Razor512
Very Senior Member
In the case of skydog, the shifting of many of the features from being hosted locally on the router, to being hosted on a remote server, carried with it, a huge price premium over what the router was worth. They pretty much took a cheap router, jacked the normal retail price by around 300%, then moved most of the webUI and controls to a 3rd party server.
They did not use the cloud to enhance the router, they used it to hold the router's functionality ransom. Imagine if you bought a new car, and the car had no key access or any type of access and starting that you controlled, but instead the company required you to call the car company and ask a CSR to open your door and start the car for you every time you wanted to use the car? Then in a skydog fashion, the car company gets bought by another more evil company that now wants to use that "cloud" service but with pacemakers, and thus will no longer be supporting the car access, thus leaving you with a car that you cannot get much use out of, how would you feel?
Cloud enhancement of a consumer device = using the cloud to enhance the same functionality in a device. Cloud ransom= taking a feature out of a device and then moving it to a remote server in order to make the device dependent on that server.
While nothing lasts forever, given the anti consumer business model, the router will become almost completely useless long before the hardware its self fails.
There are people today who are still using an old WRT54G within their network. When some hardware becomes obsolete for more modern demands, some people may re-purpose the old hardware.
There are some devices where people upgrade regularly for what are often minor incremental improvements, and there are devices which people upgrade when something stops working properly, or is no longer able to meet their needs, e.g., a user has an 802.11g router, and tries to stream a bluray rip from their NAS, and then comes to the conclusion that a modern router is needed.
With non cloud device, it can effectively be used with full functionality until the device fails beyond economic repair, but with a cloud device, it largely fails the moment the remote servers die.
Considering that they are not extending all current devices subscriptions to a future cutoff date, and instead letting current ones expire and not renew. Will N300 2.4GHz and N300 5GHz be 100% useless and obsolete within the next 1.5-2 years? (given the target crowd of the skydog, will those users fine N300 completely unbearable within the next 1.5-2 years? (probably not unless google fiber stops being lazy and expands to every state).
For everyone else outside of that target group, even AC1300 5GHz is woefully inadequate for a home network
They did not use the cloud to enhance the router, they used it to hold the router's functionality ransom. Imagine if you bought a new car, and the car had no key access or any type of access and starting that you controlled, but instead the company required you to call the car company and ask a CSR to open your door and start the car for you every time you wanted to use the car? Then in a skydog fashion, the car company gets bought by another more evil company that now wants to use that "cloud" service but with pacemakers, and thus will no longer be supporting the car access, thus leaving you with a car that you cannot get much use out of, how would you feel?
Cloud enhancement of a consumer device = using the cloud to enhance the same functionality in a device. Cloud ransom= taking a feature out of a device and then moving it to a remote server in order to make the device dependent on that server.
While nothing lasts forever, given the anti consumer business model, the router will become almost completely useless long before the hardware its self fails.
There are people today who are still using an old WRT54G within their network. When some hardware becomes obsolete for more modern demands, some people may re-purpose the old hardware.
There are some devices where people upgrade regularly for what are often minor incremental improvements, and there are devices which people upgrade when something stops working properly, or is no longer able to meet their needs, e.g., a user has an 802.11g router, and tries to stream a bluray rip from their NAS, and then comes to the conclusion that a modern router is needed.
With non cloud device, it can effectively be used with full functionality until the device fails beyond economic repair, but with a cloud device, it largely fails the moment the remote servers die.
Considering that they are not extending all current devices subscriptions to a future cutoff date, and instead letting current ones expire and not renew. Will N300 2.4GHz and N300 5GHz be 100% useless and obsolete within the next 1.5-2 years? (given the target crowd of the skydog, will those users fine N300 completely unbearable within the next 1.5-2 years? (probably not unless google fiber stops being lazy and expands to every state).
For everyone else outside of that target group, even AC1300 5GHz is woefully inadequate for a home network
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