Google's OnHub Smart Router Pre-Order

Zarathustra[H];1041802755 said:
It is painful to me that there are people out there that avoid wired Ethernet, when it is overwhelmingly superior to anything wireless.

I'd get rid of WiFi before I got rid of wired Ethernet, personally.
Click to expand...

After doing DSL phone support for ATT for 3 years I can attest to that.

People will not, just wont, use ethernet. Like cat 5/6 puts out radiation or it will make them go blind for doing that.

I get sometimes it isnt practical but when the router, tv and xbox are all in the same entertainment center and they wont...
 
I'll stick with my DLink DAP-2690. I get wireless at the front of my development.
 
This is mainly a internet of things router but does not support the most popular protocol, this device allows google to monitor all your network traffic, have fun with that kids.
 
Elf_Boy said:
After doing DSL phone support for ATT for 3 years I can attest to that.

People will not, just wont, use ethernet. Like cat 5/6 puts out radiation or it will make them go blind for doing that.

I get sometimes it isnt practical but when the router, tv and xbox are all in the same entertainment center and they wont...
Click to expand...


Personally I go to great lengths to avoid WiFi use unless I ABSOLUTELY have to.

This means, if it's not a laptop, phone or tablet that needs to move around to function as designed, it gets wired Ethernet. I don't care how inconvenient it is, or how many hours I have to spend poking holes in walls, snaking wires, or installing racetracks along floor boards.

WiFi for me will only be used when absolutely necessary.


It is ridiculous that they would refuse even in those circumstances where it is easy. As soon as you introduce WiFi you introduce more complexity, and thus potential problems. The golden rule of engineering is the "KISS" principle. Keep it Simple, Stupid.

With wired Ethernet, you plug in a wire, it auto-negotiates, and you are done. Unless the wire gets damaged, you never have to worry again.

With WiFi, you are have multiple devices with different frequencies, and channels all fighting for the narrow 2.4 and 5ghz space, leading to risks of interference and thus poor signal, even when the distances are close. You have walls of differing levels of resistance to the 2.4 and 5 ghz spectrum leading to dead areas in your home. You have 802.11 a, b, g, n ac, etc, some are backwards compatible some are not. You have different levels of security (open, WEP, WPA WPA2, some of which with a choice of TKIP and AES, some devices are compatible, others not). Simply a ton of stuff can go wrong in the auto-negotiation and authentication steps, and once connected at any time interference (neighbor uses a old microwave, or a 2.4ghz cordless phone, another neighbor buys a new more powerful wireless router, etc. etc.) you could find yourself getting reduced signal strength, sometimes to the point where you are kicked off all together, but usually only to the point where your signal is degraded.

And that's before we even talk about the added latencies, lower performance, and the security risks of an exposed wireless WiFi router to anyone who can download an WiFi hack tool off the internet.



Let's talk about the experience on a typical 802.11b/g/n router or WiFi access point.

Your router is labeled 300mbps. Sounds good, right?

Except this assumes you connect with a device that has two antennas and both of them auto-negotiate to the wider 40mhz bands each.

If you live in a hut in the middle of nowhere and only have a few devices, this may actually happen, but if you like most Americans, live an in an urban or suburban setting, the band is probably too congested. With all likelihood you are probably only going to connect with one antenna (or your device may just have one antenna) and that one antenna will use a narrow 20mhz band for less speed.

If your signal strength is perfect, this means you are connecting at 65mbps, instead of 300mbps. But wait, you are behind a wall, or the 2.4ghz band is congested in your area? Then step that down a few steps, maybe down to 52mbps or 39mbps.

Do you ever use traffic that goes in both directions at the same time (pretty much everything does, game servers, torrents, but even regular TCP traffic as it sends a confirmation packet, so even a straight download causes upstream traffic)

Guess what? Unlike wired Ethernet WiFi is half duplex, meaning it can only send traffic in one direction at a time (wired Ethernet is full duplex, down and up at a gigabit all day long in both directions)

This means you just went down from an effective bandwidth of 39mbit/s to half that, 19.5mbit/s.

Whats that? WiFi protocol overhead? Oh, lose another 40% or so. You are down to about 11.7Mbit/s effective bandwidth, which is ~1.5 MB/s

Your pings are probably 50ms higher than they would have been using wired Ethernet, too.

And you are only a microwave ovens use away from losing your signal.

Compare this to gigabit Ethernet. 1000mbit up and 1000mbit down at the same time, latencies in the fractions of a ms, completely reliable (unless you do a poor job of cable management and run over the cord with your office chair too many times in a row) You can get as high as 120MB/s data trasfer rates (if you use the right protocols, SMB generally foesnt go above ~87MB/s or so)

it is just amazing to me how much more people value even very slight convenience over "Doing it Right".

Now the above is - of course - a little bit of a worst case situation for WiFi. Back when I used a consumer router in a congested neighborhood I could actually get between 4 and 8 MB/s data transfer rates, and you can limit the problems by going with a pro-sumer / entry enterprise unit like a Ubiquiti Unifi access point instead of a consumer WiFi router, but it is still going to be stupidly slow with stupidly high latency compared to gigabit Ethernet, even if the box has really big bandwidth numbers on it.

Those numbers are for marketing only and don't mean anything in the real world. They may only be achievable in an RF isolated lab, with two devices testing a few feet from each other (and even then you still suffer from protocol overhead and half duplex, so the best case is ~ a quarter to a third of the labeled bandwidth). In the rest of the world, the planets would have to align for you to get anything even close.

yeah, no thanks, I'll be using wired Ethernet for as long as I am able. I even ran an optical 10Gbit cable from my Desktop to my NAS server in the basement recently.

The smart choice is, use WiFi only when you absolutely have to. For everything else, wire it.
 
Your preaching to the choir here.

I will use wifi for the Roku (the two or three times a year I turn it on) and my phone, tablet, but not for my desktop. Ever.
 
How naïve would you have to be to install a Google appliance at your network edge?
/smh
 
They are advertising a lack of status lights like it's a feature. How do you know what's wrong with it when it invariably won't connect to it's control app?
 
ViperGrendal said:
There's some good routers out there. They are hit or miss. DD-wrt and Tomato can be lifesavers too for stability, but DD-wrt has had major performance issues with some newer routers. I had to revert back to stock firmware as DD-wrt couldn't handle anything over 100Mbits and god forbid you try to download anything torrent related like a War Thunder update. Instant lockup. :( It's been a few months, but I'm reluctant to try it again.

On topic though, I'm not sure I'd trust a google router.
Click to expand...

Good to know. I don't torrent or stream over wifi too much except on my phone and my wife's phone which isn't a lot, with FiOS 150/150, but I have two consoles I game on wired to the router. The wife wants a Roku (and after explaining to her that she hardly watches what's been recorded on the DVR) I said no way. But then I remembered my PS3 - I plan on hardwiring it also to the router so she can "watch netflix in the living room" (because going downstairs to watch anything on my new 4K Samsung 65" TV on either console wouldn't work for her because our cats won't go downstairs:rolleyes:) All this after I re-upped my contract with Verizon when I should have discontinued my TV service but we sometimes use their on demand service to watch something we've missed - a new router would prevent that, not that that's a bad thing given the consoles have the apps already on them (netflix, hulu, amazon) but now I have to wait two years to 'cut the cord' :(
 
I would love to see someone add this behind another firewall/router to monitor all outbound traffic and see how much info is being sent to google to data mine.
 
Too soon to discount it. It looks like a consumer WIFI router with enterprise features with multiple antennas Xirrus, frequent Google firmware updates, channel intelligence, possibly cloud management features, etc. If it has IPS functionality with auto updated signatures like Emerging Threats I'll definitely be interested.
 
I wonder when Google will start advertising free wifi in many areas.

The map will show a circle around all the homes with this router.
 
Zarathustra[H];1041802755 said:
It is painful to me that there are people out there that avoid wired Ethernet, when it is overwhelmingly superior to anything wireless.

I'd get rid of WiFi before I got rid of wired Ethernet, personally.
Click to expand...

While I agree, that really only works if your home is wired for Ethernet or all your computers are in a single room.
 
nilepez said:
While I agree, that really only works if your home is wired for Ethernet or all your computers are in a single room.
Click to expand...

The Ethernet spec allows for 300ft cables :p

If you don't want to drill holes in everything, they do sell those little self adhesive racetracks you can cleanly run along the floorboards so that the wires are not ugly and in the way.

I'm lucky to currently live in a house that is wired for Ethernet. Two ports in every room except the office and TV room which have 4 each, and a big breakout panel in the basement.

In my previous two apartments though, I neither had pre-installed Ethernet nor could I drill holes in walls, so I just used the racetracks. The both work well, and look nice enough to not piss off significant others.
 
Zarathustra[H];1041804047 said:
The Ethernet spec allows for 300ft cables :p

If you don't want to drill holes in everything, they do sell those little self adhesive racetracks you can cleanly run along the floorboards so that the wires are not ugly and in the way.

I'm lucky to currently live in a house that is wired for Ethernet. Two ports in every room except the office and TV room which have 4 each, and a big breakout panel in the basement.

In my previous two apartments though, I neither had pre-installed Ethernet nor could I drill holes in walls, so I just used the racetracks. The both work well, and look nice enough to not piss off significant others.
Click to expand...

I understand, but that's 99% of the world is unwilling to do that, and for most people the benefit is not enough for them to care. I'm complaining, because my AC router doesn't do much more than N speeds, but for most that's more than enough bandwidth, because they're only using it to access the internet.
 
nilepez said:
I understand, but that's 99% of the world is unwilling to do that, and for most people the benefit is not enough for them to care. I'm complaining, because my AC router doesn't do much more than N speeds, but for most that's more than enough bandwidth, because they're only using it to access the internet.
Click to expand...

Oh, I agree there.

Most people don't do home networking like we do home networking.

Anyone who has a NAS though, as the data transfer speed difference will be HUGE.

And anyone who likes to play online video games, regardless of whether it is PC, console (or even mobile in some cases) really should care as it DOES impact latency.
 
I have no idea why its such a big deal to run a wire. With products such as flexible drill bits, nylon fish tape, fish sticks, USB probe cameras, etc. etc, it really isn't as difficult as it used to be. I'm no electrician, and I had a job running cabling for residential and commercial audio installs when I was 15years old with a little training from my dad.

Even with finished walls with fiberglass insulation, all its takes is some time, patience, attention to detail and a bit of creativity.

Watch some YouTube videos :) There's more on there than just cat videos.

If you don't want to buy all these things or make the effort, call a communications contractor. A solid, low latency, fast connection is worth the money in saved frustration.

If you are like me and are paying rent, there's lots of things you can do or buy to hide and run cabling without drilling holes. Toss a cable down a cold air return ;)
 
i would have far less issue with this thing if it was much cheaper say under 100 they could drop to a cheaper soc but i doubt from looking at the spec sheet this thing is over 100 to make... i would say bill of parts is around 40-60 yet they are charging 200 for something i would need to hook a switch or second router to i would buy a nighthawk or asus router for half the price that has most of the same features basic quality consumer gaming routers these days all have dual core 1ghz soc 512-1gb ram and run some sort of linux devised os that is very user friendly.
 
Lunas said:
i would have far less issue with this thing if it was much cheaper say under 100 they could drop to a cheaper soc but i doubt from looking at the spec sheet this thing is over 100 to make... i would say bill of parts is around 40-60 yet they are charging 200 for something i would need to hook a switch or second router to i would buy a nighthawk or asus router for half the price that has most of the same features basic quality consumer gaming routers these days all have dual core 1ghz soc 512-1gb ram and run some sort of linux devised os that is very user friendly.
Click to expand...

Lol @ "gaming" router :p
 
Ordeith said:
How naïve would you have to be to install a Google appliance at your network edge?
Click to expand...

Yeah,

I'm usually more trusting of Google than other tech giants that use my personal data as I feel I have a good understanding of how they make money and use that data, but even I have a level of discomfort with this.

That being said, it's only a matter of time until 100% of consumer routers are snooping on us. It is too much of a temptation for consumer electronics companies to voluntarily give up another revenue source.

The only way to avoid this in the future will be to use an enterprise or open source solution, like I do.

Most people won't - however - and we will continue the unwitting slide into a complete lack of online privacy, because the dumb masses just don't care.


I feel the only way to correct this, and save people from their own stupidity is through regulation.

Here is the type of legislation I would personally support:
  1. No entity shall collect any data regarding any individual or organization without said individual or organizations explicit consent.
  2. In such cases where data needs to be collected in order to provide a requested product or service or where data is accumulated as a side effect of providing a product or service, consent must explicitly be provided by the individual or organization for whom the data pertains in order for it to be used for any other purpose.
  3. No service or product may be provided contingent upon consent to use collected data for purposes not directly tied to providing said service or product. If a service or product is provided free of charge to those who consent to share their data, it must also be provided free of cost to those who don't. No discount may be provided in exchange for consent to use data.
  4. Data preferences must always default to decline consent. sharing of data for purposes other than those explicitly tied to the product or service being provided must always be opt in. If the affected service involves a user setting permissions of who can see a profile or page, settings must always default to the most private. (I.E. display nothing to anyone.)
  5. Consent forms/pages must be constructed in such a way as to inform users of their rights under this law without fine print, without using any methods to "trick" users into providing consent.
  6. This law applies to all U.S. citizens while on U.S. soil, regardless of the physical location or nationality of the electronic service being used.
  7. Violations of this law will result in a fine no less than $5,000 per individual database entry of data collected in violation of this law, half of which will be due to the individual or organization whose data was incorrectly collected, and half of which due to the enforcing agency to offset the costs of enforcing this law.

In other words, companies may collect and use data only if they have permission to do so. Permission must always be opt in, and lack of providing permission may not be used to decline use of the service.


I know the internet giants would declare and outright lobbying war against anything of this sort, but it is IMHO necessary to prevent our current privacy disaster.
 
jwcalla said:
Holy mackerel what a trainwreck.
Click to expand...

The Verge and Engagdet have posted some more positive reviews, however they all sound like idiots with the "Configuring a network doesn't have to be so HARD" bullshit". Almost all routers made in the last 5 years have full walk through Setup Wizards the first time they power on and they don't swamp the user with settings. The Setup Wizard very often covers a user's normal usage, and having more options available later doesn't mean the user needs to touch every setting. So I don't see the OnHub screenshots of the setup being much more or less complicated than every other router.

The difference now is that is a user need to configure something special with OnHub, they just can't because the option doesn't exist.
 
[url said:
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/08/google-onhub-review-googles-smart-home-trojan-horse-is-a-200-leap-of-faith/1/[/url]
Click to expand...

"Trojan horse" is the perfect description for this useless device.
 
fairlane said:
If it's going to auto update itself then there's a back way in for them to do the update, and god knows what else, so that's a big NO from me.


Have you tried a Buffalo router with Tomato or DD-WRT on it?
Click to expand...

No I haven't but I have heard good AND bad things.
 
Have a feeling Google is targeting Apple Airport Extreme at this price range but with more intelligence.
 
Strange, I have never had an issue with a WiFi router I have owned (all regular consumer stuff from several different brands) and the only issue I had with one that any of my family have had was with one router and that was due to overheating due to being stacked in a small space with other hot components. No connection issues over the last 15 years at mine, my families, or even public WiFi hot-spots. Nope not one, ever. If I was in range it just worked. This goes from professional gear at large corporations to your local mom and pop restaurant out in the sticks. Maybe I am an outlier :confused:. I am currently rocking a TP-Link TL-WRD3600.
 
videowall.jpg











Thanks, but no thanks. There was a time, long, long ago, that I truly liked Google and felt they were making the world a better place (yeah, I said it).
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top