{"id":7198,"date":"2018-04-29T14:54:19","date_gmt":"2018-04-29T04:54:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/reckoner.com.au\/?p=7198"},"modified":"2018-05-02T15:37:57","modified_gmt":"2018-05-02T05:37:57","slug":"review-fingbox","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/reckoner.com.au\/reviews\/review-fingbox\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Fingbox"},"content":{"rendered":"
With everything from fridges to washing machines connecting to your WiFi these days the number of devices jumping on and off your network has more than trebled in the past few years. In my home alone there are no less than \u2013 and I’m not making this up \u2013 40 devices that connect to it. Sure I’m probably a little on the extreme side but it quickly adds up, especially for a family. Laptops, tablets, phones, TVs, gaming consoles, smart home devices, hell, even my smoke alarm connects to my WiFi! With so many devices and more on the way keeping a track of everything gets a little daunting and when all of a sudden you can’t stream Netflix and your partner is screaming at you to fix it but you can’t find what’s sucking up all your bandwidth because your ten IoT Hue bulbs are doing a firmware update you’ll get on your knees and praise sweet-baby-jesus for the Fingbox.<\/p>\n
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The Fingbox is made up of two components. An app called “Fing” which is freely available and can operate without additional hardware to scan your network and then the Fingbox hardware itself, that once connected to your network allows it to be monitored continuously.<\/p>\n
The app alone is super helpful and something I recommend everyone get, especially as it’s free. I actually had it installed prior to review when I was trying to figure out why some rogue phone kept trying to stream content to my TV. Turned out it was a neighbour with a Samsung phone and a similar Samsung TV that instead of connecting to their own, kept trying to connected to mine. It was via Bluetooth, not on my WiFi but regardless, the Fing app help me narrow it down.<\/p>\n
The Fingbox<\/em> is a small, ice hockey puck shaped device that you plug into your network and can be hidden away in a cupboard or anywhere you like really, as long as it has an ethernet connection onto your network. Once connected it acts as a guard dog of sorts, constantly monitoring it can detect rogue connections, block devices and pause their connections as well as offer analysis on the quality of your network and the internet connection to it.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Getting the Fingbox up and running is quite literally “plug and play”. And no I don’t mean the 2000’s version of plug, install a driver because it didn’t do it automatically, reboot, wait an hour, reinstall another driver, go away in frustration, come back and throw it out play. This is literally, open it up, take the ethernet cord that comes with the Fingbox and connect it to your router. Now, when you open up the Fing app, it picks up the Fingbox you’ve attached and goes on its merry, monitoring way.<\/p>\n Once you’re connected and devices begin to show up in the app’s list you can further customise how you’d like the Fingbox to operate. For example, devices can be grouped and attached to a “user” that you create. Users can be people from your phone’s address book or simply people’s name you manually enter, but in allocating devices to them you can then easily control that one persons connection. Say pausing their internet for, to use a Monty Python quote, being “a very naughty boy”<\/em>.<\/p>\n