at 2:17 am
Any update? I’ve finally managed to find a copy of Rudolf online, this makes the router almost usable, as opposed to totally toast with the 2.3.0.0 version.
There are still some major bugs, some already reported by others, others not. But with a few restarts a day it kind of works.
I’m reluctant to report any bugs for a firmware that’s almost impossible to download. There’s clearly no point reporting bugs for 2.3.0.0 as it’s totally useless (more bugs than features).
Where’s the promised new version? Happy to contribute in reporting (minor) bugs for any supported RC.
And please stop censoring these comments!
January 13th, 2010 at 9:29 pm
why you do not post my comments?
January 15th, 2010 at 1:22 pm
are you on a strike?
January 16th, 2010 at 11:32 pm
They strike on answering
January 18th, 2010 at 6:19 am
Any news on the new version??
January 19th, 2010 at 4:39 pm
zzzZZZzzz the world waiting and FON not caring … zzzZZZzzz
January 19th, 2010 at 6:42 pm
i´d rather have one functioning firmware in the near (!) future than constant comments on how well they are doing
let´s just assume they have every available person working on it, re-checking and re-working every line of code three times before releasing it; I assume this, because they failed big time with their last (beta) fw release and do not want this to happen again.
January 20th, 2010 at 2:26 pm
thx a lot my comment is still: Your comment is awaiting moderation. !!!!!!!!!!1
January 22nd, 2010 at 4:39 pm
Hi Fon devs!
Now it’s one whole month since you finished Young Rudolph off.
Please at least keep us informed how you’re gonna proceed.
Did you all completely retire from public life?
Regards, Kyros
January 24th, 2010 at 9:38 am
I downloaded 65GB of stuff on BitTorrent using the Fonera 2.0n during the past couple of months. So it certainly works. I love using Transdroid on Android to remote control this. I can click on any .torrent file in the Android browser and it automatically ads it to my Fonera 2.0n for download. Fantastic.
Now there are a few things I would hope would be added/fixed:
- It’d be nice with less random crashing (that the yellow fonera FON Router GUI page somehow shows up and only 1-2 minutes later Internet works again) This seems to happen 2-3 times a week, I wonder why.
- It’d be really nice if the BitTorrent client had options like “Maximum amount of active torrents”, “Unseed completed torrents after __ ratio” (one could put 0 in there if they want instant automatic unseed after complete), or “Only seed until __ ratio after all queued downloads have completed”. I don’t know if FON is able to change in the way transmission works on these things. I guess an Android app could also handle this remotely but that wouldn’t be as efficient as those being built-in settings.
- When I have active torrents, Samba movie streaming just doesn’t really work, so I have to pause all downloads when I want to stream my videos. It would be nice if there was an automatic way to detect how much torrent activity can be supported without disrupting live streams and that the full speed automatically is restarted when the local video streaming or other file transfer is finished. I guess this won’t happen though. Manually pausing all downloads using Transdroid before playing a video I guess will be good enough then.
- Sometimes the hard drive shows up as B1 instead of A1 (I guess only after I reconnect the USB hard drive when it was turned off for a while) and I need to reboot the router and USB hard drive for Transmission to work again. I am not sure why.
- Sometimes it just keeps blinking thus does not permit to safely disconnect the USB hard drive. Would be nice with somekind of force stop all activity to allow of safe USB hard drive disconnect.
January 24th, 2010 at 4:18 pm
Maybe a nice occasion to look at the 3G/UMTS that won’t work either if you connect a hub? (and is, by lack of storage useless without one….)
Happy 24th january!
January 24th, 2010 at 5:56 pm
While it seems a new firmware is still not available please add a huawei 1552 to the 3G/UMTS code. Hub-less.
January 25th, 2010 at 9:52 am
the strike thing was funny
http://english.martinvarsavsky.net/general/fon-got-an-order-for-400000-fonera-wifi-routers-this-week.html
January 25th, 2010 at 2:07 pm
@Pablo, did you read this comment on the page you pointed?
=================
Posted by Martin Varsavsky - January 22, 2010 4:09 pm - #
I use foneras all the time and everywhere. I also see the customer care reports and wrote in my blog that our first software releases were buggy and apologized for them. But now I don’t see any major bugs. Can you elaborate?
=================
Does anyone know where this nice, new firmware is?
January 25th, 2010 at 2:36 pm
you can ask him
January 25th, 2010 at 3:42 pm
Here some offical FON guy also tried to tell me that the last firmware has no bugs:
http://the-gadgeteer.com/2010/01/09/la-fonera-2-0n-wireless-router-review/#comments
but after some time i see internet dropping sometimes, and media server doesn’t work at all
January 31st, 2010 at 11:54 am
its gotten quiet…
anyone knows where to announce bugs?
e.g. when torrent is shut down, after awhile the USB-HDD is shutting down to and you have to restart the router
February 1st, 2010 at 10:16 am
Guys come on, tell your bosses that this is no way of treating customers. we want information at least if we dont get working products!
February 1st, 2010 at 11:18 am
@ Norman
Unfortunately that’s a misunderstanding which a lot of us Foneros make:
Foneros are no customers - we don’t pay to FON for services. Thus customers are aliens, ISPs who are paying partners, companies who are paying for having their services whitelisted on the La Fonera hotpspot network and so on…
But Foneros are no FON-members as well (we are not employees of the companies) so there is no reason to share internal information with us Foneros and to include us into their decisions - that’s why they don’t.
We are provider of infrastructure in the last meaning of our functoin and there is only as much attraction and information provided into our direction so that we keep the infrastruction up and running which they need to make their business.
To follow the meaning of the words above this says that as long the missing frmware does not influence the infrastructure (which in reality is almost gone
) they will not move just because we have no proper uptodate firmware.
February 1st, 2010 at 11:56 am
@ Kyros
So why Fon deludes us into thinking that they can create a community where we can join in building a better fw?
If there are misunderstandings, I think it is only because of Fon: that first promises and then disappears (and / or forgets the promises).
February 1st, 2010 at 12:49 pm
As long as this goes on i ask all of you to shut down the FON_ signal of the router to show that we don’t accept this kind of treatment! This is not a call to arms but a sound democratic suggestion.
February 1st, 2010 at 12:58 pm
that’s what i did…. 2 months ago
February 1st, 2010 at 1:06 pm
I disabled the hot-spot in my fonera 2.0n 10 days after that they have withdrawn the fw 2.3.5.0rc2 (without giving any other upgrade): for my use this fw is the most stable of all.
February 1st, 2010 at 2:43 pm
@ giuseppeg88
> … why Fon … create a community where we can join in building a better fw?
one comment above:
>> … there is only as much attraction … so that we keep the infrastruction up and running which they need to make their business.
;-) Kyros
February 1st, 2010 at 2:54 pm
@ Norman
I agree - my FON_FREE_INTERNET extinguished a few minutes ago as well.
Maybe it will live again when the new working firmware arrives.
Regards, Kyros
February 1st, 2010 at 5:17 pm
It’s been my observation that both Foneros and Aliens are customers of Fon. Aliens arrive at a hotspot that identifies itself as Fon, and Aliens give their money to Fon through Paypal. Some may be aware that the hotspot is maintained by a Fonero volunteer behind the scenes, but Fon has gone to great lengths to isolate the two parties.
Foneros purchase Fon’s hotspot merchandise, provide the locations, utilities and acquire Internet backhauls for the Fon Network. Foneros are directly paying for the privilege of deploying Fon’s network, mostly due to Fon’s sales pitch that they are joining a robust and widespread network, with plentiful opportunity to make profit. This is how Foneros are directly customers of Fon.
In addition to that, Foneros surrender over 60% of sales made at their hotspots, as well as ALL rights to decide how to run the network, for little more than the convenience of having Fon authenticate Aliens and manage money at Fon’s pleasure. In this sense, Foneros are really *franchisers*, who pay Fon and obey their rules in order to obtain the right to use Fon’s brand.
Fon’s offerings to Aliens is good-to-mediocre (except for the fake-email for free-Internet leeches, whom Fon still makes no attempt to eliminate after 3 years), and Fon’s offerings to Foneros is no deal at all.
At one time, I would have naively said that Aliens were the most important part of this food pyramid, because they were presumably the ones who were pouring money into it. Of course, I have since realized that Fon really doesn’t make much money from wifi sales, despite the fact that they get their Internet connections and hotspot locations for free. For 3 years, Fon has been all about “buy our rooter”, “buy our fonteena”, “buy buy buy - you could make some moneeey”.
But there is no mighty Fon Network. There are no millions of loyal Aliens. There are only router sales, and empty promises. And Fon encourages us to disable the public hotspot whenever our torrents run like crap. Foneros and their pocketbooks are what Fon depends on these days. Fon has spent 4 years rolling their eyes at the Fonero Community. I hear money has become “speech” in the USA… If Fon will not hear our spoken words, then perhaps they will hear the sound of our wallets closing?
Don’t be chumps. Pull the plug today!
February 1st, 2010 at 5:32 pm
As long as this goes on I ask all of you to stop posting comments to this blog to show that we don’t accept this kind of treatment! This is not a call to arms but a sound democratic suggestion. Don’t be a chimp!
February 1st, 2010 at 5:48 pm
I turned off my FON_Hotspot signal today.
February 2nd, 2010 at 4:00 am
Guys - Let’s reply to Martin’s twitter about needed new stable firmware - http://twitter.com/?status=@martinvars&in_reply_to_status_id=8500656418&in_reply_to=martinvars
February 2nd, 2010 at 6:44 pm
+1 I turned off my FON_Hotspot three months ago…
February 2nd, 2010 at 9:49 pm
well, I didn’t have to turn off mine, as it is turned off by default when you use 3G modems (even if they don’t work)
And it also is turned off by default if you don’t have an internet connection.
And I don’t, as I gave up and use my HTC diamond as modem for my netbook. You just plug it in with Ubuntu and it works. (just like any huawei modem) Quite a relief after struggling a month or three with the lafonera 2N.Should be easy for a linux developer to use the same modules I guess. It’s all open source. They probably have other priorities….
If one day someone writes firmware that does what router firmware should do, I might trie again.
February 3rd, 2010 at 10:34 am
It doesn’t help to simply turn off your Fonera… actually 80% allready did that so those few extra’s won’t matter as in the meanwhile hundreds of “bt fon” or “neuf fon” have been added anyway who have no squirrels with fon firmware …
perhaps we should reintroduce the “throw your fonera in the lake” again?
which would be easier to count how many are currently frustated…
instead of removing a firmware they should offer “hotfix plugin” that fixes the small tasks like voip reboot issue; the Ntpclient config that they haven’t touched in 2 years but never worked untill Rudolphe came… and some other small fixes…
now they just threw away all the hard work that was done between september and december… and we’re back in the middle ages…
I’m also “frustrated” on this openwrt sdk… but I only look at it in my spare time (and when eager to work on it)…. there are people paid by fon working at fon that have to give “results” … now where are these results?
February 3rd, 2010 at 3:26 pm
… seems they don’t see it as their duty anymore?
… seems it’s their own decision to “waste” time for this?
… seems their boss martin didn’t check anything since months?
… seems they don’t feel unconfortable at all delivering buggy work?
All togehter a well formed image of the dev-space@FON!
February 3rd, 2010 at 7:00 pm
well, i´m getting a little bit desillusioned, too :/
it´s not that i do not LIKE fon(era), or i don´t want to use their hardware anymore. the hardware seems okay, yet it suffers “featuritis”
offering hardware / software with “soon to come” features is (sadly enough!) not unheard of in the hardware/software business.
BUT: stopping to communicate their current state of progress or concearning their “roadmap” to a near-to-perfect firmware is quite dumb, plainly spoken.
@ fon @ m.v.
if you do not want to ruin your connection to “the community” (any more than you already did), DO COMMUNICATE !
hey, c´mon, as m.v. stated awhile ago, they´ve sold thousands of fonera 2.0n. USE this money to FORCE a firmware a.s.a.p.
i´m even thinking of a way to return my fonera 2.0N when there is nothing to keep me hoping for. like this, it´s not worth that much money. i would be interested if german law sees this as a (hidden) defect.
but, for now, i wait. because i WANT this to go the easy way: good firmware = everyone happy !
February 5th, 2010 at 8:14 pm
Can someone please point me to a good open-wrt firmware for a fonera 2.0g?
February 6th, 2010 at 1:22 am
Toc toc?
February 8th, 2010 at 9:42 pm
I have switched to openwrt firmware. My fonera2g works very well now.
February 9th, 2010 at 7:16 am
It has been a great while since this post, any news??
February 9th, 2010 at 7:29 am
I’m affraid the developers don’t like us anymore….
February 9th, 2010 at 7:35 am
BTW, is there anyone who knows where I can get older firmware images for the fonera 2g?
When I just started with that it worked flawlessly with my huawei modem, it even recognised the SD-card inside that modem and mouned it.
But after some firmware upgrades I somehow lost the SD card.
February 9th, 2010 at 9:43 am
The last update on the firmware was in last september, did the developers gave up?
February 9th, 2010 at 9:58 am
during 2009 they worked on the firmware with the fonera 2.0g as test object and us as testers…
in september it got ported to the fonera 2.0n which then got launched and replaced the fonera 2.0g worldwide…
there are now over 500bugs reported… there was a small moment in december when they tried to fix some (wifi for iphone/touch/broadcom); add some more features (bridge, dlna) but it only added more instability to it so it seems
at the moment they are working hard to deliver 400.000 foneras…?
February 9th, 2010 at 11:48 pm
Everytime i read the title of this post i think “maybe young rudolph was the single developer working on the project… we’re doomed”
And it’s not funny.
February 10th, 2010 at 11:13 pm
I kill my fonera… because for one reason only one, the firmware is very very bad and de developers don’t do anything!
The big project Fon was died….
February 11th, 2010 at 4:01 pm
R.I.P. Fon
February 11th, 2010 at 4:04 pm
RIP FON 2303…..
Long Live FON 2305E
http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/098mrJRewXxb6rZLRu4CVw?feat=directlink
February 11th, 2010 at 6:50 pm
Hmm .. at least a little update on the status would be nice .. otherwise I guess there is no other interpretation than that the project is current dead.
February 12th, 2010 at 9:37 am
more than 73 comments….if i was FON i would seriously think about it!
February 12th, 2010 at 9:41 am
Reply to every twitter comment that they send out and to every page that talks about their products. If potential costumers see how they will be treated, FON will have to change something.
Start commenting your personal opinion on this article:
http://ow.ly/16Dwu
and follow twitter … and reply to everything.
February 12th, 2010 at 9:48 am
trac.fonosfera.org and add it to the 500+ bugs
let’s hope they find the time to fix them all…
currently they are working on the “Fonera SIMPL” device so it seems…
February 12th, 2010 at 9:53 am
http://flash.fonera.be/FON2303 contains a copy of the RC2
February 12th, 2010 at 9:59 am
since when RC3 is out??
fonera2n-2.3.5-RC3.tar.gz on the site http://flash.fonera.be/FON2303/
February 12th, 2010 at 10:00 am
RC3 never came out…but it’s the last svn build;
but I believe I haven’t yet refigured out how to create a valid .tar.gz that is accepted by the gui… (I thought only the .FON needs to be digitally signed but I could be mistaken)
February 12th, 2010 at 10:01 am
on boards.fon.com other people are working on the firmware as we speak with light (no openvpn/ldaap/ushare) & full versions (with latest transmission torrent client)
February 12th, 2010 at 10:37 am
hm hm ….
What about firmware update of fonera 2.0 (not 2.0n but 2.0g) ….. ????……….
February 12th, 2010 at 10:39 am
officially an RC was released in september;
unofficially it has been build with the latest source changes from december… adding instability as well to this device (dyndns support, fon hotspot support)
February 12th, 2010 at 1:37 pm
it is always the same…. if device doesnt behave… lets forget it and get another one to con other new users…
This policy won’t always work… one day this company will dissapear. People don’t forget