Improvement suggestions for NetDuma R3 / DumaOS 4

[ChrisG82]

Hello dear NetDuma team. Here are my thoughts on NetDuma R3 and DumaOS 4 after about a week of use.

Hardware:

The R3 has a USB port which is currently completely unused. Please give us the option of using a USB stick there to persistently store all LOG data (system logs, ping shedule log, network activity, adblocker, etc.), which is currently lost with every restart / power cycle. Especially for the system logs and the network activity it would offer a great added value

Software:

GeoFilter:

It would be nice to be able to customise the name for a server directly after selecting it in GeoFilter and not only in the list for the shared/locked servers.

In DumaOS 3, not only a meaningless ID for the server was visible, but also IP addresses/host names. Please implement this in DumaOS 4 as soon as possible. This is particularly interesting for troubleshooting via traceroute and so on.

It would also be nice if a traceroute function could be implemented directly. This would be very helpful to see directly whether the server itself is running badly or the peering of the ISP is simply bad.

 

Ping HeatMap

Enabling or disabling servers via the Ping Heat Map would be ideal. It would also be nice if you could provide a list of hosts/server IPs per country directly there. A direct traceroute function would also be highly desirable.

 

Network Activity:

Saving the data on a connected USB stick so that it can be reloaded and displayed after a reboot. Unfortunately, it is useless if you have to restart the device more often and these statistics then simply start from scratch. A quick implementation would be desirable here!

 

Device Manager:

Delete Offline Devices: As soon as you have made adjustments to a device such as name, DHCP reservation, QoS etc., these devices must be deleted. These devices must be excluded from the delete function! It is no use simply deleting such devices when you want to tidy up! This should actually be a matter of course!

A ping function for internal devices would be desirable. Ideally with an audio output. This would be very useful for identifying unknown devices. Audio output should then of course stop if the ping is not answered.

A possibility to make suggestions for new categories directly from the Device Manager. Possibly enable manual categorisation by allowing the category to be named and providing a large selection of pictograms.

For unknown devices, it would be nice to be able to perform a search via a MAC database so that at least the manufacturer of the network module is displayed. This would make it easier to identify unknown devices.

Currently, devices that are connected via a wireless repeater are apparently not displayed individually in the Device Manager. You only see one device there, which then contains all IP addresses. This means that the devices behind the wireless repeater cannot be prioritised, restricted, named and so on. I think this is currently a serious bug that needs to be fixed as soon as possible!

 

Speed test:

It should be possible to schedule speed test for automatically testing (as with the ping heat map). Since certain functions depend on knowing the real upload and download speed, it would be a great advantage if the R3 could take care of this directly.

You might want to consider choosing a partner like Ookla for the speed test. It would be a great advantage if I could choose the server I want to test against.

 

Ping Optimiser:

If you implement a time-controlled speed test, it would be nice that if the speed deviates too much from the last optimisation of the ping, it automatically performs a new optimisation with the current measured speeds.

 

Guest WiFi:

I don't really understand your concept of guest WiFi. Not only does it use the same subnet as the normal WLAN, but the devices in the guest WLAN can also communicate freely with the devices in the normal WLAN. This makes the idea of a guest network absurd.

Please introduce a separate subnet here as quickly as possible. Maybe with the possibility to allow (single) devices from the guest network to communicate with the normal network.

Devices that are connected to the guest network are currently not displayed. Please also display these in the Device Manager. Preferably with a small symbol to make it clear that these devices are connected to the guest network.

All devices in the guest network should be included in a "Guest" group so that I can restrict from the outset what the guests are allowed to do (surfing only, peer-to-peer downloads, FTP, SSH, etc.).

Unfortunately, I have to say that as long as this is not implemented, the guest network harbours more danger than benefits....

 

UPnP:

UPnP is active by default in DumaOS. This harbours a certain potential for danger. It would certainly be more favourable to set UPnP to deactivated by default.

It also appears that I can only activate or deactivate the whole thing. Here it would definitely be better to be able to decide which clients are allowed to use UPnP and which are not.

Currently I have not found a way to specifically delete entries in UPnP. This should also be possible.

 

Port forwarding:

Perhaps you would like to provide a list of frequently used services/games for port forwarding. This would make it easier for simple users to set up port forwarding. I envisage this in such a way that the device can first be selected via a wizard (as is the case now) and then the corresponding games can simply be selected. You can then set up the corresponding forwarding via a database.

 

System Info:

It would be nice if a manual firmware upgrade could be carried out from this menu and not from the troubleshooting menu.

 

Troubleshooting:

It might make sense not to put the system logs in the Advanced menu first.

The time period for the CPU load is far too short. For proper troubleshooting, it must be possible to display the CPU utilisation for at least the last 24 hours, if not a week. It is also a good idea to only do this when you have connected a USB stick to save the data.

The CPU temperature would certainly also be interesting!

 

And last but not least:

Please introduce an option to save the configuration as quickly as possible! This should really include all manual settings such as Internet connection, network and WLAN settings, DHCP reservations and so on.

It is absolutely unacceptable to spend hours on the configuration only to realise that you have to reset the device again due to an error in the firmware and then start again from scratch. Of course, this would also be helpful for future firmware updates. If you perform a backup before the upgrade, you can perform a factory reset after the downgrade and import the appropriate config for the appropriate firmware.

This can also be combined with a forced backup before each update.

So. I know it's a lot of text, but in my opinion there are many ideas for making the R3 and DumaOS 4 even more powerful and useful.

Greetings from Germany

[Netduma Fraser]

Thank you very much for the detailed and thought out suggestions, I will certainly pass this on to the team. I know their focus is on fixing any bugs currently so I couldn't say when user requests may make it in but they'll have a lot to pick from here!