Can the SENSE act as a companion device?

sushinut
sushinut Posts: 2 New Member
in F-Secure Sense

This is likely a very novice question. It's not very clear if this device can be a companion device to my existing wireless router (like Cujo, bitdefender box)  or if the SENSE will take over and act as the wireless router in my home. For example, a home has a cable modem A connected to wireless router B.  Wireless router B is handling all wireless connections. With the SENSE added to this configuration, can wireless router B still be used for the actual wireless connection? Or will wireless router B become useless?

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  • [Deleted User]
    [Deleted User] Posts: 0 Former F-Secure Employee

    Hi sushinut,

     

    As explained in this article, “F-Secure Sense is a secure router that sits between your modem and your connected devices in the home network. Both cabled (Ethernet) and Wi-Fi connections are supported on both sides of the Sense router.”

    In order to secure your devices at home, both smart home devices, like smart TV and personal devices like smart phones, tablets and laptops will need to connect to Sense. You can use both cable and Wi-Fi for this connection. If your devices keep connecting to your old Wi-Fi router that connects directly to your cable modem, then Sense won’t see their traffic and consequently can’t protect them either.

    Whether your wireless router becomes useless or not depends on your conditions. If you have a big house and you have Wi-Fi connectivity problems in the far end and your wifi router is AC1900 class or better then probably you can keep using it. Your setup would be then as follows:
    Cable modem <--Ethernet cable1--> Sense <--Ethernet cable2--> your old Wi-Fi router

    Ethernet cable 1 would go to the WAN port in your Sense and Ethernet cable 2 would go to the LAN port in your Sense. This way you can keep your devices connected to your old router. That said, this is not a recommended setup because you lose certain security functions in your system. Eg: Sense won’t be able to determine the type of your connected devices behind your old router and hence Sense won’t be able to apply the device-specific protection algorithms either. Your protected device list in your Sense app would show you only one connected device, your old router.

    Chances are, the Wi-Fi in Sense is likely better than your old Wi-Fi router, both in speed and coverage. In that case, you can safely discard your old Wi-Fi router, connect Sense to your cable modem and you are set. You can set the SSID and password in the Sense secure access point to the same as it was in your old Wi-Fi router. Then all your devices will connect to Sense automatically after you disconnect your old router. That is actually the best setup scenario.

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  • sushinut
    sushinut Posts: 2 New Member

    Thank you for the explanation. I read the article you mentioned many times over and to me it's not clear that the setup I described is supported. Especially this portion of the article:
    " During the setup, you connect the Sense router to your existing home router and create a new, secure Wi-Fi network"

     

    To me that means my existing wireless router is not used. Adding text stating "replaces your existing wireless router or works with your existing wireless router" would help. However you did state that certain security functions are lost in this configuration.

     

    I just purchased a new wifi router (TP-link AC3150) a few days ago and it is very capable. Returning the new router and waiting until the SENSE becomes available is not ideal.  I would think there's several use cases where homes require a more powerful wireless router or even a mesh network like Google wifi.

     

     

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