Google OnHub Announced & Reviewed

[sfx2000]

FWIW - it's been generally panned with folks that have done some objective reviews...

What seems to be interesting is that most feedback/reviews so far are subjective and very marketing driven - not actually looking at the performance of this device...

http://tidbits.com/article/15897

Not making excuses, as the HW seems to be very good, but SW and performance is something that needs to improve...

 

[sfx2000]

The ars technica review is quoting disappointing network speeds.... like way slower than other AC1900 class routers, but they only compared it to the asus..

They compared it against the Asus RT-AC68U, which is very similar in performance to the Netgear R7000, Linksys WRT1900ac*1, and Apple Airport Extreme AC - all decent AC1900 class devices...

Based on the chipsets in use however - is there a MU-MIMO Wave 2 device inside - QCA's current implementation on the Linksys 8500 is 4*4:4S/3M... but looking at the antenna complex, this could be a 3*3:3S/2M implementation, just not realized yet..

*1 Yeah, the WRT1900ac, well, it's got some advantages with the 4*4:3 implementation - I still believe this is one of the best consumer Wave1 routers out there - not as open as some, but the extra radio chain makes up much for both 2.4 and 5GHz - and their factory firmware meets most folks needs...

The HW is interesting - and the SW needs to improve - lucky or not, being Gentoo based, it's a big-boy distro, not *WRT or other embedded distribution...

 

[sfx2000]

Who knew you could make a router that is like a Mac Pro.

I think it's not like a Mac Pro, but deeply inspired by the Airport Extreme AC - see below...

In any event, they've focused on a decent thermal solution...

 

[L&LD]

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015...art-home-trojan-horse-is-a-200-leap-of-faith/

This is exactly what I and a lot of my more savvy customers think of this product from google (one of them emailed me the link).

Controllable by app only? Speaker? How many radios inside? And tracks everything wireless except itself?

Not what I would call a smart 'buy' decision even for consumers that want the simplest experience possible (this is worse than what apple does and that is saying a lot).

Google shipped us this box—well, this cylinder—but it won't really talk about what's in it or why it exists. Today, it's a Wi-Fi router from Google; tomorrow it might be something totally different. But it's also a funny glowing cylinder with way too much processing power for its own good, a boatload of antennas, and an ever-present cloud connection to a Google update server so that it can evolve at will.

Together with 1GB of RAM and 4GB of storage, the OnHub has stratospherically-high specs for a router.

The entire Google On app feels like it is struggling to justify its existence. It's a Wi-Fi setup app. Most people need this for the first 30 minutes they own a router and can forget about it afterward.

The first chart above is a 4GB file transfer over the Wi-Fi network performed on a Macbook Pro. This was done from about 45 feet away with a wall or two in between us and the router. The OnHub finished the transfer in about five minutes, while the Asus router only took 1 minute.

The second chart was for a line of sight transfer from about 30 feet away. We took a 1.6GB folder with lots of tiny files in it—about 50,000. The OnHub completed the transfer in about 24 minutes, but it was again beaten by the Asus, which only took 14.

We also tried a speed test on a Nexus 6 in the yard about 100ft away from the router. Again, the OnHub lost. The Asus router handily beat the OnHub no matter where we were testing, with both increased range and better throughput (and that's with being bridged to the OnHub, which probably gave the OnHub a small advantage). If you're looking to spend $200 on just a router, there are better deals out there.

The OnHub supposedly does have some neat tricks as purely a router, a dedicated antenna scans the airwaves every five minutes, and OnHub will switch to the least crowded Wi-Fi channel to improve performance. There is a "cloud service" that is somehow supposed to help optimize the Wi-Fi connection, but Google is so vague about it that it's hard to tell what's going on.

The entity with the most control over the OnHub isn't you, it's Google.

And cloud controlled too.

Buying great hardware and putting it at the beck and call of the manufacturer is a new way to spread a virus.

Hope more people than not have the sense to ban this from controlling their networks for the benefit of google.

 

[System Error Message]

I think the issue with its wifi performance is that it keep switching channels. Manually setting a channel results in better throughput.

 

[sfx2000]

I'll keep it on the monitor list, just because it's interesting from a HW and SW perspective...

I'm not rushing to buy one however, mostly because it doesn't solve any problems for me, and I'm generally not in the audience for this device.

My needs are different - and I've got more than enough control over my Router and AP's with the Apple Airport solution... and right now the Google OnHub device doesn't even offer that...

 

[RMerlin]

People often complain about manufacturers releasing products in beta stages of development. For me, this OnHub looks like it's on an Alpha stage - a lot of its hardware features aren't even implemented yet.

Google pretty much asking people to "pay us now, and use it later. Trust us."...

Nice hardware is meaningless if for some reason it never gets actually used. What if there's a hardware design flaw that prevents something from working once they start trying to use it 6 months from now? Would they replace everyone's ObHub with a newer revision?

I've been down a similar road once. I was an early adopter of the Motorola Xoom. Took them nearly a year to implement firmware support for the sdcard slot on it...

 

[L&LD]

My needs are different - and I've got more than enough control over my Router and AP's with the Apple Airport solution... and right now the Google OnHub device doesn't even offer that...

That (bold) part made me lol...

 

[sfx2000]

I've been down a similar road once. I was an early adopter of the Motorola Xoom. Took them nearly a year to implement firmware support for the sdcard slot on it...

Recall the Blackberry Playbook? Took almost a year to get native email on that one

 

[RMerlin]

Recall the Blackberry Playbook? Took almost a year to get native email on that one

Oh yes, that was a textbook example indeed.

I've read the backstory as to why that happened. Turns out the HW developers and the BB10 SW devs were two separate teams, and there was next to no communication between the two (the software developers were a team acquired from QNX if I remember correctly). So, by the time the HW was ready, the software guys said "well, we're not there quite yet". RIM decided to ship anyway, because they needed a tablet offering yesterday.

 

[sfx2000]

Oh yes, that was a textbook example indeed.

I've read the backstory as to why that happened. Turns out the HW developers and the BB10 SW devs were two separate teams, and there was next to no communication between the two (the software developers were a team acquired from QNX if I remember correctly). So, by the time the HW was ready, the software guys said "well, we're not there quite yet". RIM decided to ship anyway, because they needed a tablet offering yesterday.

It was also a limitation in BES that at the time, only a single PIN (which is device specific) could be provisioned per account - took a major change on the server side - and BBY's strength was BES/BIS services - that's why they actually made the Playbook initially work with a BBY7 device - it would get the mail from the phone, not from the BES server directly.

 

[sfx2000]

That (bold) part made me lol...

The 5.6 Airport Utility actually had a fair amount of control over the Airports, it's the 6.0 series that really dumbed down what one could do - made the desktop client on the Mac very similar to what the iOS version did (maybe same code base even?)

The 7.7 release line removed SNMP reporting that was officially supported in the older non-AC devices, which was great for monitoring - between SNMP and Syslog, it was pretty awesome for tracking performance, esp. if one had multiple devices... the Airport Extreme AC line still does support Syslog, but one has to use the 5.6 client to configure/enable it.

 

[sfx2000]

After reviewing the SNB Main Site review - the HW is pretty impressive, and it seems to be the SW is that is holding it back...

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-reviews/32823-google-tp-link-onhub-router-reviewed

good news is that it's probably a SW issue - bad news is that it's like Chromebooks, it's down to what is important for the google...

 

[remixedcat]

It's Qualcomm-based, so no, don't expert a real, full open-source alternative for it anytime soon.

Are they even mroe closed off then they were not under QCA? I know that BCM has been more open than Atheros and then some people tell me that QCA closed stuff off further is that true or just fanboyism?

 

[RMerlin]

Are they even mroe closed off then they were not under QCA? I know that BCM has been more open than Atheros and then some people tell me that QCA closed stuff off further is that true or just fanboyism?

I've never done any extensive studies there, but in general, most of them are just as closed. Marvell's recent change of heart with the WRT1900AC makes them actually a bit ahead of the pack in terms of open source support AFAIK.

The best reference there is to look at the OpenWRT support. You'll see which model they fully support at the source level - check which chipsets these are based on.

 

[sfx2000]

I've never done any extensive studies there, but in general, most of them are just as closed. Marvell's recent change of heart with the WRT1900AC makes them actually a bit ahead of the pack in terms of open source support AFAIK.

The best reference there is to look at the OpenWRT support. You'll see which model they fully support at the source level - check which chipsets these are based on.

It's up and down... BRCM is as open as they want to be, and it's odd, some stuff they've contributed outright, or not got in the way of reverse engineering, and other stuff they flat out won't tell you without an NDA - same goes for Qualcomm-Atheros...

In my experience, Marvell on their CPU's, they're open there, but they really want to protect the secret sauce in their WiFi chips - as noted by the whole WRT1900 mess a while back - and I'm not sure why, except, that like BRCM and QCA, there might be other licensing and IP at hand...

Freescale is pretty surprising, they're remarkably open about their stuff (there's always exceptions though), and MIPS as well...

Look at handsets, and it's even worse - try to get GPU code for those SoC's, or DSP... not going to happen there...

Have to give intel some credit, their stuff is more open than just about anyone..

 

[remixedcat]

If Intel offered radios and SoCs for routers I would sign up if I were a router/ap mfr.

 

[RMerlin]

If Intel offered radios and SoCs for routers I would sign up if I were a router/ap mfr.

Even tho they are constantly struggling with their 7260/7265 drivers?

Since I switched to a new laptop that has a 7265AC, I've been having a lot of problems connecting to the 5 GHz band, with both the RT-AC87U and the new router I've been testing recently. So I know it's not the RT-AC87U''s Quantenna chipset's fault. I'm forced to disable beamforming and use a lower band channel. I also have to disable the throughput booster option they added with their 17.x driver, or else my upstream plummets to 1-5 Mbits out of a 760+ Mbps link.

I'm increasingly wondering if Broadcom, Qualcomm, Quantenna or Intel know what they are doing, or are at least even trying to talk to one another to ensure their stuff works properly in mixed environments.

 

[sfx2000]

If Intel offered radios and SoCs for routers I would sign up if I were a router/ap mfr.

They'd probably be a bit on the spendy side - and they could always partner up with another switch/wifi chipset vendor if needed...

 

[whsbuss]

I'll keep it on the monitor list, just because it's interesting from a HW and SW perspective...

I'm not rushing to buy one however, mostly because it doesn't solve any problems for me, and I'm generally not in the audience for this device.

My needs are different - and I've got more than enough control over my Router and AP's with the Apple Airport solution... and right now the Google OnHub device doesn't even offer that...

Hope Apple releases an express w/802.11ac soon.