Feature Requests

Not sure if I'm supposed to break these up into multiple requests or not, but I have a few feature suggestions after using the Firewalla for a few months. Most of these are features from previous firewalls that I miss on the Firewalla.

1. Show Top Destinations by number of connections (i.e. how many times is a domain contacted vs how much data does it up/download.) I can get this partially from my DNS provider, but there are a number of connections that are direct to IP and do not use DNS.

2. The ability to search/filter log/records for more aspects of the collected data: all requests/connections by source device, requests/connections to target IP, all DNS requests, etc. Some of this is available by only certain data is reported. For example, total data upload/download per device or per target, but not by device/IP.

3. Provide a readout of the actual WAN connection speeds/quality from the Firewall itself. Maybe refresh it daily at night.

4. Longer time filtering on insights data. On the dashboard currently most reports are for 24 hrs and cannot be changed. Data graph can be switched from 24 hrs to 30 days, but most of the other charts/graphs cannot.

5. Provide the region as a filter option in the "insights" report. Destination host is there, but region is not. "Top Regions" are shown on the dashboard, but only the top few and you can't filter it to show the devices communicating with that region. Similarly, include "block events" or "blocked flows" in the insights. Again, there's some information on the dashboard but it's just the total number. I can't do any analysis with that.

6. Provide the ability to point to a curated list of sites that should be blocked. There are maintained lists available of malicious sites, of tracking sites, of ad serving sites, etc. (For example: https://adaway.org/hosts.txt, https://v.firebog.net/hosts/Easyprivacy.txt, etc) Currently the "target lists" require you to copy/paste the list contents, which aside from being a pain, the list is static.

7. More options for using multiple WAN connections. In addition to failover or specific allocation percentages, use things like quality of connection, bandwidth requirements per direction, automatic load balancing, etc. For example, I have an asymmetric default WAN connection that is very fast down (700Mbps) but relatively slow up (20Mbps) and a secondary WAN that is symmetric that is higher up (150Mbps) but slower down (150Mbps). It would be great if outgoing Video chat or VoIP traffic could be directed to the connection with the higher upload speed/quality, where as high bandwidth downloads (netflix) would be directed the other way. Or if traffic could automatically be load balanced if the main WAN is experiencing high usage.

8. This may be possible and I've just not figured out how to do it, but it would be great if we could export the contents of the log data. I'd love to be able to get the data into excel or similar and be able to do more analysis or cross-reference the data with the data from other sources for more detailed insights.

I hope at least some of those are good ideas.

Thanks!

Stevensedlmayr

June 10, 2021 02:07

I definitely agree with this post, however I do not know how responsive they are to support. I emailed and asked a lot of questions and just got generic answers back.

On point 8, this would be great. I think they should send pings out on both wans on a regular basis, then look at the answers. Maybe every second or two. Then they should weight the outgoing and the incoming depending upon the answers they receive, doing a dynamic adjustment. This would take care of load balancing on a dynamic basis instead of having us to assign it, and also use the fastest method for output and input. It would also fix the failover problem. If one is failing, then the weight of the wan is decreased sending most if not all traffic through the good wan.

This is a very easy fix and would make them the leaders in dual wan technology. It is the closest that you can get to real bonding of two wans.

For instance, on outgoing, if wan1 is 80Mbs and wan 2 is 20Mbs, then the dynamic weight of traffic is 80/20. If wan1 changes to 50 Mbs and wan2 stays at 20, then the weight is roughly 71% and 29% traffic flow.

Thanks, it would make your router the number 1 in dual wans.

Firewalla

June 10, 2021 03:07

Unless you ask very private questions, we will likely reply to you very quickly. If you have not received anything, check your SPAM box.

As of features, this is request section is managed by voting, if your feature is getting some votes we will follow up. So best break things down and make the title visible

Feature Requests

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