Few things are less sexy than the humble router. But this wireless workhorse is our portal to the wonders of the Internet, and it's overdue for a makeover. Design students, backed by TalkTalk, have come up with four clever and cool concepts to bring sexy back to Wi-Fi gizmos.
TalkTalk turned to Goldsmiths, University of London, the crucible of learning that begat Blur and Damian Hirst and is so minimalist and stylish it's dropped the word 'college'. And it's on Twitter (@GoldsmithsUoL). We reckon even the porters' uniforms are primary-coloured skinny jeans.
The designs consider four factors: signal strength, home style, energy efficiency and pure enjoyment. Members of the public -- that's you -- get to vote for their favourite at futurerouters.com. Or just leave a comment moaning about your broadband, it's up to you. These are concepts rather than finished designs, so if you have any suggestions on how they could be improved, or if you have any ideas of your own, stick them in the comments.
Click through our gallery to meet the concepts. We'll start with the frankly crazy-looking Jellyfish, pictured above.
The Jellyfish is designed to be the centre of attention: yeah, we can see that. It has an 'organic' breathing sequence, which glows to indicates bandwidth strength. Perhaps inspired by this infamously bonkers-barmy 3 advert, the Jellyfish connects up to eight Ethernet cables for people to link up like they're in an episode of Doctor Who.