Google WiFi

[SaveByRichter35]

Does any one use the Google WiFi mesh network system in their home?

[Max27]

20 minutes ago, SaveByRichter35 said:

Does any one use the Google WiFi mesh network system in their home?

i have it, whats up?

[Chenner29]

1 hour ago, SaveByRichter35 said:

Does any one use the Google WiFi mesh network system in their home?

I had a home networking guy in my house the other day, he told me the Eero system is much better and easier to use than the Google. 

I would bet the Google version collects personal info.

[mckinneymagnum]

Eero was just acquired by Amazon, so there are many out there that are spooked that Amazon might eventually know more about their customers than they should. I’m of the opinion that as long as you have nothing to hide then you shouldn’t be worried

I just moved from Apple AirPort Extreme (5 yrs old) to the AMPLIFI HD mesh system and love it. Super easy to setup and the extenders just plug into a socket and blanket our 3000 sq.ft. two story home in rock solid Wifi. 

[Puckstopper]

I have used both Google WiFi and eero.  eero is by far the more easy to use of the pair, and at the time that I switched offered more features. The downside is that unless you buy the more expensive system it doesn't offer an ethernet port at every node the way the Google product does.  As McKinney mentioned, I am somewhat concerned about Amazon purchasing eero.  I'll be keeping an eye on the privacy policy, and if it shifts to something I'm not comfortable with I'll have to decide where to go from there.  One of the reasons I didn't do more than briefly demo G-WiFi was that I didn't really like what I saw in the fine print.  

Two other possible alternatives for you: 

A company called Ubiquiti makes some really nice mesh networking gear, but I've heard the setup is a little more techy than the plug and play, app based setup that G-WiFi and eero both offer. 

Asus has added firmare allowing it's routers to act as mesh networking nodes, even certain older, less expensive models.  I'm actually using an older Asus router as the main router in my home, and the eero devices are simply being used as access points at this point.  I lost functionality on the eero side, but picked up the ability to access a hard drive full of music plugged into the Asus router from anywhere in the world.   It seemed like a small tradeoff.  The downside of the Asus setup is that the devices aren't small and streamlined the way the Google and eero units are.  But if you're not worried about pretty, you can buy a couple decent Asus routers for less than the price of the Google or eero setups from Microcenter.com and be in business.

No matter which direction you choose, mesh networking is superior to a single AP setup in almost every application.  It offers a more even, balanced experience throughout any decent sized structure and excels at eliminating dead spots.  There are downsides such as a lower overall top speed due to network overhead, but by and large the overall experience is smoother and better with mesh. 

[Chenner29]

3 hours ago, mckinneymagnum said:

Eero was just acquired by Amazon, so there are many out there that are spooked that Amazon might eventually know more about their customers than they should. I’m of the opinion that as long as you have nothing to hide then you shouldn’t be worried

I just moved from Apple AirPort Extreme (5 yrs old) to the AMPLIFI HD mesh system and love it. Super easy to setup and the extenders just plug into a socket and blanket our 3000 sq.ft. two story home in rock solid Wifi. 

Good info. Also terrifying. I feel like my Alexa already knows too much...

My daughter and my wife were watching a movie once when I was at hockey and Alexa randomly turned on and talked about chocolate 

[SaveByRichter35]

On 3/3/2019 at 8:19 PM, Chenner29 said:

I had a home networking guy in my house the other day, he told me the Eero system is much better and easier to use than the Google. 

I would bet the Google version collects personal info.

A few days ago when I researched the Google WiFi I did read that it collects some information but it wasn't personal info, and I believe there was an option to even turn that off.  I have to go back and read it.  I don't have anything to hide(except for the rare porn session ) so I am not even worried about that. 

On 3/4/2019 at 10:24 AM, Puckstopper said:

I have used both Google WiFi and eero.  eero is by far the more easy to use of the pair, and at the time that I switched offered more features. The downside is that unless you buy the more expensive system it doesn't offer an ethernet port at every node the way the Google product does.  As McKinney mentioned, I am somewhat concerned about Amazon purchasing eero.  I'll be keeping an eye on the privacy policy, and if it shifts to something I'm not comfortable with I'll have to decide where to go from there.  One of the reasons I didn't do more than briefly demo G-WiFi was that I didn't really like what I saw in the fine print.  

Two other possible alternatives for you: 

A company called Ubiquiti makes some really nice mesh networking gear, but I've heard the setup is a little more techy than the plug and play, app based setup that G-WiFi and eero both offer. 

Asus has added firmare allowing it's routers to act as mesh networking nodes, even certain older, less expensive models.  I'm actually using an older Asus router as the main router in my home, and the eero devices are simply being used as access points at this point.  I lost functionality on the eero side, but picked up the ability to access a hard drive full of music plugged into the Asus router from anywhere in the world.   It seemed like a small tradeoff.  The downside of the Asus setup is that the devices aren't small and streamlined the way the Google and eero units are.  But if you're not worried about pretty, you can buy a couple decent Asus routers for less than the price of the Google or eero setups from Microcenter.com and be in business.

No matter which direction you choose, mesh networking is superior to a single AP setup in almost every application.  It offers a more even, balanced experience throughout any decent sized structure and excels at eliminating dead spots.  There are downsides such as a lower overall top speed due to network overhead, but by and large the overall experience is smoother and better with mesh. 

I am actually looking at picking up the Asus Wireless AC3100 Gigabit Router (RT-AC3100) as the main router for the house and then using the Googles to spread the signal.  I have a standard 2000sqft split ranch house.  The main router will be in a closet dead center of the house on the lower floor.  From what I understood was one of the Google WiFi needs to be plugged into the main router and I was going to put one GWF in the far left corner of the house in the living room near my tv so its close to my DirecTV box and FireTV.  The other would be on the other end of the house in the master bedroom.
My reasoning for wanting that Asus router because I read in its review that you can plug an external hard drive into it and use it as a "cloud" hard drive for the home.  I have always wanted that function to easily store music, pictures, and videos so they're not stuck on our phone.

23 hours ago, Chenner29 said:

Good info. Also terrifying. I feel like my Alexa already knows too much...

My daughter and my wife were watching a movie once when I was at hockey and Alexa randomly turned on and talked about chocolate 

This is why I will not even allow any of those Alexa devices in my house.  Its bad enough our cell phones and laptops are all listening devices for the government.  I am not giving them more.

[SaveByRichter35]

I should mention the reason I am asking is because we lost our office with the second child coming in April.  It was turned into her bedroom.  That is where the current router/modem is located.  We are about to upgrade our Verizon Fios internet package as well as move the router to the closet downstairs that I mentioned in the previous post.  As also mentioned, its literally in the same spot, dead center of the house, but it is downstairs in a closet instead of upstairs in a bedroom.  We were given a free router/modem combo when we initially signed up for our internet package upon buying our home 5 years ago.  With the upgrade we are being forced to either buy or rent Verizon's Quantum Gateway router.  Renting is stupid at $12/month.  So I have to research the Verizon router but I am heavily leaning towards the Asus.

[Puckstopper]

Instead of spending $300 on the Google WiFi devices I'd pick up a second Asus router.  It doesn't even have to be as good as the AC3100 you're looking at.  Also, I'd place them somewhat off center to ensure the best coverage.   Divide your home into thirds and place one roughly at each third.  More info here:  https://www.asus.com/us/AiMesh/

[SaveByRichter35]

15 hours ago, Puckstopper said:

Instead of spending $300 on the Google WiFi devices I'd pick up a second Asus router.  It doesn't even have to be as good as the AC3100 you're looking at.  Also, I'd place them somewhat off center to ensure the best coverage.   Divide your home into thirds and place one roughly at each third.  More info here:  https://www.asus.com/us/AiMesh/

The way my house is set up the difference between center and off center at 1/3 and 2/3 is minimal.

[SaveByRichter35]

Techies I need some help here.  In a toss up between these two routers.

Netgear Nighthawk AC1900 or ASUS AC1900 (RT-AC68U)

[Puckstopper]

I've got the 68p (nearly identical) running factory firmware and still seeing regular firmware updates years after purchase.  My folks have a Netgear Nighthawk 1750 that I had to flash DD-WRT aftermarket firmware onto to get basic security updates for and to get the Samba server to work so we could view media from device to device on the LAN.  There is no doubt in my mind that the ASUS product is superior in every meaningful way to a Nighthawk running factory firmware.  If you're willing to dive down the rabbit hole of aftermarket firmware then they're very comparable products in home.  If you want to access media from a hard drive plugged into the router while you're on the go, Asus's AiCloud app worked better than Netgear's Genie the last time I tested. 

The big drawback to Asus is that their tech support pages sometimes are a little hard to read.  Not sure if they're using a fancy version of Google Translate or what, but you can tell they're not written by someone fluent in English.

[SaveByRichter35]

On 3/11/2019 at 11:13 PM, Puckstopper said:

I've got the 68p (nearly identical) running factory firmware and still seeing regular firmware updates years after purchase.  My folks have a Netgear Nighthawk 1750 that I had to flash DD-WRT aftermarket firmware onto to get basic security updates for and to get the Samba server to work so we could view media from device to device on the LAN.  There is no doubt in my mind that the ASUS product is superior in every meaningful way to a Nighthawk running factory firmware.  If you're willing to dive down the rabbit hole of aftermarket firmware then they're very comparable products in home.  If you want to access media from a hard drive plugged into the router while you're on the go, Asus's AiCloud app worked better than Netgear's Genie the last time I tested. 

The big drawback to Asus is that their tech support pages sometimes are a little hard to read.  Not sure if they're using a fancy version of Google Translate or what, but you can tell they're not written by someone fluent in English.

Thanks again for the info.  I was leaning toward the Asus anyway but someone mentioned the Netgear so I just wanted to do my due diligence with some opinions other than my own.  I am by no means a techie.  

[SaveByRichter35]

@Puckstopper question about wireless storage.  I already have a 2TB WD external hard drive.  I know I can just plug that into the usb port on the router to essentially make it an NAS drive.  However, is there any advantage to having an actual NAS drive that would be worth buying a whole new drive?

[Znowleopard]

@SaveByRichter35 A NAS gives you drive redundancy (if you choose), automatic backup, offsite back up (if you use a cloud service ) and hard drives that can be on 24/7 and are made for long term use, encryption (depending which NAS you get). Depends your use case, if you want a drive to back up some photos once a month, then maybe just plug the drive into your pc, if you want your stuff backed up hourly, daily , and if you want to for example use it as a plex server for media then a proper NAS is the best option.

[SaveByRichter35]

8 hours ago, Znowleopard said:

@SaveByRichter35 A NAS gives you drive redundancy (if you choose), automatic backup, offsite back up (if you use a cloud service ) and hard drives that can be on 24/7 and are made for long term use, encryption (depending which NAS you get). Depends your use case, if you want a drive to back up some photos once a month, then maybe just plug the drive into your pc, if you want your stuff backed up hourly, daily , and if you want to for example use it as a plex server for media then a proper NAS is the best option.

I have no idea what a plex server is.  I planned on just plugging my current external into the router to make it a "cloud" for the house.  That way we can save all pictures, videos, movies, music, my wife's work files, etc right to that instead of having to always plug the drive from computer to computer.  My biggest hope is to be able to send stuff right from our phones into the drive.  I've had a few people tell me a regular external would do that so long as its hooked up to the router itself.  However, I would like to hear confirmation from someone more tech savvy than they and I.  

[Puckstopper]

8 hours ago, Znowleopard said:

@SaveByRichter35 A NAS gives you drive redundancy (if you choose), automatic backup, offsite back up (if you use a cloud service ) and hard drives that can be on 24/7 and are made for long term use, encryption (depending which NAS you get). Depends your use case, if you want a drive to back up some photos once a month, then maybe just plug the drive into your pc, if you want your stuff backed up hourly, daily , and if you want to for example use it as a plex server for media then a proper NAS is the best option.

In addition to this, the USB 3.0 port on the Asus can be a little flaky.   Generally speaking if you log into the router and eject your USB drive before unplugging it you'll be just fine but a dedicated NAS has huge advantages in terms of reliability.

Asus does offer tools to allow for automatic backup and I've left my drive plugged in for years now without issues, so those are not really advantages over a dedicated NAS.   One advantage for plugging your drive into the Asus is the AiCloud app which allows you to access the drive plugged into your router from anywhere.  You can do this with a NAS too, but the app makes it super convenient.

Long story short:  Start with the USB drive in the router and upgrade to a NAS if needed.  

On a side note: A Plex server (whether on a NAS or an old computer like mine is) is another way to access your media quickly and easily.   It's simple to set up (albeit time consuming) and even the free version offers the ability to access your movies and photos on the go.  The paid version, known as a Plex Pass offers the ability to have multiple phones upload their photos to the Plex server and the ability to set up accounts for individual users.   Start with the free version and if you like it wait for a sale to bring the lifetime cost of the Plex Pass under $100.  I just popped for a lifetime Plex Pass last year and love being able to stream movies when sitting at the airport or on the Roku at our cottage.

[SaveByRichter35]

14 minutes ago, Puckstopper said:

In addition to this, the USB 3.0 port on the Asus can be a little flaky.   Generally speaking if you log into the router and eject your USB drive before unplugging it you'll be just fine but a dedicated NAS has huge advantages in terms of reliability.

Asus does offer tools to allow for automatic backup and I've left my drive plugged in for years now without issues, so those are not really advantages over a dedicated NAS.   One advantage for plugging your drive into the Asus is the AiCloud app which allows you to access the drive plugged into your router from anywhere.  You can do this with a NAS too, but the app makes it super convenient.

Long story short:  Start with the USB drive in the router and upgrade to a NAS if needed.  

On a side note: A Plex server (whether on a NAS or an old computer like mine is) is another way to access your media quickly and easily.   It's simple to set up (albeit time consuming) and even the free version offers the ability to access your movies and photos on the go.  The paid version, known as a Plex Pass offers the ability to have multiple phones upload their photos to the Plex server and the ability to set up accounts for individual users.   Start with the free version and if you like it wait for a sale to bring the lifetime cost of the Plex Pass under $100.  I just popped for a lifetime Plex Pass last year and love being able to stream movies when sitting at the airport or on the Roku at our cottage.

Ok great thanks.  That's pretty much all I want it for.  Now that we have a kid and a second due in a few weeks we've, obviously, been taking waaaaayyyyy more picture and videos over the last almost 2 years.  Phones are starting to fill up so I wanna be able to easily save all that stuff off of the phones.  She uses Google Photos on her Google Drive, I just save stuff to a private album on Facebook.  Problem with that is Facebook downgrades the photos and videos and Google is weird with the way things get deleted.  I think if you delete something from Google it automatically deletes it from your phone as well which I don't like.  I just want an easier way of saving this stuff on our own.  I definitely don't wanna have to depend on saving stuff on Facebook that's for sure.  I have no problem shelling out a little extra for an actual NAS drive but if the external hooked up to the router gets the job done then I would just prefer to use that.

Just for clarification, from what I am understanding when reading yours and @Znowleopard's posts, the NAS drives don't get plugged into the router?  I thought they did so that's why I was curious what the big difference was between the two.

[Znowleopard]

2 hours ago, SaveByRichter35 said:

Ok great thanks.  That's pretty much all I want it for.  Now that we have a kid and a second due in a few weeks we've, obviously, been taking waaaaayyyyy more picture and videos over the last almost 2 years.  Phones are starting to fill up so I wanna be able to easily save all that stuff off of the phones.  She uses Google Photos on her Google Drive, I just save stuff to a private album on Facebook.  Problem with that is Facebook downgrades the photos and videos and Google is weird with the way things get deleted.  I think if you delete something from Google it automatically deletes it from your phone as well which I don't like.  I just want an easier way of saving this stuff on our own.  I definitely don't wanna have to depend on saving stuff on Facebook that's for sure.  I have no problem shelling out a little extra for an actual NAS drive but if the external hooked up to the router gets the job done then I would just prefer to use that.

Just for clarification, from what I am understanding when reading yours and @Znowleopard's posts, the NAS drives don't get plugged into the router?  I thought they did so that's why I was curious what the big difference was between the two.

Well a NAS is a a computer with hard drives in, so you would connect the NAS to the router via a Ethernet cable and that way have access to it.

[SaveByRichter35]

Just now, Znowleopard said:

Well a NAS is a a computer with hard drives in, so you would connect the NAS to the router via a Ethernet cable and that way have access to it.

Ahhh ok, I assumed it was USB as well.  So ethernet is going to be even faster than USB 3.0.  Hmm...decisions decision.

[Znowleopard]

5 minutes ago, SaveByRichter35 said:

Ahhh ok, I assumed it was USB as well.  So ethernet is going to be even faster than USB 3.0.  Hmm...decisions decision.

I dont think the cable is the limiting factor i think that would be the hard drive (or the internals of the router). The main reason to go for a NAS in my opinion, would be drive redundancy so if one hard drive fails you dont loose all your data, expandability if you get a NAS with more hard drive bay then you can add drives as you need and functionality, you can do alot more with a NAS than the external drive (altough it sounds like the Asus AiCloud app makes up some of the difference ) if you buy a NAS from WD or synology them both have apps so you can access files from phones/anywhere.

[SaveByRichter35]

3 minutes ago, Znowleopard said:

I dont think the cable is the limiting factor i think that would be the hard drive (or the internals of the router). The main reason to go for a NAS in my opinion, would be drive redundancy so if one hard drive fails you dont loose all your data, expandability if you get a NAS with more hard drive bay then you can add drives as you need and functionality, you can do alot more with a NAS than the external drive (altough it sounds like the Asus AiCloud app makes up some of the difference ) if you buy a NAS from WD or synology them both have apps so you can access files from phones/anywhere.

Man you guys are making it hard to decide lol.  Anyone need a new external? lol

[Znowleopard]

Just now, SaveByRichter35 said:

Man you guys are making it hard to decide lol.  Anyone need a new external? lol

You could just try using the external drive and then if it doesn't work out buy a NAS

[SaveByRichter35]

4 minutes ago, Znowleopard said:

You could just try using the external drive and then if it doesn't work out buy a NAS

I don't see why it won't work.  I am sure I am just being overly dramatic about the situation.  I think the fact that I have a sale code that expires tonight for a NAS drive is fueling my indecisiveness.  Buying a NAS box with no drive + the drive with the sale code would save me $135 vs buying the NAS box with the drive already in it.  The problem is its still money I probably don't have to spend being I already have the external usb drive.

[Znowleopard]

35 minutes ago, SaveByRichter35 said:

I don't see why it won't work.  I am sure I am just being overly dramatic about the situation.  I think the fact that I have a sale code that expires tonight for a NAS drive is fueling my indecisiveness.  Buying a NAS box with no drive + the drive with the sale code would save me $135 vs buying the NAS box with the drive already in it.  The problem is its still money I probably don't have to spend being I already have the external usb drive.

Yes probably. Let me know how it goes!