Have you ever had trouble figuring out what's wrong with your home network? Do you wish you had some way to make the "invisible" aspects of home networking more visible, and more controllable? As networking moves into the home, people are increasingly being faced with complex network management chores. Unsurprisingly, many have great difficulty in managing their networks. This difficulty is compounded by the fact that advanced network management tools—such as those developed for businesses—are generally too complex for home users, do not support the common tasks they face, and are not a good fit for the home. This paper presents Eden, an interactive, direct manipulation home network management system aimed at end users. Eden supports a range of common tasks, and provides a simple conceptual model that can help users understand key aspects of networking better. The system leverages a novel home network router that acts as a “drop- in” replacement for users’ current router. We demonstrate that Eden not only improves the user experience of networking, but also aids users in forming workable conceptual models of how the network works. This research paper submission was recently published at the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST), 2010, in New York City.

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