Up until this point, I’ve been using a router from one of your competitors which featured ethernet jacks on the back, and indicator lights on the front - not only an activity light for each port but a signal strength indicator for the 3G/4G modem. I’m upset that your product has its lights on the back where I’d need to use a dental mirror to see them (as I have it in a cabinet). This competiting product also had a power switch, which the Surf SOHO doesn’t.
Did it save 3 cents to not have lights on the front (and maybe 20 cents to not have a power switch)? Or was it some kind of “style choice” like Macs not having a hard drive light (which I think is ridiculous)? Please take this as feedback that I want front lights so I can turn my head and look at the router to see its status immediately, without working any harder.
My cables all arrive at the back of the cabinet, so it’s not practical to turn the router and all the cables around so I can see the lights, and even if I did, then I wouldn’t be able to see the status and WIFI lights on the front.
This is a style choice and has nothing to do with cost. Most of the customer feedback we received was to move the ports to the back of the device so it looks much cleaner from the front.
These routers are designed to run 24/7 so we don’t feel a need to have a power switch.
I’m not complaining about the ports being on the back, which are also on the back of your competitor’s router. Did you read my post at all? I’m complaining about the lack of lights on the front.
Somehow having lights would make the design “unclean”? Bizarre.
It seems like we’re going in circles. Though I mentioned the 3G/4G lights, I was mainly concerned about the lack of port lights in front - yes, even though the ports are in back. That’s the configuration in your competitor’s product which makes sense to me.
That competing router also has failover and supports a bunch of usb modems, yet somehow they’ve figured out how to extract the 3G/4G signal strength info - so it’s not an impossible task - and it indeed works with my modem. Unfortunately, they’re not updating the firmware, which I why I decided to get a new router - but as you can tell I’m not happy with the indicators.