Home Users - 100 Device Limit

[JasonJoel]

Any possibility that SV would consider relaxing/expanding the 100 device limit for HOME users?

I am a home user, and already have >100 IPs (maybe 115-120 right now) between my LAN and IoT networks.

I have a ton of IoT devices - 80+ between TVs, TiVos, XBOXes, a bunch of Google Home devices, some VMs, Home Automation hubs, etc - seems like EVERYTHING has an IP address adn connection these days.

But even on the non-IoT side there are a bunch of IPs between phones, tablets, watches, UniFi APs/Switches, VMs, and desktops.

It all adds up to the fact that I can't stay under 100 and still monitor everything I want to.

In a perfect world I wouldn't have to further segment my IoT devices to try and stay under the artificial 100 device limit. Please consider this!

Or if not that, then at least add thew ability to ignore/exclude specific IPs in a subnet and have those not count towards the licensing count (I looked and I don't see anything like that on your short or long term road maps). Then at least I could exclude the lesser device and still analyze the traffic on some of the less trusted IoT devices.

Thanks for your consideration.

[JasonJoel]

In any case, I'm going to go through the work and make a few more VLANs and move devices around to stay under 100 devices on the monitored interfaces.

[robvanhooren]

 ... do you really need direct coverage for them all?

vs pushing e.g. the IoT junk thru a proxy.

limit used to be 25, which truly *is* unworkable -- at the time, I nagged mb to get it to 50.

imo 100 for free is a big ask, they're a business after all ... with 50 at least there's marketplace parity with e.g. Sophos' free thing, so they had a competitive reason to match that.

maybe I'll be surprised and SV will bump it up higher, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

cheers,

R.

[JasonJoel]

A very fair point of course.

Although, I will say the 50 device limit (with no reasonable way for a home user to get to 100 or 150) is exactly why I don't use Sophos at all. So they get $0 instead of something >$0 from me.

I think in the end the question is whether companies want to offer products to home users, or if they want to focus on business only.

IP devices on home networks are growing very fast between TVs, tablets, phones, watches, game consoles, roku/streaming devices, voice assistants, handheld gaming systems, etc. And home users simply aren't going to pay multiple hundreds of dollars/year for a tool like this. So in my opinion, long term these companies are going to have to continue to raise the limits for home users while also figuring out ways of making sure the home licenses are not mis-used by businesses (thus losing revenue), or provide an easy way to exclude devices from monitoring/license count WITHOUT having to re-architect their networks.

In the end, I'll be fine - I have the technical know-how to split up my networks and re-architect. But many home users do not have that know-how or hardware to do so.

[MrMxyzptlk]

I agree; I'm obsessed with home automation, and would LOVE to monitor all my DIY IoT; I have hundreds of devices. There is no way I can afford hundreds of dollars a month just for my hobby.

There really needs to be a hobbyist license.

I would pay up to $99 annually for this ability?

[mb]

Hi all,

Thanks for your comments and suggestions. We're actively following the discussion. Though I must say this is generally one of the most challenging decisions on our table.

One one hand, we see that product is fitting the requirements of a niche group of highly-skilled home users, which makes us happy to be able to provide the functionality. On the other hand, the level of sophistication of these home networks are on par with some enterprises

Be assured that we're trying our best.

In case you did not get the email, we have a short survey that is helping us better understand how home users are using Sensei:

https://www.sunnyvalley.io/home-subscription-survey/

Feel free to participate. Many thanks in advance.

[tswalker]

sometimes this can be solved by issueing device block licenseing. say a block of 10 licenses for  liek 10$ a years....  100 devices for like 99$ a year... etc.

just a thought

[RedeyeAce]

@ JasonJoel

Surely the easiest option is to swap houses with me fella, i've got just below 50, so you'll have no problems here at all

Joking aside, I would of thought that 150 should be standard nowadays given the working from home and kids having more kit for homeschooling.

I do agree with mb but also would point out that if SV is marketing the product to people who are running OPNSense, PfSense, Centos, etc etc. that this demographic is NOT an atypical home and therefore a normal home average would not be sufficient for us?

Doing the survey now

Just do something like every 50 block required above that at a modest upgrade cost?

[JasonJoel]

I can stay <100 if I exclude my IoT VLAN. So that's what I'm doing.

Honestly, now that I've worked around the device count limit, I immediately ran into the # of policies limit. 2+default restricts how I would like to use the product. 5+default would be better.

[Antaris]

Just an idea: make second NAT with cheap router for the IoT network. Use port forwarding if needed.

[edsai]

I'll be running into this limit too. I've got multiple children (sorry, we didn't stick to the two kids, 2 dogs and a cat rule) with multiple devices, some IoT, connected speakers, multiple TVs, chromecast, raspberry pi's for 3d printing, etc. and isolating VLANs is a less than convenient way to do this. I just subscribed for a month instead of annual ($9.99) because I was worried I would hit the 100 device limit and that Sensei would out for me as an option.  I'm at 93 and one child is away and will probably put us close to 100 when they come home if you factor in smartwatch, tablet, phone, and laptop. I'm looking at other options like a Firewalla Gold because I'm pretty sure I'll hit the limit.

Having the limit upped to 150 or 200 would be great, especially since it cost $9.99 a month or $99 a year which isn't exactly inexpensive.