InvizBox, a small Irish company focused on building Wi-Fi routers with built-in Internet privacy, has successfully crowdfunded the next generation of its eponymous privacy platform. The InvizBox 2 and InvizBox 2 Pro are more than an evolution from the team's original product, which was an open source modification of the OpenWRT router code focused on use of the Tor anonymizing network. These new devices are more powerful and faster, and they focus more on usable networking that avoids ISPs' prying eyes (and defeating geo-blocking of online content) rather than striving to avoid the long arm of state surveillance.

The InvizBox team is doing a livestream event today, despite the arrival in Ireland of Hurricane Ophelia—which has caused widespread closures of businesses in the country. But the project is already fully funded, which bodes well for delivery based on the team's previous track record. Working with an industrial design team in China, InvizBox has created a much more attractive privacy tool, both aesthetically and practically.

The original InvizBox launched two years ago in response to the somewhat poorly conceived crowdfunding launch of another product aimed at Internet privacy. Ars tested InvizBox (and its competitor, Anonabox) in 2015. An open source Wi-Fi router with built-in support for the Tor anonymizing network, InvizBox was a good implementation of an idea with some major roadblocks to wide adoption—the most obvious one being the limitations of Tor itself. Then InvizBox followed up with the InvizBox Go, which shifted the focus away from Tor and toward a more consumer-friendly and mobile-friendly form of privacy. This was a battery-powered Wi-Fi router that could act as a protected bridge to public Wi-Fi networks.

The InvizBox 2 devices are meant to replace home Wi-Fi routers, offering many of the same features as current home routers at a similar price point (starting at about $80 for the InvizBox 2). There are mobile apps and a Web browser interface for configuring the router, but it comes ready to work with the VPN service right out of the box. InvizBox has also paired its new devices with the InvizBox Go (the mobile device we mentioned earlier) to provide a secure connection from the road back to the home network.

InvizBox 2 and 2 Pro connect to a commercial VPN service with 256-bit AES encryption (IPVanish) to provide a secure connection from the router to an Internet point of presence—an exit point that can be configured for each "hotspot" SSID name assigned to the device. So, for example, "InvizBox_US" could connect to a US exit point for regular use, and "InvizBox_UK" could theoretically be used to get your Dr. Who fix. VPN credentials come already embedded in the router, so there's no setup required.

With 256 megabytes of RAM, InvizBox 2 can run multiple instances of the VPN service, thanks to its quad-core ARM processor—up to four, with load-balancing to manage connections of more than four devices. With 2.4G and 5G Wi-Fi, the InvizBox 2 also supports connection speeds of up to 200 Mbps, and it has 2 gigabit Ethernet ports (one for the LAN, one for the Internet side) to match that if you're lucky enough to have that sort of ISP bandwidth. The beefier InvizBox 2 Pro (with 512 MB of RAM and a faster processor) will support more concurrent users and VPN sessions. It also will have faster 5G support and a larger antenna for extended range. The Pro will also sport three additional gigabit Ethernet LAN ports.

Parental controls will let you determine who gets to use that bandwidth for what. There's also built-in DNS-based ad blocking and a built-in outbound traffic analysis tool that looks for suspicious traffic—like a botnet taking control of whatever Internet of Things device with horrible security you've introduced to your home network.

The Invizbox 2 hasn't totally forsaken Tor. The router can be configured as a Tor relay to provide bandwidth to the Tor network as a whole—as the device retrieves its updates via a Tor hidden service. All of the open source code for the platform is available on GitHub.