Makes me a tiny bit crazy when I see that the Google offering (which is a router and two access points) imply that it's somehow different than a router, but that's marketing for you.
I think it is more then that and I think they are on to something.
I bought one of the three packs and played around with it last night and tonight. Works pretty well I would have to say. It has a very easy setup method. You download an app on your phone and that controls everything from the install to the ongoing maintenance. And wow.. automatic firmware updates! Holy smokes, someone besides Apple is thinking about it? This is increasingly important due to routers being pretty easy to hack out.. Automatic updates will prevent mistakes in the code from persisting, this is a mighty good thing.
Google has tried very very hard to make this easy and this is the best one I have seen yet. Even the packaging is very Apple like. When you hate to throw the packaging away because it is so nice, you know you bought some Apple stuff. This is the first non Apple packaging where I found myself trying to figure out what to to do with the cool box..
Let me say first that I am not a huge Google fan, their interfaces and the way things work are generally over complicated and obtuse. I am the family IT guy and I just set up all this stuff for everyone in the family.. Let my brother Admin his Google account? Are you crazy! But this is different.. way different. I might actually just let my brother set it up himself! Now that is testimony, let me tell you..
You need a Google account to get it activated but once that is done it is just a couple of options to push and it self discovers and gets it all setup for you. Very slick. Not very Google like.. what happened?
Extenders are often necessary nowadays if you want to cover every part of your house completely. Anyone can see this just by going to Best Buy and noting the deluge of network extenders on the shelves.
It is often a compromise in some way to use just one Access Point (Router) without an extender. I dislike most of the extenders out there... lots of people (including me) have bought the TP-Link's and they work for a while.. But they are crap, they are terrible after a while.. . The configurations get wiped out routinely, they lock up which requires frequent reboots, just the worst. Recommending these to a customer is not a good idea in that we find ourselves trying to support the lousy things over the phone.
Instead our strategy at UIA is find the place in the house the is going to get the most use.. then extend with a hardwire Ethernet cable from the ONT (where the Fiber comes in ) to that part of the house and put the WiFi router there. We go around the house and conduct speed tests where ever we think there might be use, such as the TV, office, Kitchen and so on. We take pains to hook up everything for our customer.. every device. We feel this part is essential.. we are already there after all.. lets just get it done.
Usually this works pretty well. It doesn't mean however that in some corner somewhere there might be 20 or 10 Mbps instead of 100 Mbps for example..
I am always hesitant to recommend extenders as they can be a real pain in the neck (see above comments), but the Google system is different and might actually work.
I have an upstairs and and downstairs.. lots of walls.. and so far so good. I like that I can see how well the Access Points are talking to each other.. gives me a graphic view of how it is performing that is easy to understand. I get 600 Mbps next to the Primary router which is as good as my Apple. Really simple and easy to keep adding Access points around the house.
I will comment further in another post on why your DSL WiFi might give you full coverage whereas our UIA high speed may not give you that same complete coverage.
Regards,
--Wes
