Google Wi-Fi: Google's Answer to the Home Router - Is it worth it? (Spoiler Alert: It is)

We can’t have nice things.

Attempting to bring the conversation back on-topic.

I personally don’t think it is, but that is because I tinker and my home network in its current state is weird and partially jerry rigged on how I get internet in some of the rooms of the house.

Now if all of my problems can be easily solved with wifi, that’d be lovely, but with gamers, that is a bit difficult.

I’d totally set this sort of thing up for less tech-savvy people that I do not want to manage long term.

A rule anyone tech-savvy should follow is: if you are helping friends and family, be prepared to do it for a LONG time, best bet is to set them up with something almost mindless to manage and teach them that way. In the event they even call you, as long as the process is simple, it’d be easy to direct them throw methods to troubleshoot it themselves with this sort of product.

I mean, yes, generally this applies, but routers are a bit different. if they don’t know how to change the settings in the first place, they can’t mess things up, and you can just tell them to power cycle it.

No one’s setting up complex networks for people who expect free support (at least I hope not)

ahaha… You think people will listen about not touching a router, a lot of people will try to change a setting thinking it makes it better for them only to ruin what they have. Power-cycling won’t fix that issue, so I for one am very much for this product. Based on my current understanding, this product tries to stupid-proof the one person who will want to change a setting.

Based on what I see here, it keeps management relatively simple which is quite a big plus when trying to guide someone through the product in the event they change something that broke their network. That also means you are less likely to traverse to the end-user’s home to fix it for them.

I’m all for being secure and cutting back how much data is collected, but I am not willing to impose those ideas onto other people, I am not altruistic enough to constantly support them on a whim just because I believe everyone should should try to protect themselves.

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That’s not paranoia, It’s pointing out real, negative trade-offs in the design that make the device less practical, in the same way that design differences in, say, an electric scooter with a fitbit companion app and a regular ass bicycle have different levels of utility.

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non-technical people don’t spend the time to learn how to change the default password or access the web interface 99% of the time. The app gives them way more access than they should have in the first place imo (if I’m the one that’s going to be fixing their shit later, that is)

easier to set the router up, then change the web interface password/login so even if they do look up how to mess with stuff, they can’t get into it. Then if they call you for the credentials you can just tell them they need to call someone else if they fuck up.

You sound like proprietary software :smirk: :grin:

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If I have to manage the credentials for a family/friend, that is already a no-go zone, that already solidifies me a go to person to fix their problems. Like I said, I am not willing to subject myself to that torture, I only give advice on what I think is best, and based on @Kat’s review of the product, I would recommend this for the average person as it takes most of the responsibility out of my hands.

if you’re just recommending a product, then you don’t have that responsibility in the first place. if they get in there and fuck things up, just tell them to hard reset instead of power cycle, and not to touch those bits again.

there’s no need to make things more complicated than that.

@anon79053375 The only free support I give to friends and family is emotional.

I personally wouldn’t because I hate google, but hey if it works for what you’re trying to do I think that’s cool. I still have this damn google home that I never plugged in. I want to put linux on it because the speakers are nice.

So this is a pretty decent piece of hardware.

Its got a few good things going for it.

It’s easy to set up and manage, its effectively plug and play. @Kat goes over the features pretty well. A nice plus to this device is it support IPv6 with UK ISPs quite nicely, there’s no fiddling required, it picks up the ISP settings automatically unlike some other software and devices.

Its also pretty easy to manage and maybe a contender for putting in peoples homes that you manage their computer stuff as it allows for multiple managers of the device etc.

Overall it works well.

A few things that are still up in the air is how it will manage going forward, this is an older generation device for this mesh stuff and as pointed out in the thread newer generation devices by other manufacturers look to be out performing this. It might need a refresh sometime soon. The other thing is how it will continue to be supported. From what I’ve seen support has been generally positive, feedback has resulted in new features and improvements and they continue to provides updates to these devices. Time is really all that’s needed to see how this continues in the future.

If you want to come home and just get on with your life, its one to consider at least i think as it works well for its purpose.

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How well is newer mesh stuff working btw?

last time I looked into it it was actually cheaper just to do a few ethernet drops, in terms of hardware investment, and you have a lot of overhead for the mesh to worry about.

That was a few years ago though

Obviously an ethernet backhaul is far superior in every respect but mesh works great these days.

As for the google wifi, the point the OP and others in the thread made is that it isn’t for us. I mean, I spent an hour yesterday setting up IGMP snooping, MDNS reflectors, and building tons of firewall rules so I could access my Sonos system in a separate VLAN. I’m not the target audience.

That said if you do need it for the mesh capability as opposed to just a standalone wifi router, the Google device is a poor performer and you’d be better off with the Wirecutter’s recommendation.

does it still have the throughput overhead issues, or have they figured away around the halving per hop problem?

I agree to the extent that it isn’t really for anyone, given that you can turn on any modern router and it will work 99% of the time with no configuration on a home network anyway. The value added features seem more as seen on tv than absolutely necessary.

Like I said, I don’t give a shit about the telemetry, I just don’t like the companion app nonsense, and I’d recommend any solid appless router over this (even to others) because it just represents another point of failure and another barrier to smooth function down the line, just like any other home appliance with a companion app.

A router running an old, outdated web UI is worse. At that point, I’d rather roll something with FreeBSD or CentOS via CLI. But that’s not needed in the consumer space.

The method with which one administers the device is irrelevant IMO as long as its kept up to date and is kept relatively modern.

I don’t think that the device being app focused is the Achilles heel you think it to be.

My rationale being; no one keeps the same router for 10+ years anyway. So in ten years when the app won’t run on anything the device has lived out its usefulness anyway.

Google made this setup process very seamless which is to be commended. Objectively, the router does what a router is supposed to do. It’s just another simple device for simple people in the consumer space.

TLDR does the job and would recommend :+1:

I still have several wrt45Gs laying around when I need extra switches, and I have family members that have older buffalo/cisco devices that they’ve been using instead of the builtins that come on most broadband modems (why ISPs can’t just build a decent modem/router combo is beyond me) but yeah, plenty of people don’t just hop from spec to spec.

the vast majority of people never touch the UI in the first place either way. The web ui might not have material design but it’s not any less convenient than an app, (you still have to connect to the network and log in either way) and it gives you the choice of whatever you want to use for management provided it has a network card in it.

My benchmark for convenience is how little I have to interact with something to keep it working. I want my software and hardware to bore me to death with how reliable it is. I’d say most people have that same sentiment at least to some extent.

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After ten years capacitors start to go, so it’s a good idea to get replacements anyway.

Most things in the enterprise space only receive supports for 10 years as well.

Maybe I should’ve gone into more depth. It’s not that it’s not using MD, its that they’re running some old compromised version of PHP over HTTP. That’s what irks me.

Agreed. Although very few things like routers are really mobile setup focused these days. So that in itself should be noteworthy. The current market trend is mobile-focused so it makes sense why Google would take this approach.

that’s the thing though, it’s a trend that actively makes my life more difficult if it takes off. I’d much rather just have mobile broadband be more convenient and less expensive to use for people in the US than have a market I care about cannibalized because the integrated service is just that atrocious.

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Do you know that PWA’s (Progressive Web App’s) are not native apps right? They run in the browser. So anything that can get to them via address.

Google is trying to make everything PWA’s (these days). And encourage other people to do the same.

When this router project probably got started around 2 or 3 years ago it was probably easier at the time to make it a native app. It’s highly plausible that they will release an update making this into a PWA, although this is just my speculation.

Although they could not as well, and then this turns into a lemon. Time will tell.

If everyone continues to release a shitty product then that will come to pass.