TLDR : I’m noticing increasing pattern of app’s directly running on home WiFi routers and I’m very excited about it’s possibilities.
I was reading this interesting report from hardenstance on operator’s making some money by selling security products to consumers (it has good insights and I recommend you to read it), one thing that caught my attention is about prpl foundation, a non profit which provides openwrt(popular wifi full stack OS) wrapped standardised platform for embedded devices, in case you are not aware, by installing openwrt on your wifi access point you make it a nice Linux whitebox on which you can do anything just like a normal PC or server.
Now, you might wonder what can I possible run on it? well it has CPU ,it has a RAM, it has a NAND storage, it has USB ports, it has ethernet ports, talk about edge computing this is the true edge IMHO.
What made me write this post is that I saw this happening in multiple places in which people are actually building apps and app store, this is not something new, openwrt already has close to 4K+ packages like this that you can install, but a dedicated business and appstore?
An App store inside a CPE??
Oh man! I dreamt about the same concept 7 years back and I always wanted such things to happen because wifi router is such a underutilised box, but now it looks like its getting small wings, lets see few examples what I mean here.
Press enter or click to view image in full size
Image generated using copilot using prompt “a futuristic home wifi router with multiple apps running on top”
Case in point 1: prpl Appstore
This page says “prpl Foundation Enables Open-Source App Store Concept for Residential CPE”, this stack is also compliant to existing industry standards such as TR-157, OCI etc. This is really a big boon to operators and ISP’s since today’s CPE is most unmonetized & underutlized device IMHO, if service providers are able to sell in house or source application from 3rd party and offer as a service to consumer it would definitely add onto monthly bill and will be a new revenue stream for operators and internet providers, the quoted link also has good praise from few operators as well which means the ball is already rolling.
Case in point 2: Decentralized Dabba Wi-Fi
These folks from Bangalore have built an entire WiFi device like how you build a pc, 1TB storage!! seriously?? Intel i3 11th and not your poor cousin ARM or mips and a decentralised app store to run dapps!!
This got to be the craziest spec of all but they needed this spec for mining their dabba coin and they have listed other apps like storj,adblock, steam(really??), this idea is wayyy to much peak into the future and a really long road ahead for this product but I WANT it to happen for betterment of society.
Case in point 3: Nokia Corteca Applications
Nokia has listed Corteca Applications marketplace where it allows third party apps to run on CPE devices that it sells, the page lists applications from both in-house and third party developed like fsecure, openvpn, gryphonconnect etc. I'm not sure how many operators have deployed this or how many see this as competition but a big org like Nokia doing this shows that there might be a market for this in future for operators to make money.
Case in point 4: Broadband forum’s Connected Home
This page from broadband forum lists about the same concept and a standardised way for operators to build and sell App enabled devices, this video was really insightful to watch where the speaker explains the origin and potential of this project, you should also check this page which has standards for USP(User Services Platform).
Case in point 5: HomeEdge by LFEdge
HomeEdge from Linux foundation also thinks in the similar line except it proposes to running applications on all your smart devices, this is also a neat idea but I think because of vendor locking of the smart devices it wont happen anytime soon.
Case in point 6 : Rise of Decentralized apps
If you have seen the dabba wifi page you might have got the idea of dapps, basically dapps whole backbone is to run on decentralized and distruibuted compute environment, concepts such as IPFS are truly ground breaking and it definitely needs such novel platforms for scaling.
Extras:
There is also opensync through which one can achieve the same goal.
Consumer router’s might also have these in future
If we don’t buy router’s from our internet providers chances are we get something off the self from Amazon or retail store, this is also a good market but I doubt if device vendor will every one this up, companies like plume and eero already have such value added service around this.
Example Companies that are selling apps right now:
Fsecure, Gryphon Connect, networkxray, aprecomm.ai
App categories that I’m betting on:
Decentralized apps, Consumer Security apps, CCTV related apps, child saftey, VPN, adblockers, WAN/SASE solutions, IoT/smart home apps, spam protection etc.
What I wish to see in future:
- Reduce the friction for user!!! I should be able to subscribe to any app and get billed along with my broadband.
- It should be a true Saas product, should be able to use any app in the catalog on demand, self service without jumping through tons of calls or wait for someone to activate it.
- Enterprise WiFi vendors opening up their boxes for applications developers to use in enterprise segment as well, will be a true o-ran RIC platform.
- Increased awareness among distributed and decentralised app developers that such platforms do exist.
so what are your thougts on this topic? I’m pretty sure you have a wifi router sitting idle at home just doing its 802.11 stuff, what application you would you install and run on it? what will you like to pay for?
please share it in comments.
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Opinions expressed are solely my own and do not express the views or opinions of my employer
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