Just for everyone focusing on gimmicky features, this is an OnHub, which are intended to just work.<p>Under the hood, they run ChromiumOS, including things like trusted boot (yes, this home router has a tpm), and the A/B partitions so when you get an automatic update, (which happens during a time of low bandwidth usage), it reboots into the new version in about 6 seconds. The security team is awesome: they pushed an update to all onhubs within 48 hours of public disclosure of a critical RCE earlier this year.<p>There has been some slowness to expected features, like ipv6, but the PMs have been clear about their goal: they won't include a feature that's buggy. It's exactly what you want in a piece of infrastructure.
Lots of vendors already offer this. It's pretty standard for commercial WiFi units. It's just slightly more expensive than dumb routers.<p>* Eero: <a href="https://eero.com/" rel="nofollow">https://eero.com/</a><p>* Ubuquiti: <a href="https://www.ubnt.com" rel="nofollow">https://www.ubnt.com</a><p>* Cisco: <a href="http://www.cisco.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.cisco.com</a> (sized for larger buildings)<p>Does this new Google device come with the Google Fi feature which backhauls all your traffic to Google via a VPN?
Serious question: whose WiFi is not working, to the degree that they think, "I really need to get a modern router to make this Internet thing actually work."<p>I'm seeing about a dozen fancy modern wifi routers all trying to solve a problem I'm not sure exists.
Despite their claims of being designed for user privacy, I'm wary of anything Google puts out. What information does it report back to the mothership?
I'm surprised nobody here has yet questioned the wisdom of allowing Google access to literally all of your internet traffic. This is actually a commercial product that you pay money for, so maybe they're all aboveboard here, but with Google's history of trying to get as much personal data as possible about everybody makes me unwilling to trust them with something like this.<p>On a different note, is there any reason why someone should prefer this to Ubiquiti's AmpliFi? Unlike Google, Ubiquiti has a long history of making networking gear. The only obvious benefit I see right now is Google Wifi starts at $129 for one unit whereas AmpliFi starts at $199, but that $199 includes 2 "mesh points" and presumably to get the same effect with Google Wifi you'd have to shell out $299 for the 3-pack.
I'm a little concerned that an android device is listed as _required_... i would hope all functions of the wifi devices can be configured/administrated from the web or just an internal browser pointed to the device(s).
My Airports work just fine and have worked for years. I think that the WiFi issues are mostly that people are only willing to pay like $50 for their WiFi router. At this price point I'm not sure it changes anything.
I actually just got a "Wi-Fi booster"[1] for my place to have good Wi-Fi upstairs and it's amazing (it even has an ethernet port)<p>[1]: <a href="https://www.amazon.fr/Netgear-WN3000RP-200FRS-R%C3%A9p%C3%A9teur-Wifi-N300/dp/B00MWNWEIE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1475607805&sr=8-1&keywords=wifi+booster" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.fr/Netgear-WN3000RP-200FRS-R%C3%A9p%C3%A9...</a>
> The system uses a technology called mesh Wi-Fi (something usually only seen in expensive commercial installations).<p>This is misleading. You can create your own mesh networks with several off-the-shelf routers / access points using open source software like batman-advanced [0].<p>[0] <a href="https://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki" rel="nofollow">https://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki</a>
The problems with this are the same as the rest of the things announced today(except the pixel, in my opinion): Too expensive, and not much to set it apart.
Anyone know if this is going to make use of modern AQM (fq_codel or cake) like OnHub did? OnHub used the Qualcomm brand name for it: "Streamboost".