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OnHub

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My biggest issue with this is that Google wants to inject a piece of hardware into my home that acts as the gateway to my data. A device through which all :

> Incoming data runs through

> Internal data runs through

> Outgoing data runs through

And then wants to be vague about what data they will be pumping to their back-end for analytics/data mining.

I have had a long standing proposal for home automation and I'm curious to know, in this era of insecurity and people vacuuming up all your data, how many of the tech minded people here would be interested in a device which ensures your 'home automation' data stays in your home. This can be quite clearly achieved in hardware and by having an out-of-band oversight controller that literally will not allow certain data to exit the physical domain of your home...

Cloud nonsense? It's called an application and a home automation application doesn't need to run in someone's cloud...

Whose interested? I think it's about time this cloud foolishness for the sake of monetizing someone else's data in an insecure manner come to an end. Everyone loves to rant about 'disruption'... I feel its about time this data monetization cloud bananza be disrupted.

I'm very interested.

The whole idea of home automation (and most of IoT) over cloud is absurd. The devices in your home should not communicate by sending packets around the entire globe. The data should never leave your internal network unless explicitly meant to (web interfaces are cool and all, and you want to have remote access).

I'm actually somewhat surprised people don't seem how wrong the current model is, but I suspect it's a mix of cloud being The Hot Sexy Thing and being paid not to understand this (via business models that rely on monetizing users through cloud solution; as some of my hardware startup friends told me once after talking with the investors, hardware won't be making money, the cloud platform will).

So yes, I would be very willing to help reverse this and make local network communication the default for home automation and relevant technologies.

Google's model of how it wants computing to work is fundamentally flawed and now it's infected Microsoft. Really the only shelter is Linux, when will the ignorant masses wake up and realize this?

Honestly why should someone that is tech illterate really care?

Its a pretty big hassle

I totally agree with you. I am as likely to buy this as I am to buy a router made by Facebook.

agree with everything you said, but

> Whose interested?

shouldn't that be "who's"?

Could be an attempt at making a funny combination of "whose interests" and "who's interested"

Absolutely, it's a bad joke. Endless data collection, personal profiling, total mass surveillance, NSA...

Need we say more?

I agree with you, but is this specific to only home automation? Shouldn't the same paranoia / concern (depending on who you're talking to) apply to critical company data (documents, source code, etc.) as well as personal health information (biometrics, etc.)?

It isn't just specific to home automation. The same paranoia should apply to all data and will once people understand the gaping holes in existing cloud centric/data funneling architectures. In the meantime, a new approach to the problem is worth looking into. As the speed of technological innovation increases more and more, so will the disruptive paradigm shifts.. and this cloud model is long overdue for one.

Yeah, but by giving more data you let software to personalize better. So by reducing your data exposure you are acting as techno-Luddite stiffing progress.

I don't think we will suddenly abandon the cloud. If anything, we will centralize even more information. My biggest philosophical debate is what will happen to people who deliberately protect their information. Surely they are meatier targets by various adversaries, but the thing that bugs me most is the fact that you will become irrelevant. Lack of data will impede even some most basic services and probably you won't be trusted because Big Cloud doesn't have your profile.

> Yeah, but by giving more data you let software to personalize better. So by reducing your data exposure you are acting as techno-Luddite stiffing progress.

Is this sarcasm? I guess I fail to understand how Google now knowing all the details of my life impedes "progress". It shouldn't stop them from developing new technology; why does the "cloud" need to figure out how to "personalize" things more for me anyways, outside of the obvious answer to serve up better targeted ads (which I'd rather make go away by any means necessary)?

> Is this sarcasm?

More of irony, I guess.

Google's core is still about serving you information and possibly some knowledge. To get better insights they need more information. It is as simple as that. MS entered the same field with Windows 10. They need more data to give better Cortana experience. If it's not all the data, Siri, Now & Cortana would suck. Now we are witnessing them going mainstream.

Merging cloud tech (automatic redundancy, intelligence) with P2P tech and giving the user full control is what is needed.

Secure smart home servers that act as rendezvous servers for your end-to-end encrypted connections so you have smooth links and network switching, routing, file hosting for your privately shared media (using tech like Tahoe-LAFS), anonymization (why run multiple Tor/I2P clients in a network when you can have one trusted device do it?), simple access control so you can easily determine to gets to connect to your home automation hardware, etc...

I personally think the real answer is not to have a central device, but to spread it out into a peer2peer 'fog'.

There's been some movement in industrial applications via stuff like https://twitter.com/FilamentHQ which leverages hardware accelerated ECC and telehash, using blockchain based DNS systems and other decentralized methods of command and control.

I think a similar direction needs to be taken for consumer hardware and data. The cloud needs to become just another peer.

I've been working with a bunch of interesting ideas on trying to get a distributed IoT network setup using programmable blockchains and Eris industries stack as part of an internship with them.

I very much like the term "fog computing" for P2P anti-cloud software. Hope it catches on.

Just watch out for Namespace collisions with groups like AppFog in the Container space.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fog_computing

"fog computing" is an awesome term!

It's been actively used by Cisco for several years. http://blogs.cisco.com/perspectives/iot-from-cloud-to-fog-co...

Why not both?

In P2P networks you'll need reliable peers with sufficient capacity. Making a home server into an always connected peer could solve plenty of issues, such as with routing and hosting.

This is exactly why I found the Google branding a bit weird. The smart guys over there surely must know that a lot of us would be suspicious of this device. Why didn't they brand it under Nest, or a new Google subsidiary that would take the initial suspicion-edge off? I think it's a good router at a decent price, but no way I'm putting that inside my house!

> The smart guys over there surely must know that a lot of us would be suspicious of this device. Why didn't they brand it under Nest, or a new Google subsidiary that would take the initial suspicion-edge off?

Why? Most consumers aren't in the ultra-suspicious-because-it-says-Google camp, and most of those who are in that camp are likely to take using a different branding for a project from the same ultimate corporate parent as evidence that not only is the project trying to violate privacy, its also trying to be extra sneaky about it.

I'm going to make a guess and say that this is going to sell just because it's Google branded.

I'm not buying it precisely because it is Google branded.

Unlike most of the comments here it isn't a privacy issue for me, I totally respect the privacy argument but personally just don't care enough to make decisions based on it... for me, the issue is that when I think of Google and hardware I think of the Nexus Q, Google TV, etc. Google suddenly (and relatively quickly) drops projects like this on a fairly regular basis and when the whole thing is all "cloud-this-cloud-that" dropping support basically means you've got a conversation-starting paperweight.

It's unlikely Google drops projects any more frequently than startups fail. I have (or have had) a lot of paperweights manufactured by failed startups, so I know it happens. I'm sad when startups fail, but they usually failed for the right reasons. It doesn't taint my overall perception of the startup concept.

If you think the Nexus Q was a fantastic product and that Google made the wrong decision to kill it, that's one thing -- you're saying they have bad taste, or bad product sense, or an inverted sense of quality vs. crap. I wouldn't agree with that assessment, though I admit it's an valid, internally consistent opinion.

But it's more likely you never owned a Nexus Q and are just using it as an example of how projects at Google get killed. Sure, Google kills projects. Just as startups fail. That's no more astute an observation than saying that sometimes it's sunny and sometimes it rains. You wouldn't expect Google to keep funding a stalled or not-quite-thriving project any more than you'd expect investors to keep plowing money into a startup that can't find product-market fit. Sure, the opposite outcome sometimes happens. But generally it doesn't, and that's OK.

Some think Google is valuable because it takes more risks than companies its size. The implication of your opinion is the opposite -- that Google should be more risk-averse (not starting this router project because a router is a crazy thing to build), or innovate more slowly (launching it later than today because it's not ready), or ignore market feedback longer than a startup would (damn the torpedoes, it sucks and nobody wants it, but let's keep its team on a death march). Is that how you'd run Google if you were its CEO?

"It's unlikely Google drops projects any more frequently than startups fail."

I don't disagree, which is why I also don't spend money on startup consumer goods that have any sort of requirement on "the cloud" (if the company dying makes the product virtually worthless, count me out) and also why I virtually never back tech kickstarter-style projects.

My opinion on google is that they are extremely bipolar (or at least give the external impression of being so) when it comes to experimental projects, they seem to go through periods where they are open to trying new things and then (very quickly) to periods of retraction where things that aren't ad focused are left to wither and die or just killed outright. I don't want my money caught up in their mood swings unless the value proposition is amazing, and in this case it really isn't.

The difference is that a non-cloud-reliant device can be sold to me and then abandoned by the company that made it some time in the future -- yet it still remains a usable device. Now whether the OnHub falls into that space or not I can't really say for sure; in this instance I actually doubt it does (my guess is it would remain a useful router even if the cloud-connected features were dropped for some reason).

It's also the frustrating potential that the product will be 98% awesome but with niggling problems that don't seem to get fixed as it's abandoned quickly; ie- my recent Ask HN submission about Android TV.

What _is_ the longest-lived wholly Google hardware out there?

The yellow Google Search Appliance for enterprises is about a decade old. You can still buy them today.

The Nexus One was branded Google. I wouldn't say it's supported by Google anymore because it doesn't receive firmware updates. Google first released it in early 2010.

The Chromebook CR-48 was first released in December 2010, but it wasn't a Google product (unbranded). It still receives software updates today.

BTW the new router isn't a Google product. TP-Link makes it. Google just controls the software, the way Microsoft updates Windows on third-party PCs.

The ratio of people who think about the implications vs the general public who consume rather than question is weighted in favour of big name companies.

There should simply be more coursework on privacy, classroom discussion on information monopoly, corporatocracy, ect... To level the field, it takes Education. (and I'm not saying the router is evil)

Vague? It seems to me like they're pretty clear about exactly what data they're collecting and why, and how to disable that collection: https://support.google.com/onhub/answer/6279845

"Please note that some features may not function with certain privacy settings turned off, and some information (such as the association of your Google Account to your OnHub) is stored by Google even if all privacy controls are turned off"

I am sticking with my Asus AC66U which has more features and is also cheaper than this Google device http://amzn.com/B008ABOJKS

In case HN is wondering about the reception: it's great by default, but I had some hardware mounted in inaccessible places, which could still have issues with reception.

So I replaced the middle antenna with a WL-ANT-157 from Asus, and wow. It's the best home wifi experience I've ever had in this price range.

I'd trust the Google device more simply because Google is better at software. With hardware companies like Asus you get routers full of terrible, insecure software. http://www.securityweek.com/asus-routers-plagued-command-exe...

Although I'm sure you're using DD-WRT or something...

Unfortunately when it comes to data and cloud companies these days, that's a little like saying you'd trust Blofeld more than Dr No because he's a more competent villain.

Even software from Google sometimes has security holes:

http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/08/google-pushes-update...

Here's more... granted, these aren't all vulnerabilities that Google is responsible for, but many are:

http://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability-list/vendor_id-1224/...

All software has security vulnerabilities, but organisations have vastly different attitudes toward fixing vulnerabilities as they are identified, and potentially different capabilities when it comes to fixing vulnerabilities in a timely manner.

But Google will fix the security flaws automatically. You have to compare this device to the typical home router, which is NEVER updated. And even if you do run an Open Source firmware, you have to make sure it's kept up to date.

Please don't bundle Android and the rest of Google software. They are two different teams with two different philosophies, and one team doesn't like to have it's reputation hit by the other teams faults.

Remember Android wasn't originally designed by Google, and many of it's security design decisions and culture were inherited.

That was patched within hours of the exploit coming out, hell I even remember seeing an article here on HN frontpage about it

BTW Google is not exactly known for being good at updates of hardware, just look at the mess Android is, especially older phones

Good link, thanks for sharing it. I gotta say, though, when I saw that wall of text my first thought was that this is going to be a tough sell for some of us. Thinking about it for half a second, I have to say that I would gladly prefer my router to be as dumb as possible. Maybe I just don't understand, at a gut level, how a cloud-connected router will actually improve my life?

OnHub seems to have a bunch of features which the cloud connection enables that are helpful, but not vital. For some people, having those features isn't worth the potential for additional complexity, and potential vector for privacy or security issues, that having a smarter router entails (or the increased device cost). For some people, it will be totally worth it. I personally think there's value in having options for both kinds of device on the market.

Hopefully it doesn't turn into the TV market, where it is getting increasingly difficult to find a TV that isn't "Smart".

Of course it's going to be a tough sell for some people. We could launch a potato and it'd be a tough sell for some people, let alone launching a WiFi router. :) At the end of the day you either trust the information made available by Google or you don't. If there was less text there, plenty of people would be suspicious that something was being hidden (heck - people are suspicious even with the current amount of text)!

It's okay to decide not to adopt the device in question, and it's fine to weigh how much you trust Google against what benefits you might get from any given device. For the average tech-savvy user, perhaps there's a lower value prop, perhaps there isn't. Some people like having absolute control, other people like someone managing things for them.

Hmm, that "pretty clear about exactly what date they're collecting and why" seems a bit too similar to what the proposed Australian data retention laws ask for, which the community usually refers to it as "vague and overreaching". They make a vague note about not collecting the content of network traffic (but you can infer almost everything important from source, destination, time, protocol, etc anyway) and the table on the page is just described as "examples" of what it collects, and is never stated to be the full list. Given that Google is in the data collection business, and has a licence to update the device (and what it collects) automatically, I would assume that within a short timespan it will be collecting everything it can get away with.

Even what they do mention is enough to start inferring things about your personal life:

With "historical data consumption" they can determine who is in the house and when. With the number and make of connected devices, they can take a pretty good estimate of family size, annual income, how many of your household are working, etc.. (Though they probably first care how many Apple devices there are connecting... maybe we need to send you some more Samsung adverts)

And sure it strips the URLs from the logs -- but between Google DNS and Google Analytics being on much of the web, they can piece back together every site you visit anyway and now your router has a Google account they can tie it right back to the router in your home.

And of course it's a $199 router with a license agreement that says Google can stop it working at any time they like (clause 5c).

Proposed data retention laws? They are in fact actual laws, but they just haven't agreed on how much money the telco's and ISP's are going to get for implementing it.

I'm glad that people found this to be a point of significance. I've worked in the commercial networking hardware industry for some years and shelved several consumer ideas due to a lack of interest in security/privacy.

I have watched over many years as this 'cloud' software bonanza has eclipsed the tech industry. It went away from its original intent a long time ago and now is used as the holy-grail method of :

> ensuring (rent) is always paid for service(s) people should OWN

> vacuuming up and selling people's data.

I have several projects on my plate. However, I have a solid one for securing people's data when it comes to the IoT movement (in hardware)... It revolves around the same hardware/technology that the industry uses to scrape and funnel your data except the home user will now have it at their disposal as well.

Users should have 100% control of their data. If someone wants to 'monetize' it or use it to 'improve' their platform, the user should be rightfully paid for the opportunity to do so.

Disruption? Yeah, I think it's time. The foolishness has gotten far too long in the tooth.

.. And the backwards thing about it is: there are simple and straight forward ways to secure data (in hardware). It's only because everyone in the industry wants to ship your data all over the place and data-mine the snot out of it that things are as insecure as they are.

The very (loop-hole) or (door) that is used to funnel/mine/monetize/cloudify data is the very one used as an attack vector. Complicating the crap out of things at that point defeats the whole purpose.... Get rid of the door all together and the home is the least of all places where you should be exposing yourself.

I agree with the idea that the best protecting n for privacy is to make it expensive to snoop - it's worked for thousands of years so far.

My concern is how to make the benefits of this huge amount of data (medical information, travel etc) possible while charging the other use.

It's just - how - does one attach the metadata and enforce the lolicensing?

Multiparty Computation, homomorphic encryption, Private Information Retrieval, etc...

Unfortunately they're not very efficient, and have limited security guarantees. But that's part of an approach to do it securely.

All of which Google likely has no interest in researching.

Therein lies the 'product' ... I'm working on several projects so I wasn't shy to put the general idea of this one out there... It's one of many things I feel passionately are going to be changed by disruptive paradigm shifts ahead.

That being said, you come up w/ the 'solution' and you'll have your 'product'... I already have a general architecture/approach outlined for myself. Create one and, from the looks of the interest here, you'll have an audience to buy it.

Also, with the scale and depth of hacks occurring around the world, you'll soon have an even broader audience.

If you get funded, look me up ;). I'll be looking for work in the coming months =P.

I love your perspective on the current obsession with cloud computing. Hit me up sometime if you would like to talk more about this topic.

I'm wondering if / how the identity problem, blockchain proof of physical ownership and ...

Well, firstly applications should stop thinking they are CoW - data is something that gets passed in and operated on.

Secondly data operations should be side effect free - and distributed, so that we can ask for processing- in many ways I would expect not to share my data but to accept payment in return for some slice of processing someone wants

This may work ok, and generally the things we want (social networks) will be fine with local data sharing - facebooks walled garden would have to be replaced with open protocol (ie AOL -> SMTP) and no idea how to achieve that.

So im not setting the world on fire here. But I think the shape of future is clear - just getting there ...

That is why i don't buy into this hype what so ever. Anything that has 'cloud' on it when it doesn't need to I avoid.

I'd rather set up my own router with pf-sense and a industrial WiFi access point.

I really love the concept of complete home automation however the data needs to stay in the home and companies need to ask for permission to mine it.

I have nothing against data mining it can be incredibly helpful but i want full control over weather i choose to share it or charge a small fee for my data.

I would be very interested in helping write some code or contributing money towards making improvements to lock down phone home and other unwanted behavior. I think an excellent starting point is to see if you couldn't take a Mikrotik or OpenWRT/Tomato router and bake a lot of this extra filtering and functionality in. For some of the things that Google advertises like speed checks or choosing an optimal channel or whatever, should be do-able in open source firmware, so I think it would be hugely beneficial, at least for me (and probably many others).

"a device which ensures your 'home automation' data stays in your home"

I have one of those, it's a Linksys router with OpenWRT acting as a firewall.

But if you can make it more user friendly and sparkle some hype all over... sure, go for it.

I don't think there will be a significant market for your idea. One of the most rapidly adopted technologies of the 20th century is Color Television [1] and it still commands 36% of our attention [2].

Consumers have made it crystal clear that they are willing to trade their time and data for lower prices and more convenience. Watch the commercial on that landing page. It couldn't be targeted less at technical people.

[1]: http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/business/technol...

[2]: http://www.emarketer.com/Article/Mobile-Continues-Steal-Shar...

False choice. It's not impossible to make something that tastes good and is also good for you. Some people find that Apple products are desirable, and incidentally, Apple provides a relatively high level of privacy.

But you can never expect Google to provide such a product as long as it makes money off your data. Maybe it needs to be under a different letter of the Alphabet.

Oh, come on. Just connect your Google router to your Google fiber connection and connect to it with your smartphone or laptop running a Google operating system and Google browser. Visit your Google home page (using Google's DNS servers, of course) to read your Google Mail, or perhaps catch up on the news with Google News, or use Google+ to see what your friends are up to, or get a little work done on Google Docs. Should you do some Google searches and end up on some non-Google sites, don't worry - you're still safe under the watchful eye of Google AdSense and Google Analytics. What have you got to be so paranoid about?

The NSA should stop the charade and just buy Google and Facebook already. They already have us by the balls, lets at least make it official and make the world embrace the heroic and always rightful eye of the US government.

Spot on.

I don't get it. It's become so obvious and people still seem to categorically refuse to admit the elephant in the room and to act upon it.

It's as if everybody was in some kind of unbreakable state of permanent cognitive paralysis.

And still, the HN crowd uses Gmail a lot. Here's the most technical crowd on the planet and people are obsessed with Gmail as if it was impossible to get email to work by any other means.

Furthermore, I will never understand why people would use Gmail, if there's IMAP and hundreds of email clients to choose from.

Same is true for Google Reader, that apparently caused a lot of buzz when it went away. Never understood this.

The only Google product I use is Google Maps, and Google Search occasionally. Replaced the latter with DuckDuckGo mostly and works well most of the time.

I only use Google maps for public transport route planning, otherwise I use openstreetmap. And osmand on Android is freaking awesome.

Is the search as good or as fast at gmail on these IMAP clients? I used the mail app for iPhone for a while and it sure isn't.

I use Mail on OS X and it is good enough for my purpose. Could certainly be a bit more sophisticated, but most of the time, it works. I like to have a real email client for my mails and not use a web app.

There might be dedicated search engines for emails though, if search is very important.

See, if you use search a lot and Google has the superior product for your use case, that's totally fine. But I guess most people use Gmail out of habit and not because it is truly superior to other email clients.

I'm with you here - I also find OS X's Mail plenty "good enough," including for search. And it works great for connecting to Google Mail accounts via IMAP…

Searching is a solved problem if you use OfflineIMAP to mirror your mail store locally, then run mu or notmuch on top of it. Honestly, it's faster for me to search my local mail store than using some web interface. Plus, i can do it in the train when i have no internet connection. I happily pay a few euros a month for an email server which provides me with IMAP.

Agreed. Even if Gmail is superior in some regards (I don't know - is it? There must be a reason so many people use it), as a tech savvy person I consider it a matter of pride (and privacy of course) to run my own mailserver with project like Sovereign https://github.com/sovereign/sovereign

I have been thinking of doing this for a while. Thanks for sharing https://github.com/sovereign/sovereign. Is that all one needs (whatever if mentioned on the README)?

I would be worried about getting marked as a spam server.

And this is exactly the reason I use Gmail.

This is a common belief but it hasn't been an issue in my experience of running my email server (with Sovereign) for the last two years. I run about a dozen email addresses over a handful of domains for myself and some friends and colleagues.

Sovereign includes instructions/configuration to run an upstanding email server citizen, including SPL, TKIP, MTA encryption, etc. Remote mail servers seem to respect it at least as much as gmail.

It also runs a rbl-check script once a day to notify you if your IP ends up on a blacklist. In two years running on both DigitalOcean, I've had no issues. Even gmail routinely gets added to RBLs from time to time.

I would gladly use email client with IMAP server but desktop mail clients are really still in the 90ties.

Do you have a good to alternative Gmail/Inbox which has Inbox like archiving, and easy cleanup of the ... inbox, hiding emails for some period of time, pinning emails?

As for the hosting of emails (assuming I don't want to have 10GB dedicated to emails on my machine), do you have anything that gives me 10GB of mail and has the ease of use of Inbox on all the devices (desktop and mobile)?

And still, the HN crowd uses Gmail a lot.

Ditching GMail changes nothing about your privacy situation.

An E-Mail is a postcard. Sending a postcard via DHL instead of USPS doesn't make it any more confidential, even if you happen to be the owner of DHL.

You're not wrong, but you're not right either.

Disregarding the (slow) advancements of E-Mail encryption (DANE), and the fact that's desireable that no one company has your data. The big point is that it's fair to assume that everybody has access to your mails while in transit, but using gmail Google has access to all your mails at rest.

There is no point worrying about your e-mail "at rest" when everyone has already seen it in transit.

"Ditching GMail changes nothing about your privacy situation."

Actually, there is quite a bit to be gained by running your own mail server - especially in relation to other people on your mail server.

For instance, everyone at rsync.net logs into (al)pine over SSH. So yes, if you email rsync.net and we converse, that is like the postcard - every hop it goes through can see it.

But no piece of internal rsync.net email has ever traversed a network of any kind. Internal rsync.net emails are just local copy operations from one mailspool to another.

The same could be true of your company ... or your family.

> The only Google product I use is Google Maps

I tried Bing Maps the other day and was surprised how much more usable it is. It loads faster, moves faster, and actually has a nicer interface because it uses semitransparent text to show names of areas.

How do you propose the common person act upon it?

Don't get a Google Router. Okay.

Don't use Google Fiber. Well, shucks - there's not a lot of 1,000 megabit ISPs in my area.

Don't use a Chromebook. Okay. What virus scanner should I install, then? And where should I store my data for backup? And didn't we hear that Microsoft tried to have Windows 10 phone home every damn keystroke or something?

Google browser. Fair enough, Firefox is decent.

Google DNS. Fair enough, unless I have Google Fiber. Then it's kinda weird to not pair them.

Google Mail. Something that looks like GMail has all of the problems of Google Mail. Is Microsoft really a better solution in your mind?

Google News. Come now, the problem of monopoly in news existed long before Google News did. I'd rather people also use Google News than JUST CNN, MSNBC, or shudder, the other one.

Google+. Right, because Facebook is so much better at respecting users.

Google Docs. Again, is Microsoft really better? Or Microsoft + Dropbox?

Google Search. What, I should use Bing?

AdSense and Analytics. Not really my choice, is it?

I genuinely ask this question. What do you think the common person could or should do, that would be better for them?

What, the Apple computer, Apple router, Apple browser, Apple Mail, and Siri?

Firefox may be a decent browser, but unfortunatly Mozilla has given in when it comes to adopting data kraken integration and has embedded software that can make Firefox en par with Chrome et al in the future.

No more good guys, I am afraid. Mozilla profited greatly from being spread by hackers initially, but now they no longer qualify for being supported.

No source here, I am on a crappy notebook, on the move.

At least by using a non-Google "free" mail service, file storage service, etc, you're distributing your mineable information among competing companies instead of handing it all over to a single entity. Or, you can do as I do and just find a reputable service you can just pay and not worry about it. (I pay Zoho $24 a year to host my mail.)

> What, the Apple computer, Apple router, Apple browser, Apple Mail, and Siri?

The difference between Apple's services and Google's equivalents is that Apple makes its money by selling you the boxes that the services run on - it doesn't directly profit on the services themselves. For Google, the service is the product, so if they can't make you pay for the service, then it has all incentive to data mine it for profit.

I fail to see how copying my data to more companies reduces my attack surface.

> all incentive to data mine it for profit.

Yes, and it has all incentive to protect my privacy, because if they screw that up, they lose all of my business, and all of everyone else's business, too.

> I fail to see how copying my data to more companies reduces my attack surface.

I'm talking about your privacy and mine-ability, not your attack surface. (Though it does help with that too, in a way - a bigger chance someone will get some of your data, perhaps, but a smaller chance they'll get all of it.)

No. That does not help minimize my attack surface. You're confusing surface with depth. And unfortunately, someone doesn't need to steal very much of my data in order to screw me over royally. If my Social Security number is held by more companies, that does not help me.

>Yes, and it has all incentive to protect my privacy, because if they screw that up, they lose all of my business, and all of everyone else's business, too.

There have been innumerable data breaches and we haven't seen those companies go bankrupt.

I pay attention to the data breaches. Google is one of the best companies out there.

I agree. My point still stands. The industry as a whole is terrible at keeping data secure.

> Don't {...}

You have pointed out many of the reasons why this is indeed a hard problem. That's why some of us have been trying to warn about these dangers for almost 20 years. The problem was significantly easier to fight 10 (or even 5) years ago, but everybody - including the technically knowledgeable people that should have known better - decided that shiny features were more important than paying attention to the larger picture and defending their future freedom.

> What do you think the common person could or should do, that would be better for them?

They should not use any service that goes against their long-term interests. While having a replacement is nice, this might require making a sacrifice. The lack of an alternative doesn't justify supporting the bad option[1].

Do you think that this problem is going to get any easier as time goes on? The cost of leaving Google is only going to increase, so it might be a good idea to find a way to pay that cost sooner rather than later.

[1] "...we've proved it again and again, that if once you have paid him the Dane-geld you never get rid of the Dane." ( http://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/kipling/dane_geld.html )

Just finished reading 'The Circle' by Dave Eggers - think Google's monopoly and totalitarianism come true - and this just further reiterates how Google are become so pervasive and invasive in monetising off everyone's data and lack of privacy awareness.

I'll go back to dial-up rather than have all my activity centralised in the Google ether.

From what I can see though, the hardware looks decent... Personally I'm curious for when someone does a teardown, to make sure there are no hardcoded callbacks to Google servers that shouldn't be.

If not, this wouldn't be so bad (for $200) running DDWRT/OpenWRT?

[edit] Also, does anyone know if the base firmware will be open source similar to Chromium? If so, one could theoretically still take advantage of their security updates (which would honestly be leaps and bounds above current consumer-grade hardware) with open source tooling.

I started developing a self hosted home automation framework for my senior project last year. Been on a bit of a hiatus, partially because I don't have my own place currently, but its here: https://github.com/terramod. Central web application that can run "apps" on your house, with raspi nodes that connect the hardware around the house.

I too am a bit surprised to hear tech minded people get excited about products that basically exist to collect their data.

"I feel its about time this data monetization cloud bonanza be disrupted."

Ironically, having users controlling their own routers could be the best chance to do that. That is, toss out the crappy consumer routers and instead embrace the router as a user-controlled computer that sits between the user's devices (including IoT devices) and the ISP connection (e.g., modem). This router could run an open source source OS and be programmed _by the user_ to do all sorts of useful things, such as block ads, block tracking, perhaps even create private overlay networks among family and friends, protected from spam.

In a world where the Internet user can have some respite from radio, TV and other advertising, Google (=slave to advertisers) should not be selling routers. Should they come to dominate the market, the respite will come to an end. Users probably will not even know what happened. No one pays attention to routers as computers. They just want a strong WiFi signal.

Worried about Security then look @ this wolflink routers. They are far better than this onhub and it can be controlled directly from mobile and the highlight of this router is that it comes with parental control https://www.wolflinks.com/

I'm interested.

Well I don't think there is anything inherently wrong with Google. So suddenly people have started to become suspicious about what data a router is able to collect, while in fact various routers which are well capable of executing malicious applications have been around forever? This is just a trend and Google is not some inherently evil guy that acts outside of the norm. Ditch Google? Fine. The next alternative you find is equally, if not more, likely to perform some data collection. Of course you can go full Stallman and ensure your data are truly guarded by your own in every possible sense. But the heavy price that comes with it, we all have seen.

From [1]

  Get started

  Welcome! To set up your OnHub, you’ll also need:
  Google account
  Android or iOS device
  Broadband connection

Google account? That seems like an unnecessary requirement for a router.

[1] https://on.google.com/hub/support/#get-started

Sounds a lot like the Meraki model. Makes sense... I'm sure one of the top consumer issues is losing router credentials.

> losing router credentials

I suspect 95% of people do not change the default credentials, which are stickered or engraved on their routers.

> default credentials, which are stickered or engraved on their routers.

Which having a seemingly random admin and wifi password with WPA pre-configured is better than no password.

I remember a story where an individual connected to an open AP, scanned the network, found a windows network share with everyone read access, that had NES roms and their tax returns. The sad part, and still is true today, you couldn't help them without admitting that you committed a crime (a felony I believe).

Sure you could -- just drop off a file someplace visible.

> read access

If you have their tax returns, you can mail them a letter, or often even phone or email them.

That would require committing a crime (in the US at least).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_piggybacking#Unite...

This is too funny - why would you admit, to a cop, what you are doing??? You just say you are sitting in your car enjoying a nice day - and it wouldn't be a lie because technically you are. It just so happens you are doing other things as well.

> He had been accessing the Internet through a nonprofit agency's network from a car parked nearby and chatted with the police officer about it.

If you are thinking "but surely the legal system should understand this concept, right?"

> "I had a feeling a law was being broken, but I didn't know exactly what"

Or how about the library who didn't mind a patron was using their wireless system - but the police still wanted to press charges:

> The library director said that Tanner had not broken any rules, and local citizens criticized police for their actions.

From one of the news articles:

> The police officer confiscated Tanner's laptop in order to inspect what he may have been downloading,

That is a big NO. If a police officer ripped my laptop from my hands - I guarantee it would be a decision we would both regret.

I think you meant to attach this reply to some other comment.

No - you said drop off a file somewhere. Connecting to their open AP is a crime in itself. I was trying to point out that the legal system has no idea how to deal with the legalities of accessing APs. Of course, they would have prove I had a malicious intent (assuming they could track me down).

So don't sign the file with your real name?

And honestly that probably greatly improved home wifi security.

Yup - my first thought too.

I used to work there, and one eternal subject of lunch-table conversation was how interesting it would be to make consumer routers with the same ease of management... but how the consumer market is such a hellhole to work in because margins are so low and consumers are more sensitive to price than to management complexity in their purchasing decisions.

A good brand like Google's can get around that, though.

How can they link all collected data then ?

Could be worse - a G+ account.

Yay, more wifi data. Android wasn't enough ;)

http://www.businessinsider.com/google-collecting-wi-fi-passw...

A Google Wave account.

Do you mean because they aren't available, or because of something about wave?

When I tried it after hearing it would shut down soon, it seemed neat.

Yeah, Wave was a great tool for remote collaboration/project management. There's the Apache Wave bundle you can self-host, but it's not as simple as just linking someone to wave.google.com.

I was just being snarky. A router requiring you to have a Google account seems needlessly complicated. We could crank it up a notch and allow only the users of an esoteric and obsolete messaging system use it.

Wave was a cool idea, though. But refusing to integrate it with e-mail under the assumption everybody will stop using it was a tad optimistic.

(Disclaimer: I work for the same former-division-of-Google-and-now-Alphabet-subsidiary that built this, though I don't work on OnHub.)

I think you need an account for cloud-based configuration, credential sharing, etc. Maybe it's not for everyone, but I think it makes sense as a product. I highly doubt they added a Google account requirement to improve ad targeting.

What division is that?

Fiber was part of "Access and Energy" led by Craig Barratt. Has a spot on their super out of date management page: https://www.google.co.uk/about/company/facts/management/

    I highly doubt they added a Google account requirement
    to improve ad targeting.

You might be right but it's really hard for me to agree with you. It could be optional, but it appears not to be.

I believe the post was not disputing the existence of the requirement, but the idea that it was to improve ad targeting.

I understand, and I still think an ad company has every interest to improve its ad targeting. What is so controversial about that?

Thanks, but shouldn't these features be optional? I still don't get why I need a Google Account.

These features are the value proposition. If you don't want them, a different router might actually be better for you.

I thought the value proposition was a better designed antenna and intelligent on-board bandwidth prioritization.

>These features are the value proposition

Asking for an explanation or complaining or criticizing a product is good and should be encouraged. Companies should expect negative feedback if they release products that consumers do not like. In fact this helps the Companies too in making products that people want.

I don't quite see why you're telling people to "take it or leave it". That applies to every single product in existence, and I would hazard a guess that most people here are aware of it.

I'm not saying that it's "take it or leave it".

I'm saying that if you're unwilling to use a Google account for this, then (in all likelihood) it probably isn't the best product for you.

The same way that if you're unwilling to use an Amazon (or Apple) account, the Kindle (or iPhone) isn't going to be the best product for you.

The router is cloud configured from your mobile device, that is how it works.

Some cloud services for the device are actually optional. But AFAIK you still need a Google Account.

Here is the help page on the topic of data collection and privacy:

https://support.google.com/onhub/answer/6246642?hl=en&ref_to...

And see also, how to set a whole bunch of privacy settings:

https://support.google.com/onhub/answer/6279845?vid=1-635755...

Disclaimer: I work on the project. I am not a spokesperson or legal or marketing, or anything like that.

That's bullshit. It should use something like Thread or Bluetooth 4.0 to let you configure it from your mobile device, which already assumes you'll be in the same room with the router in 99% percent of the cases.

There's no reason for this to be sent over the Internet, when you're both in the same room.

I wouldn't phrase it so negatively but I do share the same sentiment. I think this is the craziness that seems to be so widespread that people don't notice how crazy it is - the primary way for two devices sitting few meters from each other to communicate should not be routing packets around half of the planet. I get it's easier, but it's bad engineering, unnecessarily wasteful energy-wise and I bet the only reason this is the default is for companies to lock people down and make money on data.

Totally agree.

"unnecessarily wasteful energy-wise"

This is just for setup right? So the energy cost is insanely trivial, hardly worth mentioning.

I'm making a general point here. In case of this router, one-time expense is indeed hardly worth mentioning. I just dislike the whole trend.

The general point is "local direct communication is hard and unreliable". Your phone falls back to 3G - connection broken. You're on "HouseWifi" and the other device is on "HouseWifi_5Ghz" - connection broken. You have a router with a guest mode and stops guests accessing the local LAN - guest can't print or chromecast or whatever.

It allows configuring while not near it too, to check what's wrong with it while at the office. Bluetooth doesn't extend that far.

If you can debug the device remotely, you can debug the device remotely without trusting a third party.

There's absolutely no reason your private home router should be a slave to whatever remote configuration, monitoring, or intercept that some third party may be under legal orders to implement.

IMO these devices are nothing but parasites. On the positive side, Google has no track record with selling this kind of device and hopefully they will fail badly at it.

I'd say Google has done amazingly well with selling at least one device like this, the Chromecast.

Maybe I'm over-stating the similarities, or the actual success.

Google Fiber is one of the most wanted things in the tech world. You think having your traffic go through their router is bad? I don't even want to know how you'd feel about every internet thing you do being on their network.

There is a significant difference between being the first hop after the firewall, and the firewall actual.

This then assumes that authentication is handled by some combination of device proximity, physically pushing a "grant admin access" button on the device, or falling back to password management (possibly on a sticker on the bottom of the device).

There is something to be said for tying the device into an existing strong authentication infrastructure.

IPv6 support?

yes

> The router is cloud configured from your mobile device, that is how it works.

How do I configure a router if I need an internet connection to configure it? Sounds like a circular dependency issue.

Out of box configuration of the device is done without the need for Internet access.

Also, these days a good % of customers are walking around with an Internet connection in their hands, separate from their home connection.

Does it mean that you can set it up without a Google Account, then? Or does it let you create one (without being set up for the internet) somehow?

It's a wirless bridge, and it assumes you already have a router with an internet connection(i.e. your cable/dsl/fiber box). Setup instructions are here:

https://support.google.com/onhub/answer/6246481?hl=en

>> that is how it works.

That's how it's "made to" work (needing a google account).

Is guest access on a private SSID? Is my traffic separate from theirs? What about VPN support? I was getting ready to by an Asus router because I'm in the market for one, and it's at a similar price point. The three features I'm most interested in are QOS (which it looks like you have), having guests segregated from my network, and VPN access to my server

For users in some country can't access Google Account (e.g. China), Can I still buy and use it? That'll be no Google Account on daily use.

> The router is cloud configured from your mobile device, that is how it works.

So is the Chromecast and you don't need an account for that, unless you want to customize it with your own photos etc

They are optional. You have the option of just buying a different device.

No way! I deserve the best, and I also deserve the best without giving up anything nothing notta zilch! /s

You're actually giving up $200. Quite a good chunk of change. And no discount for my meta data passing through Google.

Uh, I think that's the discounted price... ;)

I understand the sentiment but I can see a certain logic to using a Google Account.

It gives some protection against an attacker using a default password (as with every other router in the world). Also the hardware could be locked to a particular account in case the firmware is reset and you return to a welcome page.

Also it seems preferable that Google should use it's existing infrastructure instead of creating something new just for this.

Their privacy policy seems open ended enough to indicate otherwise. Using this router allows Google to collect a HECK of a lot of data about your Internet usage.

No it doesn't? https://support.google.com/onhub/answer/6279845

For now

> For now

Sure! What else doesn't it do "for now"? You should make a list. Subliminal messaging out of the speaker, ad hoc mesh for coordinating kill-bots...

More seriously, one nice feature of that page:

If changes are made to this article (which should be rare), a revision history will be available on this page to let you know what has changed and why.

All privacy policies should have this.

That IS a lot of data!

I like the "for example.." present in most sentences.

Attempting to list out each and every individual instance where a piece of data might be used does not a good privacy policy make.

Well, privacy policies are weaksauce and in general haven't been legally tested that much.

-- When you upload, submit, store, send or receive content to or through our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content.

The rights you grant in this license are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting, and improving our Services, and to develop new ones. This license continues even if you stop using our Services.

Our automated systems analyze your content to provide you personally relevant product features, such as customized search results, tailored advertising, and spam and malware detection. This analysis occurs as the content is sent, received, and when it is stored. --

So yeah, the Terms of Service is filled with so many legal loopholes that only a lawyer would love.

[1] http://www.google.com/intl/en/policies/terms/

Cloud-based configuration? Isn't that virtually always a terrible idea security wise for a router? Is it another form of "lawful intercept"?

Depends on if you think un-updated, bad PRNG devices are better.

This isn't an "either-or" situation. You can have an auto-updating router which doesn't depend on configuring via a third party service.

Not really. If the router auto-updates, it has to get that update from somewhere. If anything, being able to push firmware is more powerful than being able to push configuration.

> I highly doubt they added a Google account requirement to improve ad targeting.

Ad delivery networks, and google is one of the biggest, have one core business: delivering ads. Everything is setup to make that as big and as solid as possible. Whatever it takes (and we all know how far ad delivery networks will go: almost infinitely far).

Now they ship a piece of hardware, require signing up with an account, and it's not for prolonging / helping their core business? If you believe that, I have a piece of land I want to sell to you, special price.

I'm not going to say you're wrong, but Google has an interest in maximizing the number of people who have consistent, reliable, enjoyable internet experiences. If this hardware does not collect data to help them target ads (and that may very well be the case), but causes more eyeballs to spend more time online where they will find Google-hosted ads, it helps their core business AND the customer.

> Ad delivery networks, and google is one of the biggest, have one core business: delivering ads

It's made by an alphabet subsidiary, not google. Google are the bad ad-selling guys, they're the good guys. 100% true!

I agree!

- Typed on Google Chrome on my Android Phone, connected to my Google Fiber network via my onHub router.

Believe it or not there are a lot of teams at Google that don't think about ads. I worked on Geo for over three years and had plenty of discussions about how various things should work, and ads never came up. (There was one case where we pushed pointless login requirements on the user, gating Zagat reviews behind a G+ login, and I (along with many others) argued against it.) Like I said, I'm not on the OnHub team, but knowing how these sorts of things work my educated guess is that they did some market research and found that the best way to have the best UX for the median user was to do cloud-based configuration.

On top of which, the privacy policy (linked elsewhere in the comments)_ makes it clear that your actual web browsing data isn't tracked.

At a strategic level, if we make wifi better and people use the internet more, sure, we can show them more ads. Maybe that and/or other strategic concerns are part of why the project got funded in the first place. But the people actually designing the features are probably a disjoint set of people from the ones thinking about that kind of strategy.

I suppose a workaround could be just an OnHub specific Google Account.

How is creating a Google Account a workaround to creating a Google Account?

How is creating a throwaway Google Account anything other than a minor inconvenience?

"I highly doubt they added a Google account requirement to improve ad targeting."

I find that a highly optimistic statement given advertising is pretty much Google's only significantly profitable product and is supporting the entire conglomerate.

It doesn't seem very plausible that Google made OnHub just to sell lots of them at the $200 price point. I think the official stance on this will be that they want to make the internet work better and be easier to setup. I do think that's plausible.

Plus, unless Google can snoop into HTTPS connections, how would this help them with ad targeting? (since HTTP will be phased out within the next few years)

Haven't the NSA revelations of the past few years driven home the fact that metadata is extraordinarily valuable and informative?

> unless Google can snoop into HTTPS connections, how would this help them with ad targeting

Hostname from TLS SNI is also useful for AD targeting.

If you're able to tell, which division is that? Is this really inner-Google product development, or mostly/partial/somewhat outsourced via a prod-dev consultancy?

Pretty sure they mean Nest.

Not directly, but they would certainly have included it as an entry point to bring users into Google's account-driven services, and to make a Google account "stickier".

That indirectly does increase ad revenue and targeting, and you can be sure that over time different people in the company will keep having the "bright idea" that if they correlate OnHub data with data from Analytics, DNS, and location services, they can improve ad-targeting by 0.x%, leading to $Y million in additional revenue, and within a few years it will be.

It's computer fascism and people are stupid enough to sign up for it.

The fact that you can decide to sign up for it or not means it's not fascistic at all.

Not only that, why do I need an Android or iOS device? Are we too hip for web configuration pages now?

Very interesting. From looking at the specs, it looks like they're packaging a server and marketing it as a router. The configuration app is a very nice touch, routers have always a pain to configure. I'd love to stick this in my apartment (even though I can only receive a maximum of 10mb/s).

As a side note, I'm surprised this isn't marketed alongside the Nest branch. It really has the look and feel of Nest products with the LEDs and the speaker aesthetic. Also surprised this isn't an "Alphabet" product.

"As a side note, I'm surprised this isn't marketed alongside the Nest branch. It really has the look and feel of Nest products with the LEDs and the speaker aesthetic. Also surprised this isn't an "Alphabet" product."

It pretty much is... it's their way of sneaking the 'home automation' core/aggregation box into people's homes masked as a wireless router (for now).

I'm sure the capability you mention will come heading into the future. The only question will be : execution/security and will a competitor come up w/ a more secure/well executed product which won't serve as a data vacuum hose to google.

This kind of product launch on the heels of their massive alphabet re-org with no understanding where it came from (division wise) or what its goal is leads me to question whether the re-org is really going to move google beyond its former execution flaws ...

There are decent solutions to this already. INSTEON works great. It's got dual-band connectivity (wired and wireless) and you can either use a cloud hub if you want, or control it locally with a computer.

I can't tell you how many Insteon switches I've replaced in anger because they start flashing, stop responding to button presses, start beeping - one didn't even stop when I pulled the air gap switch. I'm well versed in their tech and in electrical systems, and everything was installed correctly, in some cases with fresh neutral wires pulled through direct from the neutral buss bar in the service panel, just to avoid potential crosstalk/current leakage, since they communicate over wires as well as via two way radio (newer spec switches).

I know it's anecdotal, but the Insteon forums are filled with similar stories. I was a very early adopter and have been through several generations of devices, and I'm committed to using another platform when I start replacing the remaining Insteon switches that will inevitably die.

I wouldn't recommend Insteon to anyone. X-10 was more reliable in my house. I'm evaluating Zigbee options now.

I have heard these stories (and am wary), but I have yet to have a single INSTEON device fail on me so far. X-10 was completely unusable for me.

I just bought a Zigbee Winkhub because I was looking into something to play around with to remotely control lights. I also wanted something that I could hack and run my own code on. The Winkhub is relatively easy to hack. I've only been using mine for about a week now but am very happy with it. I've only tested mine with lights so far.

Well they bought Revolv a while back (via Nest), mostly for the team. Come to think of it, I think they were working with Go too.

Revolv Hub supported devices:

http://support.revolv.com/knowledgebase/articles/329116

> home automation' core/aggregation box

Deeper than that, even. It seems like this is intended as a local-network cloudlet[1] substrate.

Launch an app on your phone that needs a companion frontend server instance to talk to? One gets launched "in the cloud"—specifically, in a virtual cloud owned by the app author. But where is that instance, physically? Usually a provider like AWS... but with a cloudlet peering arrangement, that instance could instead end up running on your router. (Not as crazy as it sounds if your app has an N:M frontend-backend server topology.)

[1] https://github.com/cmusatyalab/elijah-cloudlet

I've been toying with terminology to deal with the idea of a decentralized p2p cloud. Calling it a 'virtual cloud' seems off, and 'fog' has been co-opted by other kinds of tech. Any thoughts on what would be a good terminology for this?

Mist

“The Shade”

* It’s a play on the word “shard”.

* It suggests privacy and protection.

* It suggests something that is nearby, as opposed to “the cloud” that is far away.

…

Unfortunately, the word is probably too susceptible to negative connotation.

I thought fog was being used to describe this kind of thing. Where else is fog computing used, differently?

Given that it has ZigBee, Bluetooth 4.0 I think it's meant to be a hub. It also mentions Weave which would work well together with Nest: https://nest.com/support/article/How-does-Nest-Protect-conne...

What about Thread?

Thread uses the same hardware and radio protocols as Zigbee but a different software layer on the top.

Which means this could easily get Thread support as one of the "software updates" to come out.

The FAQ on the specs page mentions Thread support.

Thread and Zigbee both work on 802.15.4, which it supports.

Come to think of it, that's why Google is so behind Thread - they want a mesh networking protocol that's not exclusively local, but can connect each one of the embedded systems directly to the Internet with their own IPv6 address. Although, the protocol does support using a "gateway", too, but I have a feeling that won't be made the priority for most Thread-enabled devices.

To understand why certain products, which are seemingly unrelated to Google's core competency, have stayed with Google and haven't moved on to Alphabet, or why Google created a product such as OnHub and not Nest, you have to realize why all of these product are under Google - to track all the data that goes through them under the same generic/unified "privacy" policy, and then feed it into its advertising system.

That's why OnHub is a Google product.

And that's exactly why it won't be getting put in my home.

This was a primary motivation for Google+ as well - a single unified login under one unified privacy policy.

I hate to burst your bubble, but it's actually just a branding thing, and has been in the works for much longer than anyone involved knew that Alphabet was going to happen.

The team that built this is part of the same company as Google Fiber (disclaimer: for which I work), which is in fact no longer part of Google Inc.

Well, if they wanted to track data through this, though, they either have to make it under the Google brand, or can’t sell it in Europe.

> but it's actually just a branding thing

I've heard it's mostly a liability thing. When projects like the self-driving car were directly under Google, Google's assets were fair game in any lawsuit over that technology. With the current setup, liability is siloed in each legal entity which gives the cash cow, Google, more protection.

More here: http://www.theverge.com/2015/8/13/9149431/alphabet-google-co...

I wasn't commenting on why the Alphabet thing happened (I've heard all sorts of explanations but nothing official except what's been said publicly, and I don't personally have any insight). I was talking about why things in Access & Energy are still getting the "Google" label, e.g. "Google Fiber" or "OnHub by Google".

For clarity:

Here is the help page on the topic of data collection and privacy: https://support.google.com/onhub/answer/6246642?hl=en&ref_to.... And see also, how to set a whole bunch of privacy settings: https://support.google.com/onhub/answer/6279845?vid=1-635755.... Disclaimer: I work on the project. I am not a spokesperson or legal or marketing, or anything like that.

> routers have always a pain to configure

Eh? You must buy some shitty routers, no offense.

Compared to the rest of the market, paying $200 for a router isn't competitive. It just is not worth it given Google's "eh-we-will-do-it-and-stop-if-people-complain/sue" mindset.

----

To Melvin, since I'm submitting to fast:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B013ALA9LA?ref=spks_0_0_2170510902&...

> OnHub Wireless Router from Google and TP-LINK > by TP-LINK

1) You complain about the quality of TP-LINK products and think the solution is....another TP-LINK product, likely measured in the same way.

2) Honestly, I cannot think of a consumer AP that would actually perform to your expectations [apartment complex with 30+ competitors, saturating all the channels] that would be priced at $300, let alone $200. I can tell you right now, this Google AP won't do it either. Its "up to 1900mbps" for a reason. Trust me. Buying this won't be a magical solution to your problems if you real world gigabit speeds.

----

To the folks complaining about "magical routers":

A) Buy something from Ubiquiti Networks.

B) Buy something you can flash with WRT firmware.

In both cases, as long as you understand the hardware specs, you'll get something better than the norm. In Ubiquiti's case, I'm 99% sure it will outperform a Google branded TP-Link AP unless Google is heavily subsidizing and QAing everything.

Really? I paid more for that for my last one. ASUS RT-AC68U when it just came out...

I have a 1 Gbps fiber connection at my apartment. I spent a good hour doing research and finally bought this http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00BUSDVBQ. It had 4.5 stars at the time and was the highest rated router that Amazon carried. I bought it, plugged it in and ran speedtest on it. Max speed I could get was 250mb/s. Not bad but not the gb/s that was getting advertised. Additional, over time, it would always slow down to 10-50mb/s. I called TP-Link and they said this was likely the best it'll do and the advertised speeds are in an interference free lab environment.

If OnHub fixes that second problem as they claim to, that would be more than enough reason for me to spend the $200. If they can get higher than 250mb/s speed by optimizing around the congestion, $200 will be well worth the spend.

I was in the same situation as you. Same Router too.

I could actually get close to 1 Gbps with the stock firmware. But it was unstable, requiring a reset every other day. I used an open source firmware, but it didn't contain the NAT offload module, so I would not be able to get over 200-250 Mbps. (This was is all wired, not wireless).

Since I had a wifi access point, I ended up switching to an Ubiquity Edgemax router and haven't had any problems since.

Not really a fan of TP-Link.

Here's the thing about TP-Link: They're a "good enough" manufactur. Meaning if you care about something, don't buy a TP-Link, but if you don't care that much and just need it to basically work "good enough" (e.g. WiFi for your mom's house) then they're fine.

I got a cheap TP-Link repeater. It works fine, nothing special, no bells or whistles. But for the price it was a good buy.

TP-Link are hardly a manufacturer of "good enough" products. Their $100 Archer C7 router is the top recommendation on TheWirecutter for over a year.[0] Their $75 Archer C5 is also the top rated AC1200 router in every single category on SmallNetBuilder.[1] It beats out more expensive models from all the bigger name manufacturers.

[0] http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-wi-fi-router/

[1] http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/tools/rankers/router/result/1...

I've got the same router and I'm getting close to 900Mbps. Maybe your client device doesn't support 5Ghz?

I'm very happy considering the price and openwrt support.

Wifi or ethernet? My client device is the latest MacBook Pro. It supports 5Ghz.

So what's your magical router? Does it have options actually make sense? And a help that is, like, helpful?

I'm talking about things such as "Enable XPRESS whatever". Help: "Turns XPRESS whatever on or off". And then you find out that no matter what the feature was supposed to do, theoretically, in practice it makes the router slow and unstable. Or, at worst, crashes it. No brand is immune. Many (non-enterprise) routers will advertise QoS features, but you find that you are better off without them.

That goes for almost all brands that are not classed as "Enterprise" - and even some that are.

Have you ever tried an AVM Router? Amazing things, several of their Fritz!Box lineup are actually better specs-wise than this Google router (and don’t come from a company with rather questionable update and privacy record)

Have you tried running either a *wrt variant, or, if you don't like poking firmware, any of Ubiquiti's offerings?

> Trust me.

I don't trust people who say "Trust me." :)

I'm sure. No one ever believes me until I've been paid to fix it. I'm used to it.

It's less about your skills, and more about your presentation. "Honestly" and "Trust me" smack of salesmanship. It's a weird effect. Engineers try to be more persuasive by picking up, intentionally or not, vocabulary used for persuasion. Unfortunately, there is a lot of nuance that's hard to control.

Tighten up your writing, and perhaps speech, so you simply state the facts as you see them. This router will meet your needs because it has these 3 features. 1,2,3. It's much harder to argue with flat statements of fact as opposed to the salesmanship trick of, i would lie to most people but i like you so i'm going to tell you a secret.

Or, you know, don't. If it's not a problem for you don't waste time on it, but that's the underlying effect.

Thanks for the advice.

I think the underlying problem is my incentive is for people to disbelieve me the first time I tell them something. I don't really care if they believe me since after I am proven right I get more to fix the problem. [e.g. The last time, I got ~$6k] :/

So I'm not really motivated to fix it, y'know?

I probably should fix it since I'd be a better person for it but my financial incentive isn't aligned with fixing it.

My point: you're a random stranger saying to another random stranger "trust me" without justifying your request to trust you. Why should I trust you?

Your reply: After I've convinced them that I know enough to fix the problem (by either demonstrating my expertise/qualifications/experience or getting someone else to vouch for me), they believe me.

Well duh! If you demonstrate why they should trust you, they'll trust you. They won't just randomly pay you money to fix shit if they don't trust you.

Given I suggested a free solution it doesn't really require much trust.

But hey, go keep trusting the people who already screwed you.

You're going off the deep end now.

I'm uncertain how a factual statement is going off the deep end but okay.

1) You want to fix a shitty TP-Link product with another TP-Link product.

2) How is that not that?

Trustworthy people don't need to tell others to trust them.

How do DrayTek products rank these days? When I was on ADSL they were excellent, and their UK-tuned firmware outperformed Linksys & Netgear.

Now I'm on fibre I'm using the Draytek purely as an access point, and BT's modem to connect. The Draytek'll need replacing soon.

I only recommend what I've used personally. :/

DrayTek sucks as a router, those things need to be rebooted all the time. Use an EdgeRouter.

No experience with Draytek's routers, but I've been happy with their ADSL/VDSL modems (Vigor 120/130). They have some really nice features, like PPPoA -> PPPoE passthrough.

We're using a few of their modems in bridge mode and then everything works fine. It's just the routing they can't do.

I've never had problems with my Router. I do however have problems with Google ChromeCast vanishing from other devices -- which according to Google is a problem with the router (although for me the problem mostly occurs when the ChromeCast decides to use the same WiFi channel for its internal WLAN as the WiFi it's registered on).

I also have occasional problems with Linux devices being picky and flaky -- sometimes not connecting at all (repeating the "connecting..." phase ad nauseam) and sometimes just dropping the connection until I restart the device.

I find it dubious that these problems would be fixed by a Google branded router.

I have a Ubiquiti AC access point at home and the only thing I could see the OnHub doing better is the auto-sensing other networks and working around them. I'm not sure how that would work yet since changing channels would kick everyone off wifi for a second but the Ubiquiti "auto" channel is only changed/detected at boot (probably for the reason I just mentioned).

What specs are you talking about specifically? It doesn't look like a server at all.

https://on.google.com/hub/#specs

The detailed specs page shows a 1.4 GHz Dual Core processor and a 1GB of DDR3 RAM. Thats a little ridiculous for a router

Not really. The Linksys WRT1900AC has a 1.2ghz dual core CPU as well.

At some point you need a general purpose CPU to run everything and it's not hard to just throw an ARM SoC at it which is going to be in the 1-1.5ghz range and dual core because that's just what low-end is now.

The Linksys: http://www.linksys.com/us/p/P-WRT1900AC/

Agreed, the specs between the WRT1900AC and the OnHub are strikingly similar. Even the advertised smart features.

Plus at least 4GB of storage.

It's a Dual Core ARM, it's expected for a good gigabit router.

I'd imagine it's basically off-the-shelf mobile hardware.

The CPU is inline with top of the line routers these days (e.g. Asus RT-AC87U is a 1Ghz dual core). 1+Ghz dual core CPUs are really cheap these days.

The RAM is about 4x what other routers are packing but the cost difference between a 1Gbit chip and 4Gbit chip is a few dollars. Prices have been plummeting this year and 8Gbit chips replaced 4Gbit as the new hotness. Not to mention DDR4 rolling out so there might just be dumping going on that makes adding 1GB of RAM a non issue.

There's a specs link at the top of the page, but I'm also not sure what parent poster means. Just confused, I think.

The specifications are on a par with low-end consumer-grade NAS products, and it has a USB 3 port, but nothing on the site says anything about providing storage or other services, except for router-type and supporting configuration services (I suppose "keep an eye on your network" is a bit of an extra).

"Plenty of room, OnHub has 4GB of storage space, so there’s plenty of room for auto-updates and the latest software features" is hardly selling a server. All it claims to be is a fancy router.

> Also surprised this isn't an "Alphabet" product.

Alphabet has been announced, but AFAIK the actual corporate transition hasn't yet occurred.

Not to mention Alphabet is a holding company and won't have any products. It will all be done through the subsidiary companies (e.g. the new Google).

It's comparable to the other top home commercial routers out there, like the Airport Extreme or Linksys 1900AC.

> The configuration app is a very nice touch, routers have always a pain to configure.

Basically this boils down to:

The average home router which has basic to no settings (many even lack channel selection) but usage is poor to suboptimal. I had a Netgear router which had broken internal static routing - and netgear's response was to buy a different router (even though you could set it inside the router...).

Buying a higher power router or installing DD-WRT, Tomato or any of the other firmwares - now you have 1000 configuration items but you don't know which ones to tweak to give you good performance.

I believe most people fall into the middle - they want something that's easy to use with good performance but with the ability to adjust the 1000 configuration items if they wanted to.

> I believe most people fall into the middle - they want something that's easy to use with good performance but with the ability to adjust the 1000 configuration items if they wanted to.

I think most people want something that just works. (Most HN readers might want something where they can adjust 1000 configuration settings, but most people I think would never want to.)

> I'm surprised this isn't marketed alongside the Nest branch.

I'm surprised that it isn't a Nest branded product that the Nest division ultimately controls. Looking at Google's history, I wouldn't be surprised if the Nest division came out with their own wifi router as well.

I'm hoping that this doesn't turn into another Google TV release where the product is barely beta.

I think the best way to judge this product is as a hub for a smart home. The fact that it is an easy to wifi router is incidental (in spite of the fact that is all the marketing is talking about). It seems pretty clear, "onHub" is suppose to be a hub for a bunch of "on" branded smart home devices.

I've written some more fleshed out thoughts here: https://medium.com/@mrwilliamchang/onhub-is-not-a-router-foc...

So what does this device primarily do that I need right now? Just throttling internet for certain devices and prioritizing others? I'm not even entirely sure what 'uses smart software to find the best WiFi connection' means. What's the value prop here given the device costs $200? It's not like it can better your internet somehow.

It does have prioritizing: https://support.google.com/onhub/answer/6246483

any plastic router has some sort of QoS build in. This seems to have a nicer UI though.

"any plastic router has some sort of QoS build in"... that doesn't work.

If you don't have an expensive product, do some tests with and without the router's QoS. You'd be better of with a raspberry Pi doing QoS in most cases.

Agreed. Found that none of the routers I've ever bought came with QoS that actually worked, or at least made a noticeable difference.

Even if you do have an expensive product, the QoS in the stock firmware is guaranteed to have major problems.

The only way I can interpret that quote is, "it can automatically switch wifi radio channels when the one its using gets congested". I don't know, maybe there's more to it than that.

Because $40 routers can do that.

With six 2.4 and 5 GHz antennas each, that's two antennas times three (non-overlapping) channels simultaneously in each band. Assuming it can somehow get device A to communicate on channel A and device B to communicate on channel C, etc., you could avoid some congestion while still allowing all those devices to maximize the available bandwidth.

No $40 routers that I know of do anything like that.

meaning that if everyone in the neighborhood owns one, there will be six times as much congestion and everyone's internet access will be even slower than before!

you might consider learning how wifi actually works

It would be much better if you could educate us on what they got wrong, rather than just being mean.

I'm not 100% this is true, but with multiple antennas, you can do beam-forming. The basic idea is that you can use interference to point the wifi signal at devices that are using it heavily at the moment, boosting their signal and thus their speed.

When I upgraded from a generic $50 linksys router to a $200 Apple Extreme it vastly increased the range and speed of the wireless. Before it my TV's netflix connection would drop all the time or switch to low-res mode.

So it's conceivable that it would better your Internet.

That's interesting. The largest apt I've lived in was a 850 sq ft 2br so I've never had any issue with the range or lag from my router. Thanks for sharing.

I live in a 200 sq ft studio and I've had issues with interference with 2.4 GHz Ubiquity equipment and various other routers (probably due to having too many neighbors within range) -- switching to a $200 Apple Airport Extreme with "more antennas" made most of my problems go away.

However, seeing better performance 5 GHz 802.11 n/ac requires you to have both a good router and a good laptop -- my experience is that unless your users/family blindly uses Macbooks, they won't see any improvement from a $200 router because their 2-3 year old $500 Windows laptop only has a 802.11 b/g/n 2.4 GHz-only 1x1.

Most of this is because of the terrible Linksys software. I've had routers that acted terribly, and seen them perform much better with DDWRT installed.

It has a 3rd radio that monitors the channels you aren't currently using to see if any of them are better. The first two radios in the device can't switch without dropping connections, so they can't go hunting for new channels once the AP is turned on.

My Airport Extreme chooses channels automatically at boot time, then never again. This is fine for my house though, because my neighbors are reasonably far away.

At work, our Meraki AP has this kind of 3rd radio, and we get very good performance in a terrible RF environment, where lots of other equipment (from Apple and Ubiquiti) has failed.

Sounds like an awesome feature. I'm a huge fan of Ubiquiti, and was planning to get some APs for my house. But this Google thing looks way better now.

Which is a standard feature in a lot of other routers, too, like the Fritz!Box 7490. http://en.avm.de/products/fritzbox/fritzbox-7490/

Google is doing nothing special here.

I don't see anything on the spec sheets for the Fritz!Box 7490 that show it has more than 2 radios, like most dual band APs out there today.

Google's spec sheet [1] specifically has 3 radios:

http://i.imgur.com/x7CMktb.png

The first two radios do MIMO 3x3, and the third radio just has 1 antenna (since it isn't serving client traffic).

While this isn't completely new, it's definitely not common, especially for a consumer-grade AP/router.

[1]: https://on.google.com/hub/#specs

The Fritz!Box 7490 has 3 radios, for exactly this purpose. That’s how it supports automated channel search without disconnecting users, and how it is able to provide 1.3Gbps via WiFi.

If it does have 3 radios, that's awesome. They should make that much more explicit. I've looked all over their site, and I can't find anything that confirms this. Everything on their website just references plain old simultaneous dual-band with MIMO antennas.

For me, at least, a 3rd radio will be on the list for my next AP, so I'll take a close look at this one, too.

Well, they claimed it. I am not sure if they do have one, but switching channels and empty-channel-autodiscovery without disconnecting is a feature in the version that I have.

The issue is just that AVM produces different versions of the Fritz!Box for every ISP, so some have more storage, or more radios than others.

That Fritz!Box 7490 is US $320 on Amazon. OnHub is $200. I doubt many the sub $100 routers most people get do that sort of thing. So maybe nothing special but that is quite a high end router you're comparing it to.

Well, it’s the default router that ISPs give you for free if you sign a one-year contract here. (Yes, you can keep it even after the contract ends).

So, it’s pretty much in every house in Germany.

If OnHub has to compete against this (for the consumer free) router, then it’ll have a hard time.

Doesn't this only really buy you time until everyone around you has the same router? If everyone is constantly changing channels to compensate for neighbours I can't imagine the performance to be great, but perhaps I'm missing something.

OK, I'm trying really hard to figure out the $199 price tag. My cheap as dirt N+ router works pretty darn well connecting 12-15 devices at my home. I almost never had problems in years with it.

All the smart services Google offers, work through cloud, like Cloud Print. Not through a router like Airport express. Even Android Wear now supports Wifi so having BLE isn't that attractive to me. All the smart features that can happen with BLE and Wifi combined are always better offered with phone. So I don't see home automation/IoT benefit here either. Phone is a better hub. So what's exactly the point here? The only thing I can think of is security patches from Google. But $199 is very steep for that.

I know it has a bunch of smart engineering and more antennas. But I don't know anyone having connectivity problems that are related to their routers.

There's no reason to buy this device for $200.

It's the equivalent of Amazon's Fire phone. It's richly priced, and does very little feature wise to justify its high price. It'll flop accordingly.

$49 or $99 (max) was the correct price point. They have to beat or match routers on price (high quality routers having become dirt cheap), or otherwise provide astounding new capabilities (which this doesn't).

I've been dogfooding the device for about 4 months now. Before, I was using the previous generation Airport Extreme. It is far better - the app makes it super simple to set up, the signal seems to be stronger throughout my apartment, and I love having a convenient way to monitor / admin it remotely (via the app). Well worth the price imo.

>inb4 shill :)

How well will it work in a complex network configuration?

E.g. my network looks like this:

  Modem - L3 switch - Server 1 - Desktop
                    \          \
                     \          - Wifi AP
                      - Server 2

If I replace the AP with one of these, is it going to work? Server 1 does NAT for the wifi network.

It looks like it supports a "bridge mode" (AP only, no NAT):

https://support.google.com/onhub/answer/6240987?hl=en&ref_to...

Hi,

Could you elaborate on what you believe to be far better than the extreme. AExtreme was super simple to set up and has an app too. Did you position your OnHub differently than your extreme?

I have had an Extreme for years but recently moved and found some issues with connectivity in the new location so I've been weighing options.

Just as simple to set up as the Extreme if you're on iOS, and even simpler on Android.

I placed it in the same spot where the Extreme was formerly located; my signal strength at the other end of the apartment and outside is noticeably stronger, perhaps due to the multi-directional antenna.

The biggest positive about a company like google releasing a router is the security updates. Most consumer routers out there are left to rot and you're forced to buy a one when its exploited.

https://github.com/RMerl/asuswrt-merlin

well... I use this and it definitely not auto updates! Also keep in mind this is a one man show. https://github.com/RMerl/asuswrt-merlin/wiki/Questions-&-Ans... I even set a alarm on http://watchthatpage.com/ to track changes of that router software.

You mean like phones locked on old versions of Android once Google moves on to new ones?

And don't they have Brillo? Having this without Brillo duplicates (particularly security related) effort and signals that Google doesn't consider Brillo to be acceptable for use in its own products.

I imagine going w/ Brillo would have set back the release schedule, but Brillo, if their vision for both products were to come to pass, is by far the more consequential product. Also... The wireless router market isn't exactly teaming with competitive one-upsmanship. They could have waited 0.5-2+ years without losing significant ground.

Note: Brillo is the stripped down variant of Android aimed at IoT (internet of things) devices that Google announced at the last Google I/O. This is an ideal early device for Brillo, since it's relatively powerful and isn't battery powered, so constraints aren't quite as high as they are in many IoT devices, yet it shares much of the problem space.

https://developers.google.com/brillo/?hl=en

[edited 6:39PM UTC to add the Note]

http://nextmarket.co/blogs/smarthomeweekly/29309313-google-i...

Going by how closely this matches the leaks, I think the onHub actually is running Brillo. They've just chosen not to mention it just yet.

Well, if that's the case then that's good. I had a line originally that had a parenthetical like "(or if they are using it, they should be announcing so with much fanfare, at least in the technical sections of the page)", but it got cut due to how cumbersome it made the sentence.

Thanks for the heads up. I genuinely hope that are using Brillo and using the experience to improve the OS. I think that Google is biting off a LOT with Brillo, and I don't think that they can afford to fragment their IoT efforts.

I mean, Brillo just seems to be a software stack. That could easily be added in later, especially since they tout lots of software updates.

Smartphones have a very different upgrade cycle than a SOHO router. Customers have been trained to upgrade their phone every two years by the cell phone carriers.

Given the substantial drop-off in build quality that I've seen over the years since the first G routers until maybe _very_ recently, I'm not so sure about this statement.

I've got v1-4 WRT54Gs that are still going strong while I've seen several dozen newer routers shit themselves over the years.

Also, why do we NEED to upgrade phones every 2 years?

>Given the substantial drop-off in build quality that I've seen over the years since the first G routers until maybe _very_ recently, I'm not so sure about this statement.

This is just another reason for more competition from a company like google.

The only reason most people know their router exist is because they have to turn it off and on when their wifi gets slow or it dies. Its not a status symbol like an iphone for example.

>Also, why do we NEED to upgrade phones every 2 years?

Because everyone wants the new hotness. Can you imagine trying to use the first iphone in 2015?

No, but I can imagine comfortably using a 4S.

The 6 is going to have even longer usability.

and you're on hacker news and not the typical consumer. An out of style status symbol isn't a very good one.

No one is buying beats headphones because of the amazing sound quality.

Fair point, but the carriers deserve a lot of the blame for old versions of Android on those phones. Google is likely to keep software on their own routers up to date. At least until they lose interest in the product line entirely.

Amen.

The only privacy link I could find on the page was Google's generic privacy policy. Is there more information somewhere?

With its "advanced and always-evolving security features", I'm wondering whether and what information Google would be gathering about my local network and my network traffic.

From the Terms of Service linked from the support site https://support.google.com/onhub/answer/6270620?hl=en&ref_to...

"You agree that Google may collect and use technical and related information, including but not limited to information about your computer and/or mobile device, operating system, peripherals, applications, connected devices, network traffic, and data use to facilitate the provision of the Software and Services, including support and other related services."

It goes on to state "The OnHub Privacy FAQ describes the categories of data collected and how you can use privacy settings to change what data is collected by the Services."

But I couldn't find the OnHub Privacy FAQ and https://support.google.com/onhub/search?q=privacy oddly says "Your search - privacy - did not match any answers in OnHub Help".

I wouldn't trust Google with this much access to my internet traffic.

I would if I got Google fiber speeds. For this, though? Probably not.

As wora points out, you're probably looking for https://support.google.com/onhub/answer/6279845

Unclear why they refer to it as "The OnHub Privacy FAQ" (implying proper noun) but then the page is called "OnHub, the Google On app and your privacy" and it's not structured as an FAQ. I can't find anything else it could refer to, though.

Thanks!

There is one here: https://support.google.com/onhub/answer/6279845

still remember the day Google collected public WiFi data ...now they have your WiFi covered ;)

Is it weird that I assume that both Google and NSA are recording all of my digital actions? Does no one else assume this? Which group is more delusional?

Interesting - but I'm not sure what this gives me over something in a similar price range, for example:

http://www.amazon.com/RT-AC68U-Wireless-AC1900-Dual-Band-Gig...

Presumably either you know something about routers and want to enable QoS, install your own firmware, or use some other advanced feature - and you spend money on a decent router. Or you don't, and use whatever your ISP provides (which if it's bad, you blame the ISP for without thinking twice).

So perhaps this is the new router bundled with Google Fibre?

The AC68U is the perfect AP for the discerning user who enjoys going into the basement every two weeks to reboot things.

I've had mine for over a year now, and I've only had to reboot it 3 times - 4 if you count the time I unplugged it and moved to a new city.

I've had mine for a similar time frame and I've never needed to restart it, except to install updates. My cable modem goes out more often.

My biggest issue with this router has simply been the media server, however the wifi connections and vpn have always worked.

If you have to manually reboot something quarterly then it's a piece of shit. Your standards are way too low.

I've installed countless of these for small businesses(N66U & AC66U & AC68Us) and haven't had any issues, some with over a year of uptime.

I have a very similar model, the AC68P, and the only times I've had to reboot it since it was installed in March was for configuration changes, and that was through the web interface. Next time try rebooting your cable modem instead, maybe it's not the router that's to blame?

Why would you put your router in the basement? That's horrible for whole-house reception unless you have repeaters on each floor.

My TV is also in the basement and that's the most demanding wifi load I have.

I have the batman router for more than a year and I've power cycled it once. Realistically I don't know if the problem was with the modem, the router or my computer.

7 months, and never needed to reset it. 5 computers and 5 smartphones, and IPTV 12hs a day. Works well, without any problem.

I've had the predecessor, the AC66U, since March 2013.

I've never had to reboot it outside of firmware updates.

I suppose it's not the AC68U, but out of all of the high end Asus APs I've had, I don't think I've ever had a problem with one.

</anecdote>

This router works great. Firmware is open source, timely updated, nice performance and some functionalities are very usefull (ie: asus hosted dynamic dyn dns, OpenVPN support and TimeCapsule compataibility).

Google's router probably gives normal people a better UI. It's better to compare it to Apple's wifi router.

anyone know how this compares to mikrotik's router which was recommended to me and I have in my cart about to purchase? http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00BGIXOHQ

any suggestion on docsis3 modem?

Seems like a nice router, but the WiFi on that will be much slower - 2.4ghz only and no AC.

You can't go wrong with the Motorola SB6141. It's 8x4 bands, and certified to work with pretty much every cable provider around.

Just interesting to note that the form factor is quite similar to Amazon Echo (slim cylindrical tube), although the function is completely different (router vs "personal assistant device").

It has a speaker built in. So they'll have that with Google Cast Audio, Google Now, etc. I am pretty sure they have a taken a leaf or two out of Amazons book.

True, although the audio engineering on the Echo appears to have been quite purposeful. Not sure what kind of performance they'll get out of the speaker on this Google device. But the functionality may well be there, I agree.

3W so.. probably not

The speaker is to talk to your phone, not to you. (Its a low-powered speaker that's used to communicate to a mobile device for configuration.)

A slim cylindrical tube is also a box for a whisky bottle. It's just a cylindrical tube...

I presume they're designing something to sit visibly on a shelf, but I quite like having things in a more stackable form factor. e.g., an external 3.5" on top of a Mac Mini sitting on top of a four-bay NAS, etc.

I guess that creates issues with interference with the antenna functioning though?

From the design goals outlined in the FAQ, it seems clear to me that Google expects there to be a great deal more bandwidth hungry devices in the home speaking first to each other, and then out to the WAN, in the near term.

Including Bluetooth, Weave, and Thread, along with up to 128 devices, gives me a rough sense of the scale of connected devices they anticipate in each home. Given that it also has a reasonable compute capabilities and cooling as one of the highlights, I think it's far to say that it could do a lot of processing on its own before reaching back home to the GOOG DCs.

...likely part of their "Internet of Things" strategy.

Hard to believe there's a huge market for $199 WiFi routers, no matter how sophisticated.

On the other hand, even a sprinkling of installations is probably pretty valuable if it allows Google to derive more accurate ISP performance numbers. There's got to be some benefit in having thousands of devices directly connected to the ISP's network on the consumer end 24/7.

It seems that with AC being more mainstream that prices north of $250 are becoming a thing. I was surprised it was only $199.

AC?

Like 802.11 B/G/N/AC

Apple's Airport Extreme sells for the same price and supports AC. I wouldn't expect Google to try to sell something more expensive without Apple's care for details.

Obligatory "buy refurbished equipment from Apple" comment (full manufacturer's warranty; I've never had any problems). The refurbished Airport Extreme is $129, which seems like a pretty good deal. Try poking around under "Mac Accessories".

I spent $150 each or something like that on my apple routers about 5 years ago, they both are still running strong but since technology has of course advanced so much in the past few years, I would spend that on a router with the hope it lasts the same time.

I paid almost that for my current router[0]. I think mine has better specs, even not being an AC (few, if none, of my devices use it anyway). Google's hub has no USB ports, no guest wifi (from what I can gather). Mine, however, has those things, though to be honest, most of the time, the printer or USB storage doesn't quite work right, though that could because I use a Mac and the driver's aren't supported as well.

[0] http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005KG44V0?psc=1&redirect=t...

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/c_gletsUWTM-5b3oIpHD7fFXfa...

It does seem to have one USB port, though I'm not sure what it's for.

It has a USB 3.0 port:

https://on.google.com/hub/#specs

Ah, my mistake then, I looked at the specs but didn't notice it for some reason.

If you're not spending at least $100 on a wireless router, you're probably giving up significant amounts of the performance you're paying for from your ISP. Routers are computers. The $40 units just can't handle modern usage patterns (multiple phones / tablets / computers with relatively high speed caps) very well.

It's my single biggest recommendation when people complain about the speed of the Internet in their home. More often than not, they're underspending on their networking equipment, not their ISP package.

> More often than not, they're underspending on their networking equipment, not their ISP package.

Often, their networking equipment is part of the ISP package because the ISP wants to provide a seamless experience, and doesn't even provide easy access to the information necessary to use your own equipment.

I don't even know what this means. Are you saying that your ISP doesn't allow you to plug standard ethernet devices into their lines? I own my own modem and router and do what I want with them. I don't follow you.

> Are you saying that your ISP doesn't allow you to plug standard ethernet devices into their lines?

Using your own router rather than the ISPs preconfigured router requires more than just plugging a personally-purchased router into their line (even in the simple case where you aren't using the ISPs bundled cable/phone/internet service that's all delivered through a common system.)

At least in the simple case, someone with modest technical skill can figure out how to get that information relatively easily, but most ISP customers aren't even modestly technical.

Since when? When I got my new router, I plugged it in and was online. I did some configuration (and flashing) afterwards, but it certainly worked when I plugged it in. Isn't that the point of consumer products?

When I've had a cable modem, all I've had to do is connect my router to the modem via Ethernet. When I've had modemless service via Ethernet jack, all I've had to do is connect my router to the wall Ethernet jack.

So what are you talking about? Purchasing your own cable modem? Or something else that I've never had to do?

If you have DSL, the modem and the router are the same box, so if you want your own, you have to throw out the one the ISP gave you, and configure yours by yourself. In practice, I bet you could just call up the ISP if you're having trouble, but I agree that an ISP has an incentive to give you a good unit to start with.

I haven't had DSL in a while, but when I did, the ISP just provided a modem with a phone line connector and a single ethernet connector. There's no requirement for DSL to bundle the modem and router.

Sure, lots of DSL ISPs used to do that in the old days before WiFi was a common consumer demand, and some still might.

Now, the ISPs that are using DSL (e.g., AT&T U-Verse which uses VDSL2 where it isn't FTTP) seem (from what I've experienced and seen with other people that have DSL-based service) to deploy all-in-one modem/routers (and, when they have services like TV and Phone as well as basic internet, to run them through the supplied all-in-one box, as well.)

> There's no requirement for DSL to bundle the modem and router.

Sure, its not a theoretical requirement, just practically what ISPs seem to do now.

Gotcha, I thought it was being presented as some sort of technical constraint.

An interesting variant on all of this is FiOS, which is often brought into the house on coax which plugs into their router. It's possible to buy something that will bridge the coax to ethernet, but they're pretty hard to find.

I think this might be going away as they increase speeds. I originally had the coax, but then they replaced it with ethernet coming in to the house. I kept their router anyway because it actually seems to be pretty good.

> If you have DSL, the modem and the router are the same box, so if you want your own, you have to throw out the one the ISP gave you, and configure yours by yourself.

The usual recommended approach I've seen is to keep the ISP-provided modem/router, plug your router into it, and make certain configuration changes on one or both of the devices (though, for the same ISP, I've seen conflicting information on the correct configuration changes, with clearly dated assumptions, but still possibly correct as far as it goes information, in the official information from the ISP.)

But my basic point is that for most home users, they aren't conceptualizing it as spending separately on "internet service package" and "network hardware", the network hardware is part of the internet service package.

Most modem-router combos support "bridge mode" which allows you to connect your own router's "Internet/WAN" port to one of the the modem-router's ethernet ports and have it initiate PPPoE to your ISP.

If that doesn't work, you can also just connect the modem-router's ethernet port to a LAN port on your own router, and just disable DHCP/DNS on the router.

My experience is that the DSL modems only contain mid-range routing and wi-fi equipment (10/100 switches instead of Gigabit, 802.11 b/g/n that run with one antenna instead of six and only on 2.4 GHz band). It's adequate to get things "working" but if you pay for a faster VDSL plan (usually 25 or 50 Mbps packages) you can see improved Wi-Fi performance with the right third-party router and laptop/phone.

My ISP provides an integrated modem/wifi router and they don't provide a bridge mode. I've long given up trying to fight against that with my own equipment.

It's not even a battle worth fighting; your average consumer router is significantly less powerful than what the cable company gives you. Even if you do get it in bridge mode, you'd need something more than a $200 consumer router to get the max speed out of it.

So not true, the RT-AC68U will walk circles around any eMTA an ISP will give you. The eMTA's cable companies give are expensive because a DOCSIS 3.0 modem is already $80 on average, adding a VoIP gateway and WLAN router plus a sufficient profit margin adds up.

Well, basically, a $200 home router will peak well before maxing out a 150 mbps connection unless you turn off all the QoS, UPnP and security features... but at that point you're better off just using the eMTA (which can handle the speed because it never had any of those features in the first place).

Once again, not true. NAT and QoS are the most expensive tasks a consumer router will perform, and even at 1Gbps it's rather mundane work even for a slower CPU (the 600MHz CPU in the RT-AC66U is sufficient).

Once you start looking at the latency requirements to achieve 10GBps interconnects you're going to have issues with what you can reasonably expect from the $200 price range, but consumer networks have a long ways to go before that's going to even need to be thought about.

This is completely untrue. Even a sub-$100 TP-Link router will provide 800+ Mbps routing, far higher than a typical broadband connection.

I think you're overestimating the price of hardware required to handle 100 mbps. Broadcom asics in datacenter switches handle on the order of 100gbps and they are on the order of $100.

That's about what I paid for my ASUS RT-AC68P. I went through a couple different sub-$100 routers (Belkin and Linksys) before settling on this one. I've not yet had to reboot it for any reason other than configuration changes, something I definitely couldn't say about the others. Previously I was using a Buffalo Wireless G router with DD-WRT, but it finally gave up the ghost after about 7 or 8 years of service. Having built in samba / FTP / DLNA support of USB drives makes it worth the added expense, as does QoS and SSH access. I'd highly recommend it.

I bought some 802.11AC router from Asus a few months ago for around that much, and I was absolutely floored at how much better it was than my old WRT54GS that I had been using with DD-WRT for years. Now I'm easily able to download consistently at 16MB/s from the internet, and do large file transfers at even higher rates between devices at home. I've mostly stopped using gigabit ethernet at home even because it's so fast.

I'm just curious why so many wireless routers are flakey, need frequently reset, have connection issues, etc. That, and what Google is actually doing differently than other high quality routers.

To your first question: they're rushed out of the door in a hurry to catch the next trend, and have poor cooling and poor software. To your second question: other high quality routers don't enable Google to spy on you quite so effortlessly.

Most the consumer hardware networking industry is based on costs. Components are sourced based on the lowest cost and quality tends to be prioritized for SMB/enterprise products. Typically, routers are relatively inelastic in demand and industrial design, brand recognition, and price point make up the decision criteria for consumers. Testing is mostly spent on integrating all these various components and very little is spent on general UI. I'm a bit wary on Google's approach unless they have some great QA process or are bringing higher quality components to consumers at a lower price point. (Used to work for one of the big consumer networking companies)

Or they're selling this router at a loss by accounting the firmware as $0 so they can give the customer more for their money.

Google seem to be approaching their marketing from a consumers perspective, capitalising on the common experience of flakey WiFi and shitty tech support telling you that "turning it off, waiting 30 seconds and on again" should "solve" the problem.

I'd imagine they've approached the design and development of this product from that angle too.

There's wide variation in hardware quality, but consumer-oriented stuff is a lot more likely to have thermal issues and crappy power supplies.

For software, things are more uniformly bad. Almost every commercial router uses the drivers provided by the chipset vendor, and those are always bad. Even the poster child for open-source drivers (Atheros ath9k 802.11n) still had some nasty lockup bugs this year (eg. https://dev.openwrt.org/browser/trunk/package/kernel/mac8021...). The closed-source drivers get much less maintenance.

And then the router vendors have a team of morons slap together a web interface where all the priorities are on branding, and none on actually exposing the right functionality of the underlying Linux system in a secure manner. And that's if they're even using Linux.

OpenWRT makes an extremely powerful argument that the problems is the fragmentation of development instead of a single ongoing centralized project.

The jury's still out on where this effort from Google will fall. They've got some people who definitely know what they're doing (eg. Avery Pennarun, though I don't know if he's involved with this). On the other hand, core networking performance and stability clearly isn't what they're emphasizing, and they appear to be using the same ath10k hardware and drivers as everyone else.

> For initial setup, the Google On app on a device with Android 4.0 or higher or iOS 7 or higher is required.

Bah! What's wrong with my Thinkpad?

Adding support for Linux/OSX/Windows is probably not a priority for them to get this thing off the ground.

How about, eh, you know... Web based? No need for this platform-specific bullshit.

Last I heard Google was pretty good at creating good web applications.

Perhaps it uses some local comms to bootstrap it. Like Bluetooth or sound waves.

Yes, it says somewhere on the site that it uses soundwaves to share the initial key with your device.

But that's NOT an excuse to make the device depend on the Mobile ecosystem.

If it can play a code on the speaker, it can just talk. In English. Via thirty-six audio files: a.wav, b.wav, ... 9.wav. Ok, thirty-seven recordings--can't forget welcome_to_your_new_router_your_key_is.wav. :)

I'd wager that whatever they're doing, it's far more reliable than reading out English letters and doing speech recognition on it. Accomplishing the key exchange might not have been reliable in all browsers.

... I meant, let the device speak directly to the user. "Your key is alpha nine hotel victor ..."

The goal was some sort of manual setup.

Humans are good at speech recognition. We've been doing it for thousands of years.

Is that what you really want? A wifi AP that can be configured from the web? Because THAT's how you get hacked.

> Is that what you really want? A wifi AP that can be configured from the web?

Uh. Yes. In fact anything else is a deal-breaker to me and I regularly buy $300+ routers.

> Because THAT's how you get hacked.

If the router admin-interface is a POS written by the same rails-developers who leave delete operations on GET links, sure. I don't though, and I think the OpenWRT developers would take offence at such a blanket-statement like that.

But let's take your statement at face value: Web-based interfaces are inherently unsafe. Should we shut down all web-applications then? Should web shut the entire web down? That's the logical end of your extreme line of thought after all.

From the comments in this thread its pretty clear that most consumers probably don't understand QOS/prioritization. While most routers allow manual configuration if Google's router can automate this task this is a huge benefit. Imagine if you're using your network for wifi calls and others are just browsing the net. Your calls should clearly take priority over other traffic. The same goes for gaming etc. The hardware specs are incredible for a home router at this price point.

I'm really looking forward to the intelligence aspect and how much it can actually improve the overall network performance. The nice integrated app to share passwords and see who's on the network is just a nice to have feature.

edit: appears to be sold out on google store, and amazon is only selling the blue model

Interesting that it has a TPM[1]. Any guesses about the uses/implications of that?

I wonder if it can be configured to act solely as an access point--I already have a ubnt EdgeRouter Lite, but wouldn't mind replacing my aging access point.

EDIT: It does support bridge mode[2].

1. https://on.google.com/hub/#specs

2. https://support.google.com/onhub/answer/6240987?hl=en&ref_to...

Just a guess, but the TPM is probably for secure boot, just like on a Chromebook. Since security is one of the selling points.

https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chromiumos-design-docs/...

That would make sense. We'll have to wait and see if the OnHub has a "dev" switch like Chromebooks. Hopefully it will be possible to put custom software on it (even if the Google software is just fine, the flexibility would be nice).

I have the same set up as you do. EdgeRouter Lite with an old Linksys E2000 acting solely as an access point. OnHub might be a good replacement, but I’m wondering if it supports VLAN tagging as I’d like to separate my private network from the guest network.

Interacting with security hardware? Smart locks, FIDO alliance protocols, etc?

That would not be an option I'd consider. I think controlling your locks without the use of an outside entity is the safest way to avoid problems.

I wonder if these will be capable of lending spare (encrypted) bandwidth to anonymous mobile devices. I.e., can Google Fi[1] users benefit from Wi-Fi when walking past a house that has an OnHub running?

[1] https://fi.google.com/about/

Two Google services working together? Don't be silly!

Every time a company has tried to do open wifi sharing there's been a lot of kickback. Mostly because it's opt out instead of opt in but that's put a big damper on anyone doing similar things.

I think BT in the UK (one of the main ISPs) do this:

>"When you buy any BT broadband package you receive unlimited FREE access to BT Wi-fi, the UK's largest wi-fi network, plus millions of Fon hotspots overseas. Simply use the BT broadband email address and password you were given when you joined us.

>"To get the FREE service you'll share a small, separate and secure portion of your home broadband connection with other members of the BT Wi-fi community. This is what creates the millions of hotspots you can use out and about." (http://www.btwifi.com/help/login-with-bt/help-broadband-cust...) //

In other words "you can't buy a BT broadband package without giving your router to be used as part of our wi-fi network". Marketing, probably most users don't realise they're part of the "wi-fi network"?

Comcast does this under the "xfinitywifi" network name as a default setup for anybody who uses the standard cable modem/router-in-one box, with thousands and thousands of access points: http://wifi.xfinity.com/

What I really want to see is an 'opt-in' service that allows you to use other peoples' networks if you opt-in to sharing your's. It should be extremely easy to opt-in, and a message should be displayed asking you to opt-in when you try to sign in to someone else's network.

Also, the guest network traffic needs to be sent over a vpn, so you are not responsible for it / don't have to deal with people torrenting, etc on your network. And it should be low priority traffic.

That's the problem they need to solve, opt-in and making it easy and visible enough to get enough people to enable it to make it actually useful.

A VPN or similar system to make sure you're not getting accused of things their free wifi is being used for too is a good idea. Not sure if anyone has done that yet in the various implementations.

Maybe in the US. In the UK its the default on any router from the biggest telco, and the biggest cable provider are turning it on imminently. I've yet to hear anyone complain about it.

Coolest thing I see is on the NewEgg page where it says it's "weave" ready, and you can see the Zigbee/Bluetooth radios. It's a router, and it's the smart home hub.

I'm really surprised this part didn't generate more attention from the HN crowd. Currently IoT devices always end up having some kind of protocol adaptor unit, like wifi->zigbee and it sucks!

As far as I know, the Almond+ is the only other router with 802.15.4 support.

I've been quite pleased with my Almond+. Certainly more than I have been with other Kickstarter stuff.

1. Overall-- this can, theoretically speaking, integrate all- WiFi IoT, Zigbee IoT, Thread IoT, Weave IoT. Whichever way the market picks-up, Google can.

2. On top of that, the specs are good enough to stream multiple IP cams.

3. Shot in the dark, but with all the "six 2.4GHz antennas, six 5GHz antennas, and a congestion-sensing antenna" they're probably trying to fix the classical WiFi congestion and star-topology range issues that comes with WiFi IoT. Especially because it supports 128 devices in WiFi. 4. Rumors are, it already runs Brillo, their IoT OS they showcased at IO. 5. Its bridge mode support be something they can use to have "multiple BRs" as promised by Thread?

[4] http://nextmarket.co/blogs/smarthomeweekly/29309313-google-i... [5] https://support.google.com/onhub/answer/6275097?vid=1-635755...

> To set up your OnHub, you’ll also need:

> Google Account

No, thanks. SpyHub would be more adequate name.

I would reconsider it when I could put my own software on it, that would not require untrusted third-party accounts.

lol. I like your name. I wonder how ISPs will react to this.

I suppose you should stay far away from Google Fiber then, as well. And anything else done by the evil Google. Much better to keep with the good guys like Comcast. They will never, ever spy on you.

I'm outside US, so yeah I'm gonna stay far away from Google Fiber as well as from Comcast. Don't worry.

Thats a false dichotomy. There have always been fiber providers, its just that Google Fiber is the "sexy" one that people look to for salvation instead of locally campaigning for fiber (which has been successful in quite a number of cities across the USA).

This reminds me of how (in some parts of Europe at least) a lot of communities are trying to buy back the municipal water and power plants that were originally privatised "because privatisation benefits the economy". Turns out creating a (new) monopoly by selling all the public infrastructure to the same company isn't actually good for anyone (other than that company).

This is one of those things that I would never use however I think is great for the majority of people out there that I know that probably have not opened up their router's interface since setting it up (years ago). Pushed (forced) updates is a good thing in some cases.

An interesting thought is also what if Google starts making use of that 4gb by prepushing/caching sites that you visit daily down to the device for instantaneous retrieval.

Another interesting idea is that this probably comes with a nice UI for people to see their inbound/outbound traffic for a given timespan. My guess is a lot of people (ie non Y! news readers) don't configure their current routers for this. Once they start seeing an exact number, it will be interesting to see how it compares to their ISP if it is similar to Comcast and has caps and overage fees for metered cities.

I'm not sure what the advantage of this is over any other router, other than vague 'built for all the ways you wifi'. Simplicity is nice, maybe this is trying to duplicate Nest-like success in the router realm, but people don't actively fiddle with routers like they do thermostats.

Automatic security patches.

My read is that this about Google Fiber. You get a 1Gb connection but your router gets you like 80Mb/sec... that's a bummer, this fixes it (if it works).

on.google.com/hub for a product named OnHub? Does that mean more OnXXX products are on the way?

Maybe O is for On.

So can I use it to do all the nerdy things I use my DD-WRT flashed router for? Like QoS, adblocking at the router, a separate guest WiFi, VPN support, MAC address filtering, etc?

you are not the target audience!

Well maybe they are... If it can do all that without learning DD-WRT, then I'll buy it. I understand all those things and want most of them enabled at home, I just don't have the time or motivation to learn the configuration files despite being a programmer who's perfectly capable of it. The interface should be distinct from the capability.

You are thinking of OpenWRT, I believe. DD-WRT is pretty much flash and go. Ad blocking is a bit of a pain, but the rest of the things I named have a GUI.

Router enthusiasts are definitely a target audience. Average demographics won't pay $200 for a router.

Tell that to Apple Airport Extreme users ;)

Hopefully this device actually has the CPU power to run QOS at more than 50mbps... the same can't be said of any other consumer router in the $200 price range.

Can you explain that? What's QOS, how much CPU does it take to run well, and why don't other expensive routers have the power for fast internet?

Quality of Service is when the router shapes the traffic making sure all devices on the network get their 'fair' share so to speak. It can prioritize traffic depending on application and use. So you could deprioritize streaming video for instance if you want to make sure that your skype call went through.

This takes some processing power which not all routers have a lot of.

This link covers it a bit more in depth: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2689995/quality-of-service-ex...

> This takes some processing power which not all routers have a lot of.

I've set up and hand rolled my own Linux-based routers in the past on cheap leftover hardware (first gen Celeron). Adding QoS introduced literally zero noticeable CPU overhead.

I'm not saying you're wrong but you're clearly overselling the computational cost of this feature.

Fair enough! I've never really delved too deeply into it as most of the time the stuff I deal with is pretty simple. Though some other comments parallel to mine seem to agree with me

My router is a Asus RT-N16. It has a 480 MHz Broadcom BCM4716 chip. It uses 100% of the CPU just do to NAT on my 100 mbps connection. Doing QoS on it is out of the question. As is doing VPN at those speeds.

You are right. It isn't that much CPU, but with modern connection speeds (>=100 mbit) you actually need a half way decent CPU. Your old Celeron was probably routing a < 10 mbps connection.

You're right about a few things, but I don't think you're painting a true picture of things.

Yes, your router uses much CPU for NAT. That's because it is a complex process which requires mangling the packets and keeping lots of state in a big table.

QoS however is relatively cheap. It's merely looking at fixed offsets in the IP packets and deciding which of those (mangled) packets must go now and which can go later. It requires some extra memory for some extra packet-queues, and a lookup in one of iptables' smallest rulesets. That's about it.

Yes, I routed things at slower speeds, but you got to have a perspective on things: You must NAT all the traffic, but only need to QoS the outgoing traffic.

This means that if the downstream speeds have increased 100x recent years while upbound speeds only 10x (which is my fair assesment of the market), your NAT cost is now 110x higher, while the QoS cost is merely 10x.

And QoS was the cheap load. If your router is already buried in other work, I'm sure QoS will feel extra painful, but so would anything else. On a healthy load you probably wont see it in the load-graphs at all.

Also worth keeping in mind is that QoS as a feature has diminishing returns the higher upload-rates you have. If you have 128kbps upload, making sure the right packets get out first is excessively important. If you have Gigabit upload, not only will QoS be more expensive, but you are almost guaranteed to have no benefit from it what so ever.

So yeah, I stand by my argument. QoS is not a heavy feature, even though marketed as such.

QOS is quality of service. It lets you prioritize certain traffic over others. So if I'm running BitTorrent but trying to watch Netflix, I can set up a QOS rule to prioritize Netflix over the BitTorrent. Netflix might only need 4Mbps but a torrent can take 100% of my connection. So I would set a QOS rule to make sure that Netflix gets what it needs then the torrent can have the rest.

Inspecting every packet as it runs through the network takes a lot of processing power. Many router manufacturers put just enough hardware in the box to handle fast connections, but not enough to handle complicated QOS rules on top of that.

Looks like Google is doing the same; that CPU probably isn't fast enough to handle NAT and QoS at the speeds the WiFi radio is capable of; much less a gigabit Google Fiber connection. While I understand consumers aren't going to spend $500 on a router, it's a bit disappointing to see Google engage in the same behavior that Linksys, D-link, et al do.

OnHub looks nice, but honestly the Apple AirPort Time Capsule is a great device, and also gives you Time Machine backups. The only feature I've found missing, is VPN site-to-site and VPN client connections.

It is missing SNMP or any kind of traffic monitoring. The WAN to LAN speed is also a bit lacking if you have a very fast connection.

I see no mention of being able to use 2 or 3 of these things in an Wi-Fi extender type of scenario that I can do with my current Airport Extreme routers.

I was wondering the same thing.

Their FAQ suggests increasing coverage by having one unit act as the router (doing NAT), and having others act as (bridged) access points:

https://support.google.com/onhub/answer/6275097?vid=1-635755...

This method seems really cumbersome compared to the Airport Extreme and their wireless bridging method.

Ehm... that's pretty much the exact same method you use on Airport Extreme if you care about speeds (one being the NAT machine, others APs connected with cables).

If you're doing the wireless bridge you're trading off a lot of wireless bandwidth (and added noise) just to get data from one Airport to another. Far from an optimal setup.

In the Clommunity project, designed for the world's largest wireless community network (Guifi.net), we have developed a Linux Distro, called cloudy, for these kind of boxes: http://cloudy.community/

We are using the boxes to provide "cloud" services to other users in the Guifi network (30K+ deployments). We currently have 20 rolled out with another 20 coming soon. We're expecting 100+ by the end of next year.

It supports different hardware profiles, but Intel Atom and ARM are quite popular.

could you make a small local cloud with that, in Arizona?

Yeah sure. It's built using decentralized (gossip-based) protocols such as Serf (https://www.serfdom.io/) and you just need one IP to act as a bootstrap.

Looks like a direct competitor to Apple's airport series: http://www.apple.com/shop/product/ME918/airport-extreme

Nope. It is competitor for Apple TV which is going to be the hub for Apple Homekit devices.

$200 for the unit -- so it's competing on the higher end of consumer routers against offerings such as Apple's Airport. They seemed to have paid a lot of attention to human-friendly UI/UX though.

Would probably wait for reviews to see what's up.

Airport Extreme is also $200.

At $200 you're in the price range of just building yourself a pfsense box.

Great for people who know how, not so useful a comment otherwise.

My point was simply a comparison, yes I should have provided my depth. But at $200 for a premium consumer grade router you are definitely within the realm of a nice pfsense (or alternative) system.

You could, but at that price it would most likely be a full desktop running pfsense, and who wants that kind of power draw at home? Comparable low-power pfsense boxes are about the same price, or even more for the ones advertised on the pfsense website[1].

The OnHub spec page mentions a draw of <36W[2], which is more than I would have guessed, but it's still less than most desktops. For a device running 24/7 in a residential setting, it makes sense to be low-power.

1. http://store.pfsense.org/SG-2220/

2. https://on.google.com/hub/#specs

I wouldn't really call it a full desktop. Intel DQ77KB mini-itx, lga1155 with dual Intel nics is what we use for $100 off Amazon. Pair it with a cheap Celeron and some used laptop memory off ebay. At the wall ~15W.

That's not bad! I'm surprised you're able to get the power consumption so low.

With a case, power supply, CPU, heatsink, and RAM the price starts to approach the OnHub though, without any Wi-Fi nics.

The DQ77KB is a cool little board. Have you tried running one as a VPN endpoint?

Right now I have one of them with pfsense and its openvpn server running. But that one was upgraded to an Intel i5-3470T so it pulls about ~25W. We went with that cpu for it's AES stuff but it turns out that pfsense (or maybe its freebsd, not sure) can't completely take advantage of it. But otherwise it works great for a vpn that we use when we're outside and on mobile.

Another with a Celeron G1620 is running as an vsphere server. I really love the board.

came here to comment on the UX. It makes sense, an average person should be able to detect if someone is connected to their wifi when no one should without knowing what DHCP is.

Huh... Just thinking about what a smart router COULD do...

What if this thing allowed you to punch holes in the firewall through the app, wherever you are? That'd be fairly nifty...

And what if it had VPN built in to the router and the app? That'd be nice as well...

Viewing access log files remotely?

Hmmm - what if it has parental locks? Like, a whitelist of websites for THIS device (kid's tablet), but dad's phone and mom's phone can do anything...

I also can't help but wonder if this thing has Google Fi BUILT IN to it. Meaning, anyone driving by on your street gets to send some packets through your router with really fast switching.... If you allow it. And if you have Google Fiber (gigabit), why wouldn't you allow it?

Oh, and the other one that occurs to me... With all of those antennas... Do you think they might actually be able to estimate your radial location, relative to the device? To some amount of accuracy? Might be interesting. Probably estimate distance, too... Put them together...

If I were slightly evil, I'd be thinking about designing a router that I could market to small businesses. Walk in to your Starbucks, and the guy behind the counter automatically sees your picture, and your regular orders up on the screen...

I have to say it looks like they may have taken some liberties with the product design a la Amazon Echo.

Before I read into the product specifications I was expecting an Echo competitor via Google Now tech.

Agreed. It looks a little like a squatter Echo. Cylindrical, ring of light at the top. But I suppose Amazon will avoid any legal action since it's pretty tough to win a court case with the argument "they copied my cylinder." Hopefully the different functionality of each device will keep any ugly legal battles from ensuing.

But with the a computer embedded in this router along with a speaker and bluetooth and zigbee radios this could be customized to offer a lot of the features that the Echo offers (minus the voice control). I hope that doesn't cause any problems.

About 80% of the space in the Amazon Echo is taken up by the speaker. The Google router just has a little 3w speaker in it, so I don't think Google is gonna be converting it into an entertainment device anytime soon.

While this looks very interesting and I'm sure is great for a lot of people, I think I'll stick to my Apple Extreme base station. It has pretty good software for configuration and provides Time Machine support for my multiple OS X machines in the house.

That said, I think that everyone on HN complaining about privacy and cost and how you can "just install your own firmware" is completely missing the point of the OnHub. Most people have a crappy router running insecure software and does terrible things to the internet and never gets updated. OnHub fixes all that and in a way that my Mom could actually install and use the thing. Almost no other solution (besides maybe the Apple products) would be able to cover all these bases.

So, I'm happy that someone (else) is finally making good hardware with easy to use software. More power to Google and keep the good stuff coming!

This is definitely like the Nest in that it's an "entry" into the home, clearly it has ambitions to be more than just a router.

On the surface, a $200 router doesn't even make sense. 99% of the time congestion is probably not at the router/Wi-Fi level (any 5GHz wifi router should do) but somewhere upstream (ISP or WAN latency.) If you have a very large property there are plenty of routers already on the market with good external antennas. Number of people who think "man the wifi in my house sucks" is very small.

Clearly they're selling this as a boutique product (similar to Nest) with the hopes of expanding it to perform other tasks, probably similar to Amazon Echo. Heck it even looks like the Echo.

Clearly, you don't live in a city. 2.4Ghz on any channel is nearly unusable in my apartment (5Ghz fairs better I think because it penetrates obstructions less easily). My laptop can currently detect >50 wifi networks.

Only one LAN port? This reminds me of the HiWifi router which build by a Chinese company. I still think this one LAN port design is terrible.

Well, a nice 8-port metal gigabit switch will only run you about $20. True, it may be a lot harder or more expensive to do anything with port-specific VLAN tagging, but hardware support for that using something like DD-WRT is spotty anyway.

I'd also guess that the round design may play a part in that decision. It would definitely be less aesthetically pleasing to have a wagon-wheel of cables coming out of the base.

While it's silly, a cheap desktop switch is only going to cost you like $20 to get up to four ports - and it only has a 1Gbps internet port so it's not like even if you had a faster connection you're going to be wasting it.

Can anyone explain why a Router needs 4GB of storage ?

What do they mean by "OnHub has 4GB of storage space, so there’s plenty of room for auto-updates and the latest software features." ? Is software for a router that large ?

Storage is that cheap.

With the "Weave Ready" comment, I think it might be a smart home hub, too.

Let me tell you, if my Apple TV had any sort of storage, I'd be a lot happier. Getting a little old streaming everything from "the CLOUD".

The Apple TV has 8GB of storage, so when you start streaming a TV show or movie it begins downloading the whole thing so internet interruptions don't mess up your viewing.

Hm. I guess it's a UI issue. It always appears as if its loading/streaming.

Surprise! If I remember right, Apple TV has a 4GB disk that it uses as a cache.

The pure router parts? No. But stuff like the home automation features I can see why they'd fit more storage, especially in early versions where they don't know quite yet what they'll want to put in later. (Of course, swappable storage would be even better for that, but has other issues)

A 4GB USB flash drive is $5 on Amazon - heaven knows what that translates into for the naked chip, in bulk.

So the question becomes, why not?

From the Open Source Licences page, it seems to be running on (a modified version of?) Chromium OS:

https://support.google.com/onhub/answer/6257015

Probably more likely to be used for gathering usage data and phoning home. I'm not interested in giving Google access to all of my network activity.

A local cache is of course useful for streaming video, but with home automation it can also be useful in the reverse direction. If your Nest cameras are not getting enough bandwidth to send up full 1080p back to the service, they can send 480p up to Google, cache the full-res video on the OnHub router, and upload the buffer late at night when bandwidth is more available.

A router these days is basically a Linux server.

What a misleading video. When was the last time you got connection issues due to your wireless router? Uninformed people are going to buy this and then plug it in to their crappy 250kbps DSL and not notice any difference at all. The video make it seem like this solves every connection problem ever, a video will never ever buffer again! I would say, based on experience, the probability of YouTube being down or overloaded while I stream a movie is higher than the risk that I loose WiFi connection in my home, and yet my router is 5+ years old and dirt cheap then.

The mobile Overview UI looks similar to Apple's Airport Utility. Looks like they took the best part (the graph). Hopefully the UI is more straightforward. Things got lost when Apple moved to version 6.0.

The 13 antennas and form factor is kind of cool, but after that I'd rather install OpenWrt and if going for home automation, my own server.

Wonder how rootable Google will leave it.

I hope it will take after Chrome OS, not Chromecast, in that regard...

Just as a note, if range is really one of the selling points, I have found Mikrotik's RB951 class routers to be relatively affordable and have excellent range and features, for significantly less than OnHub ($20-80 for a good home router). OpenWRT routers with a lot of the same features, and the ability to boost range can also be sourced for even less.

Did Mikrotik stopped violate GPL already?

It's was big reason to not buy any of their hardware.

It's nice that we have Google ensure our TP-Link router to function correctly, hopefully. I'm frustrated with my current TP-Link router since it often needs a reset once in a while. Btw, should this design be changed because it looks to me that the top is very good at collecting dust and dead bugs. I don't expect to buy this and box it.

same experience here. I would never buy TP-Link again because of bad experiences. Flashing dd-wrt on one of its routers helped but it was still unstable from time to time. Well the same I said about LG phones (but having a LG Nexus). Seems software can be really important.

This is actually cheaper than what my current router - a Linksys WRT1900AC - is going for. On the other hand, said WRT1900AC was designed explicitly for OpenWRT support (and is even advertised as being OpenWRT-compatible - which it indeed is as of Chaos Calmer RC3), whereas OnHub's page makes zero mention of installing custom firmware.

I had an original Google TV. They appear to have all but dropped that project, and in the process my device has become terrible to use. I don't know how it actually got worse, but it did. I bought an Apple TV to replace it and I'm reasonable happy with it.

I wouldn't buy first or even second gen hardware from Google.

It looks very polished, not sure of its distinct value preposition over other routers currently on the market

From a quick read, it seems to be an easy to use QOS and security setup.

Looks like the advantages as listed are: - Very simple visual configuration software - Ability to view a graphical representation of device usage and prioritize a device - Ability to update the device without interrupting the connection - Sends setup information to Android devices via an audio tone

> We’re streaming and sharing in new ways our old routers were never built to handle. Meet OnHub, a new router from Google that’s built for all the ways you Wi-Fi.

Honestly, this is stupidly vague. How are modern routers failing us? This just looks like a high-end router, with nothing groundbreaking.

Here in CH virtually everyone receives a modem/router combo for free from their provider (ie. they borrow it to you). They are also usually preconfigured - so you just need to plug them in. Is it the same in the US? I guess at a 199$ price point this will be a tough sell.

Yes, it's the same in the US. ISPs provide a modem/router combo and charge like $7 a month for it. The disadvantage is that the router portion of the unit is usually very poor. AT&T is still giving out modem/router combos that us 802.11b/g, not even n, much less ac. Purchasing a separate router lets you use better wifi technology as well as enable useful features like QoS settings that aren't available on the ISP-provided hardware.

Why do you get charged $7 for it?

Here in the UK most providers seem to offer the router as a sign up bonus.

The disadvantage is that router is mostly cheap garbage, but it's effectively yours once your contract starts, no rental/need to give back

Yea, many of the major ISPs lease out a modem that acts as a router by default.

CH = Switzerland?

Oui, ja, si, gea, yes.

Here in Germany those offers are similar. And nearly everybody somewhat tech-savvy doesn't get or use them, because most of the time they are pretty crappy. 150€+ routers are a limited market though, I've mostly seen top fritzbox models that come with DECT phone support etc.

Here in Singapore, some of the providers offer free but crappy router for their 500mbps and up. While other ISP offers S$50 voucher for the routers they sell.

Privacy issues aren't even the first thing I worry about with OnHub.

What I worry about is it being another project from Google that dies and leaves me with a brick cause it doesn't update any more. Or it is so connected, that when they kill the backend services, then it is a brick.

Seems a little pricey. My TP-Link router was $45 and is amazing. I'm probably missing something but $200 doesn't seem "worth it" at first glance when set up really only consists of looking at the bottom of the router to find the WPA Key.

OnHub is made by TP-Link, it seems. I have a TP-Link and it has worked flawlessly too.

It speaks, but does it listen? (Have a microphone)?

No.

Oh, good.

Do they allow you to configure DNS, or do they force Google DNS use like on Chromecasts?

Since it is a full router I'm sure you can change it, but on a side note you can re-direct the chromecast DNS pretty easily too

https://www.google.ca/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&es...

"OnHub sets your default DNS provider to Google Public DNS. (This can be changed in the Advanced Networking settings of the Google On app.)"

According to https://support.google.com/onhub/answer/6279845

It looks nice, but since there's more wired ethernet devices in my residence than Wifi, it really doesn't fit an immediate need for me.

Still seeing native ZigBee support is awesome. Wonder if the OnHub provides an interface to it.

It seems like the moves by the FCC to closed source/keep proprietary the baseband firmware on routers is a move to ensure backdoors and exploits always exist on these wireless systems.

So, here's what I'd like Google, you tell me if this would be possible and I might buy your hardware.

Could you sell me a wifi router with an open source baseband firmware that you "own" and provide regular signed updates for to comply with the FCC rules? As for the rest of what you have to offer, no thanks - I would need to flash your firmware and run my own software on your router hardware. Thanks!

Will be interesting to see if Tomato works on this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomato_(firmware)

About the only real improvement I'm seeing here is the automatic, silent updates. That could be a lifesaver if a crucial bug were ever found.

Aside from that, eh. It looks good, I don't doubt that with that number of antennas etc. it'll work well, but if anyone else is like me they've long since forgotten what their router even is - it just sits there, doing its job, and has done for years.

I find the intelligent NAS boxes far more interesting - I have a Synology box that basically provides it's own cloud storage, download manager, etc.

> automatic, silent updates. That could be a lifesaver if a crucial bug were ever found.

And what if a crucial bug was introduced? ;)

Most people with old routers don't even realise the router is randomly bugging out and slowing down your web page load speeds.

Fun fact: Old routers generally don't support WiFi power saving features. That means your phone battery will drain waaay faster than it could if you had a new router. Having WiFi switched on with a phone connected to a new router will in fact generally increase battery life because it can use the cell radio less often.

http://www.techworld.com/mobile/a-guide-to-wi-fi-power-save-...

Why does this thing need an ambient light detector? Really? Since when should infrastructure care what the environment looks like? Also TPM?

Can't wait for the teardown to find that there is a microphone in it.

Ever slept in a room with a wireless router before? Those flashing lights get annoying.

Pretty much any modern hardware. I bought a nice das keyboard only to find that they don't know how to make lights on it. Instead of having some sort of diffuser or screen to light up, like normal numlock indicators, this projects light in a cone. At night, it projects a big circle on my ceiling. Emailed them and they were flabbergasted this was a thing.

Not communicating by blinking lights is not a feature to me. Progressive enhancement all you want, have a nice app for involved communication, but keep some LEDs for core status please.

> OnHub uses a dimmable light ring that uses one of four color indicators to give you feedback.

Ha, I didn't get that message at all. So the emphasis was on 'not blinking', the colored rim is the ~LED. My apologies.

As some others have mentioned, the hardware for this unit is made by TP-LINK:

"To develop OnHub, Google partnered with network hardware maker TP-LINK. Another model, built with ASUS, is coming later this year." [0]

0. http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/google-onhub-router-aims-t...

The market for this seems very small to me. Here in the UK, 99.9% of people just plug in whatever their ISP give them. They're not going to buy some box from Google to make their Internet faster. And even if they do, there's a good chance it wasn't the quality of the WiFi that was their problem, so they're just going to be pissed off at Google for taking their money and not fixing anything.

Apart from having even more user data, I think if this gets to masses, it places google in a very strong position to own the IoT space.

Man, 500 comments? At the end of the day, this is a 199$ WLAN router. Frankly, normal customers don't care for routers. They certainly don't care paying for them. Most of them are probably oblivious to even owning one.

The entire target market for guys looking at Android app graph visualizations of their home router network is about the size of HN.

The thing that throws me here that others haven't commented on yet... it's built 'in partnership with TP-Link'. TP-Link makes budget hardware, that doesn't last much longer than it's one year warranty.

Charging $199 for a TP-Link device sounds... overpriced. If this had been built by ASUS, then maybe they'd have something.

There will be one from ASUS in the future:

> Google’s hardware partner for the initial OnHub is TP-LINK; it plans future devices with other manufacturers as well, including one from ASUS later this year.

http://business.financialpost.com/fp-tech-desk/cio/google-in...

That may be your experience, but I've been using TP-Link as my go to access points for myself and my clients (home and small business) for the past 6 or so years. I've deployed maybe 20 APs in that time and none have failed yet.

This is something that will be amazing to reverse engineer too actually. Something similar to bunnie taking apart the xbox.

I wonder what sort of ramifications this has for improving indoor location services for Google's connected properties.

I find it odd how it seems to be marketed to the general consumer, who usually won't need the high specs. What is the average person going to use USB on the router for?

I have a $200+ router myself, but would feel too restricted with the OnHub's single LAN port.

Still very interesting. Just wondering why the high price point and (imo) over the top specs.

> What is the average person going to use USB on the router for?

It's a good way to share a printer, especially if you don't have a printer that supports WiFi.

Ah, okay. Hadn't thought of that, thanks.

I don't know how I would feel about Google having a device in my house that monitors all my internet traffic, I think they already know enough about me and I'm not sure I'm in a position to I trust them. Made me think of a funny comparison: I wouldn't buy a car or condom from Microsoft.

What about a car from Google? Perhaps one that drives itself?

I'll try not to put this in a way that may be interpreted as "gratuitous negativity", but I stopped caring about Google branded hardware a long time ago, since the odds of it being available in many countries outside the US sometime this century are near zero.

I could see something great coming out from OnHub once you start connecting other devices around the home thru thread mesh network http://threadgroup.org/

Even with all these data privacy issues, I am still interested on how it performs since 2.4ghz and 5ghz has their own 6 anntennas. This is important for me since on the country where I am living now, 1gbps internet connection is the norm.

The perspective of the phone on the desk in the hero shot of the "onhub" seems out of wack with respect to all the other objects on the desk, and the shadow of the onhub. Is that phone levitating slightly?

Oh, and it's clearly a telescreen.

"Choose a password you can remember, and share it with a friend using the Google On app."

No, but no thanks. Not with Google. It's already hard to prevent people from syncing my wifi password with them as part of the Android cloud stuff.

I get a 404 error when I try to pre order in Google Store. I have an Australian account - maybe that's why? http://i.imgur.com/x0soYdJ.png

It's surprising to see this announcement in the wake of the Alphabet restructuring. Because of privacy concerns, I suspect they'd sell many more of these under the Nest brand, than they will under the Google brand.

I have a new-ish Tp-Link router that's been driving me utterly batty, so I'm looking forward to Google getting into this game.

Hope they develop a full line of products, like having a second device for range-boosting.

Just an FYI, this is a TP-Link router that is being rebranded by Google. (TP-Link TGR1900)

It looks more like a Google-designed router that is manufactured by TP-Link. Notably, the firmware is from Google.

Ouch.

I have an Asus/Google Nexus 7 2012 that makes me suspicious how much Google software and service can overcome underlying terrible hardware.

it could have been better if google have added storage and caching facility right on the box, that would've helped people to reduce the total data usage for passive contents like videos.

How does it–It's really fast! Yes but how can it be faster–Why is fast good? Because of all the things you do in your life. Okay, but what technology does—Circular antenna LOLz!1

It's fast because it supports the 802.11ac standard, which offers faster rates than 802.11n. The 802.11ac standard provisions for various rates, including the 1900 Mbps rate supported by this device. That's 600 Mbps over the 2.4 GHz band, plus 1,300 Mbps over the 5 GHz band.

802.11ac enables faster rates primarily by supporting wider bandwidths, more antennas, and larger symbol constellations (each symbol transmitted over the wireless channel can take on one value from a larger set of possible values, thereby conveying more information per symbol).

Does it have a microphone? Did not see it mentioned in the specs...

The wireless radios in routers deteriorate and should be replaced every two years. The ones on your device deteriorates too, but not as quickly because it's not constantly in use like a router's. I will not be buying one of these as I consider these to be infrastructure and infrastructure should be built to industry standards so that it's easily maintained by swapping components.

The privacy concerns bug me, but what bugs me more is the prospect that my lifestyle might start relying on a product that the company putting is out has a nasty tendency to discontinue when it's no longer convenient to support. See: Google Reader.

> The wireless radios in routers deteriorate

Citation needed. What exactly do you think is deteriorating here? It's not like the antenna is oxidizing from use…

199 in exchange of google having another active spy system directly at your network edge, in case you run non google devices.

What a privilege. Think I'll pass thanks.

now available for order on Amazon. http://amzn.to/1HUa2oB

All the features and problem are solved by EERO, and solved in a much more elegant and consumer friendly way.

I mean Christ, do google even understand UX?

Why is wifi so darn expensive? Does this thing really have $200 worth of electronics? Is it that much better than the $12 TP-links?

their rel-alternate

    <link href="https://on.google.com/intl/en_ca/hub/" hreflang="en-ca" rel="alternate">
    <link href="https://on.google.com/intl/fr_ca/hub/" hreflang="fr-ca" rel="alternate">

points to a 404

This seems to show that they will launch the device in Canada (en_ca, fr_ca)

The OnHub will be available for $269 on Aug. 31 in Canada, from Best Buy and the Google Store.

More at: http://business.financialpost.com/fp-tech-desk/cio/google-in...

Here's one for the FAQ:

"Does OnHub send all my browsing information including SSL SNI header information to Google?"

This had to come out two weeks after I upgraded at home to a Cisco 1252AG, didn't it? I still want one...

The design reminds me of something between a Mac Pro, Amazon Echo, and D-Link's "cloud" routers.

Cool. Can I flash with Tomato or DD-WRT?

Which Operating System(OS) does it use? Will it be open sourced? Can you use it without a Google Account?

Am I the only one thinking this is Google's stealth echo competitor? It has all the right pieces. It's constantly connected to internet and power, zigbee/bluetooth/wifi, speaker, decent (enough) CPU, front end app.

I'm sure they already have an API built into the back end. All they would need to do would be to build a gateway API for developers and add a mic.

I too have suspicions the OnHub is a stealth echo competitor. After going through the comments here though, being the hub for home automation/IoT is compelling enough on its own. It'll be very interesting if a tear-down reveals internal microphones.

Far field speech recognition is _really_ hard. You can't just throw any random set of mic / speaker into a tube and expect it to work. The echo is almost exclusively mic / speaker, in a very specific configuration. There's no way the product they're shipping will be able to do far field speech recognition (much less while playing music).

So how does it connect to the app? Buttons and lights are a lot better than no connection.

They tell you, they just tucked it away at the bottom:

  >When you set up OnHub using an Android device, it uses an audio tone to send a setup code directly to your mobile device for easy and secure setup.

I imagine it's like Echo, and the various sticks out now; if not on Android, you connect to it from your phone as a wifi access point, and set it up from there. When done it reboots and becomes part of your regular network.

A Google branded TP-Link router

If there's one thing Google doesn't know its WiFi. Stupid Chromecast cannot connect to like 95% of Hotel WiFi. For something named after a web browser I find it mind boggling that it can't display a web page for you to enter your room number in or agree to terms.

The splash screens aren't the only problem, some hotels enforce device isolation on the network too.

Some kind of travel router (or laptop) sharing the hotel's WiFi to your own little hotspot is the way to go. You probably wouldn't want your chromecast open to other guests connected directly to the hotel's wifi anyway.

I love the design but I wish it had an ethernet port (or two).

Edit: I spoke too soon.

It does.

One LAN, one WAN.

From the specs section:

Networking

  2.4 GHz wireless  802.11b/g/n 3x3 with smart antenna
  5 GHz wireless    802.11a/n/ac 3x3 with smart antenna
  AUX wireless      802.11a/b/g/n/ac 1x1
  Ethernet switch   QCA8337 Gigabit sw
  WAN port          1x 10/100/1000 Mbps
  LAN port          1x 10/100/1000 Mbps

Oh awesome. I didn't see it in the illustrations so I assumed it just had one internet hookup.

These articles about Google's past with wi-fi might be relevant.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/google-wifi-snooping/

Newegg says "Release Date: 08/31/2015"

"Our product is not available in your country".

How predictable.

Did anyone see whether it supported IPv6 on Comcast?

in before "another project that google use it as a toy and then just throw it away if it fails"

why would i invite google into my home?

Not available outside the US. :-(

Available in Canada, technically not the US.

That must be new because I am in Canada, and it said "not available in your country".

Step 1: Get people to buy a ChromeCast to view their media

Step 2: Make ChromeCast randomly vanish from WiFi

Step 3: Get people to buy an OnHub to fix their WiFi

Step 4: ???

Step 5: All your data

and dust? it can't be for out in the open with an open rim around the top.

"From Google". Oh OK, a spying device. No thanks.

site is written in AngularJS :)

TAKE MY MONEY

Google is taking over the worrrrld

WOW!!!

Now they can monitor all activities without injecting any tools at OS or application level.

Because they couldn't already, when they were an ISP. Google Fiber.

No Z-Wave support? That's a huge FAIL for home automation.

Sooooo close Google. Add Z-Wave support and you'll have an instant winner. Make the speaker high quality (if it isn't already) and encroach on Sonos and Amazon.

But without Z-Wave, you won't sell enough to make an impact.

Google #OnHub slogan: "Because if we didn't already know most things about you now we'll know exactly everything you do on the internet"

Why would anyone want this over the latest Asus AC1900 router? Asus' web interface is easy to use and their QoS is surprisingly good out of the box.

Also, Asus isn't going to spy on everything you do.

Why would anyone want the router not supported by OpenWRT?

> Asus isn't going to spy on everything you do

How do you know that?

I have the AC2400 and just use the Merlin distribution, which is based on OpenWRT. I rarely have the problems some report about the Asus line, but then again I'm just one data point.

And the kernel in that Merlin distro is from which year?

You're really not getting the full benefit of OpenWRT when you're using Broadcom's proprietary drivers and ancient kernels.

Because it's pretty, it's made by Google, and look at all of the fancy marketing they've done.

More seriously, it offers a lot more integration with non-wifi wireless devices than the Asus does, tighter integration with Android and other Google services, and some value-add features like password-less pairing and a friendly app.

"look at all of the fancy marketing they've done"

They are trying to be Apple even the design seems close to what Apple might do at least to my eye. The thing is Apple does this and gets business because there was a core of important and vital products and software that got people using Apple for a different reason. So if I buy (as I have) Apple's Airport extreme it's because I am buying other Apple products. I can't say if that weren't the case that would be what I would go with. (I mean I might but since I am already buying the brand I am biased and just go for the IBM choice so to speak...).

My point is that a company can't simply take a product here and a product there and hope to have great success with just a great isolated device for a particular purpose.

Which means that since google is not stupid they must be doing this for another reason (as others have mentioned). They aren't doing it because they honestly expect and need to sell routers and make money from that or even another play that they are building on that we don't know about. Must be something else going on here.

Lastly, end users in flyover country don't care about all of this unless they know about or have a particular problem. And how many people even have these problems? (I don't as only one example..) If they did they would be protesting outside of cable companies and demanding better remote controls for their fios or comcast dvr's.

I think OnHub has ZigBee and Bluetooth, which might be very interesting to the maker community and in a couple years to the internet of things.

> Why would anyone want this over the latest Asus AC1900 router?

Because they've heard of the Google one.

You can almost hear the TLA's grunt of relief. Maybe they won't 'go dark' after all.

I mean, hell, even if the consumer monitors the thing, a constant X mbps stream of strongly encrypted traffic to Google is normal.

What do we do? Demand that the device must give us (per-device) keys for the purposes of audit? Somebody will argue that that would open an attack vector...

@EFF, what do we do?

Woohoo, another phallic gadget, almost exactly looks like a Mac Pro!

I'm not sure you understand what "phallic" means...

I really do - round and tall. This was supposed to be a joke, but I guess I don't know how to interact with HN community yet.

Technically any round thing that's considerably taller than it is wide is phallic. I've heard people call obelisks phallic on more than one occasion and they're not even round.

Sure, it's a stretch, but it nearly always is. Sometimes a cigar is just a phallus. ... I mean cigar.

EDIT: I'm having suspicions that HN is trying to prevent me from using the more obvious word for the male dangly bit. If this comment ends up dead, that's probably why.

Not sure if this is the best place to ask, but since it's a router thread, I'll go ahead.

I'm looking to buy a router with better performance than the Linksys E3200 that I currently have.

Lots of VMs, torrents with many connections, etc are taking a toll on it, especially towards the NAT connection count limit (wifi signal/speed is enough for me).

ERLite from Ubiquiti Networks seems interesting, but it's not so popular and I'm past the days where debugging routers was fun.

Any suggestions?

The ERLite is a fantastic router. I picked one up with the same worries you seem to have, but there's a decent community around them, and even then you'll likely only need that if you're doing something exotic like failover connections (although even those are now supported through the web UI).

For $99 the only drawback is that it doesn't also do wifi, but given how poorly my previous all in one APs have done that's possibly a feature. Ubiquiti's Unifi APs piss all over older access points I've had, I just wish I'd ponied up for at least one AC standard one instead of cheaping out on the G band ones.

Yeah, I'm starting to consider it a bonus if the devices are separated (router/wifi).

Thank you, I'll give the product another look.

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