The technology inside routers is forever changing, but the cases themselves have evolved little beyond bland boxes that you shamefacedly tuck away in a corner.

That’s why broadband company TalkTalk teamed up with students from Goldsmiths University of London to create a series of conceptual routers that push the design beyond a black plastic box with obtrusions exploding from the rear.

Here’s what they came up with:

ROUTE O’CLOCK

The bastard lovechild of the Countdown Clock and a wireless router, the Route O’Clock changes colour to display the speed of the internet connection during different parts of the day. The aim is to provide a simple visual cue to users, encouraging them to perform large downloads during off-peak hours when there is maximum bandwidth available.

“This router is essentially a twenty-four hour clock divided into half hourly segments,” The Goldsmiths team explains. “As a reaction to the broadband signal, a different traffic light colour indicates bandwidth strength at each interval.”

ENERGY SAVING ROUTER

Leaving the router on while you’re at work all day is dragging us ever closer to the nightmare scenario of Birmingham-On-Sea. The Goldsmiths students’ answer? Combine the router with a simple key hook, which switches off when everyone’s left the house.

“We identified house-key hooks as an appropriate indicator for the presence and absence of people within the home,” the team claims. “So, we programmed the router to switch off automatically when the last key is taken off of a hook. When someone returns home and re-engages a hook, it then switches back on in time for them to start surfing.”

An automatic timer would allow users to set the router to stay on for an extra couple of hours after they leave the house, if they want to complete a large download.

HYBRID ROUTER

The reason that grown adults exert more effort hiding their router than a teenager does hiding his “magazine collection” is because the hideous-looking device sprouts more wires than a patient in intensive care. The Hybrid Router attempts to add a splash of style to proceedings.

The guts of the router are hidden inside the funky-looking hardwood table, with no eyesore aerials and only the bare minimum of trailing wires.

“Contemporary homes have to deal with the mess of wires that come with a high-tech lifestyle,” says the Goldsmiths crew. “So we created a stylish side table that can hold and disguise our router cables, as well as other objects – making it a multi-functional piece of furniture.

“Flashing lights, hidden behind frosted acrylic, signal the presence of the router embedded within the base of the table, and add a subtle glow. It’s an ambient object, integrating classic lines into a modern living space.”

THE JELLYFISH

Give students free rein and one of two things will happen: supermarket trollies will be turned into late-night taxis back from the pub and they’ll come up with something as ludicrous as the Jellyfish.

“This is our craziest design and we were given full creative license,” the team explains. “We wanted to place the router at the centre of the community, at the heart of the house. We wanted to come up with a router that would live and breath; an organic element inspired by nature that would be emotionally engaging for its users and become a real talking point.”

Those tentacles aren’t just for show, either. Each of those can house an Ethernet cable, creating a router with up to eight different devices connected.