On The Evolution of Home Gateways
Tim Neubert, Rolf Winter, Jonas Winkler · 2025
Most commonly, residential broadband customers connect to the internet via a home gateway. These devices are often highly capable and feature-rich, implementing essential functions such as Network Address Translation (NAT), while also integrating a WiFi access point, multiple switch ports, and a range of upper-layer features such as parental controls or a built-in media server. Since we are all behind such devices most of the time, they really shape the way we experience the internet. And for that, the most basic services, such as DNS forwarding or Network Address Translation, must work well. But do they?About 15 years ago, a measurement study [1] characterized a large number of such devices at the time. But in the last 15 years, a lot has happened. This paper has another look at home gateway characteristics and reproduces those findings to see whether things have improved since. It relies on a diverse router population with devices released over the course of the last 20 years and also includes devices that are still included as part of residential broadband packages of ISPs today.