OVH's new SOHO router encrypts up to four DSL connections

OVH is ready to revolutionise the small office home office (SOHO) sector with a router that can encrypt four DSL connections at a time.

First reported by PC World, the OverTheBox technology allows SOHO users to bring together services from up to four ISPs and them protect them all behind a single static IP address that has a hefty amount of denial-of-service protection.

OverTheBox is actually made up of three elements. The software that is being released by OVH under a GPL Open source license, the hardware it runs on and a service the provides bandwidth and encryption for the encrypted channel.

OverTheBox makes PCs and printers safer by plugging itself in between the PCs/printers and routers. It then takes over the role of DHCP server for the LAN, aggregating the WAN links and constructing a single encrypted VPN to a server at one of OVH's data centres, a connection that is encrypted.

The technology can take over as DHCP host by using the fact that most ISPs supply multi-port routers that also contain a DHCP host. By bringing all those routers together it can assume the role of DHCP host and provide the encryption as French mass surveillance law doesn't cover data centres in that regard.

Based on NUC

The hardware is based on Intel's Next Unit of Computing (NUC) form factor and takes the shape of a small sized device that has an Intel Atom chip clocked at 1.46GHz, 2GB of RAM, three USB ports, VGA, HDMI, audio in/out, a power jack and that precious Gigabit Ethernet connection.

OVH is charging €149 (around $166, £109, or AU$237) for one of the routers that comes pre-loaded with the open source software required and for €9.99 (around $11, £7.35, or AU$15.93) companies also get the chance to terminate their encrypted VPN on one of OVH's servers.

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