Reviewers and experts called this out at the time, but Google reassured that onhub will not face any issues since they will commit to long term support of the device. As a testament to that they highlighted the overspecification of the device (it had enormous ram and cpu overhead) that would allow it to continuously improve.
This is a "feature", and is working as intended: https://twitter.com/madebygoogle/status/1294819896019189761
Don't buy Google home networking equipment.
That response is a little confusing: the management app is Internet only, but it doesn't drop all its routing tables or something just because the uplink is gone. Moreover, the regular DHCP and so on will operate just fine while not connected to the internet.
I don't know what happened in your case and I totally agree that it's a bad experience for troubleshooting (the thing even has some weird API on it [1], so why isn't there some basic web-based management tool), but you can absolutely unplug the uplink and packets flow locally.
No non-disposable hardware should ever depend on a phone app, lest it become equally disposable.
All my electronics and computers from the 80s and 90s run just fine today! In great part because they don't depend on anything.
Electronics from the 2020s are unlikely to be usable in the 2060s simply due to unnecessary dependencies, even if the hardware itself is totally fine. Don't buy things like that.
Yeah, I won't touch anything that doesn't have basic controls as physical.
I know some people who didn't jump onto Airports because of this. If this is important to you, avoid Amazon's eero line, as well.
Looking at that, I'm wondering who is stupid enough to buy a new device from them like this. It is like 'bite me once, bite me again please.'.
'eh, we just self destroyed your device, because, fuck you, but here is a coupon to buy a new one from us that we will also kill in a few years' ...
Do people actually need next-gen wifi? My impression is that 99.9+% of people would be well served by a mid-range 802.11ac router (eg. AC1750[1]) from years ago, because the most bandwidth intensive thing they do is watch 4k netflix (~25 Mb/s).
Also you have to take into account that you pay but not have 2 working devices in the end (old and new). Just one.
Sure, if the new one was providing significant value, there could have been an interest. Like if you network was saturated. But that would be surprising because currently 8/10 years old ac wifi routers are more than enough for most households usage.
Also, what is interesting is the Stockholm syndrom: some comments here are saying that it was probably old enough to be changed, so not so bad. But in that case, did you think about that, that you would probably have to change your router for a new one before receiving the obsolescence notice from Google?
They at least do this for their Pixel phones.
I'm not recommending Ubiquiti specifically given recent events but just using it as an example of a prosumer brand, even a few years old now and it still gets firmware updates, where as my old consumer router would be lucky to get any updates at all.
For you maybe.
I think it is nothing like enough. My guitar amplifier is about twenty years old.
My house is thirty and will probably make it to 300 (climate catastrophes wiling)
I do not buy Google products, if I did I would stop.
Are people really replacing their home network infrastructure every 5 years?
It seems this is more common than it should be. Apple users who complain of new products lacking features older products had, but who continue to buy those products come to mind.
And I look at compatibility matrix before buying it.
This strategy has worked very well. I upgrade on my terms.
I agree in the abstract, but I've seen enough devices ship OTA updates that make switching harder that I prefer to just cut over ASAP these days. (This is a general approach, not just for network gear; same as how I unlock my phone bootloaders right out of the box so I don't have to deal with data wiping)
> "After that, your router will still work, but it will not receive any new software features or security updates, and performance cannot be guaranteed. You will not be able to use any Google Home app features to do things like update network settings, add devices, or run speed tests. And Google Assistant commands like “Hey Google, pause my Wi-Fi” will also not be available." [0]
It'll work, but you won't be able to control it in any way!
0 - From the email I received telling me support was ending
> Since OnHub routers were introduced 6 years ago, a lot has changed. In 2022, support for these older devices will end.
Given the devices were over spec'ed to allow for future expansion I highly doubt they're outdated already.
https://www.exploitee.rs/index.php/Rooting_The_Google_OnHub
Dis: Googler, not near Nest/Home
Small businesses with fewer products are arguably more incentivized to ensure each product lasts long-term, but it's not uncommon to see them moving on from product to product, too. They just have far fewer in total to see "Google ends yet another product!"-esque headlines about.
You can't control retail inventory (well, for some products retailers report serial numbers sold, so maybe you can), but you can make relatively solid assumptions that if you shipped the units to the store/retail warehouse, they're either going to sell them or return them within some period of time, maybe 3-6 months. So assume last sale was 6 months after the last shipment.
That hardware bears trademarks that Google controls, so it's not purely a third-party product. Google may not be able to prevent retailers from selling off their remaining stock, but they should at least be able to prevent the manufacturers from sending any more to retailers, and inform retailers that the products are discontinued.
Wow, I'm not familiar if users are forced to use the Google Home app, but that seems a bit drastic to stop users from even changing the most basic settings?
Edit: Being forced to use an app is not new. If you visit your routers ip address you get a single page that links to the app for the app stores. Funny enough it still links to the Google Wifi app and not the Google Home app.
Aren't they reaching into Your device to remove functionality? Isn't this vandalism, and a crime?
Every time I trusted you with my money for hardware I ended up with paperweights.
They don’t even open up the protocols for products they artificially eol, you have to dump them.
Never ever again.
I had like to ask them what about the millions of perfectly usable phones that had to be ditched because of Android and the vendor lock ins.
Whether carbon offsets actually work is another issue though
There is a neighbouring diagnostic info endpoint that doesn't require Auth, and that works fine.
The phone apps end up having to keep up with the underlying android+ios stacks' ever changing details, but even worse are the cloud services that help make the app -> router connection seamless, with the need to keep up with the ever-ongoing churn required to run binaries on Google's servers (aka "in Production").
To give an idea of how much churn is required to run binaries "in Production", there is a 6 month build horizon enforced across the company to ensure that all teams keep up with the underlying churn (changes to security, rpc, filesystems, monitoring, libc, etc). Running binaries older than that is verboten. The reasoning is that teams building the underlying components would never get a chance to upgrade / turndown down-versions/ down-compatibility.
Supporting these products means requiring staffing the role of keeping these services running from both dev+ops perspectives.
It sounds crazy but the system is designed to build "at scale" rather than to be built "sustainably". Dealing with this ever ongoing churn is the typical life of a Google engineer building "in prod". The model works well with a healthy CI/CD (albeit still a waste of time to deal with mandated churn), but falls apart quickly when staffing is removed.
GeForce now is a better model. You buy your games on diverse platforms and the subscription to run them on remote hardware separately. Your games are still there on your computer even if GeForce now is gone.
In this case I'm thinking about the Consumer Rights Act 2015 (UK) which has a 7 year time limit for goods not fit for purpose (which a router that only lasted 2 years definitely counts as).
That was the reason I sold (for a symbolic price) my Chromecast Audio years ago, the integration was getting increasingly unreliable in Android, and I was afraid that the next step would have been to shut down its servers entirely
« Wi-Fi you can count on »
Oh the irony.
I’m curious, does anyone know when the product stopped being sold?
https://www.amazon.com/Google-WiFi-Router-TP-Link-Managed/dp...
https://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-reviews/32...
Which is hilarious because of course they didn't. They never do. How many times does Google have to fuck their hardware customers before people wise up? This isn't even the first time Google has done this explicitly to force customers to buy into the Nest ecosystem. Remember when they bought Revolv and then bricked all their $300 smart home hubs to force people to buy Nest hubs instead? Anyone who trusts Google not to drop them the very instant it becomes profitable to do so is a damn fool.
More importantly, the Asus RT-N66U is still fully functional and still supported on the Asus Router mobile app.[3] Unlike OnHub, Asus routers that run on non-Google firmware have a web interface so the network settings will continue to be adjustable even after app support ends.
Older Asus routers, including the RT-N66U, tend to be supported by open source firmware like DD-WRT.[4] OnHub is not.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B006QB1RPY
[2] https://www.asus.com/supportonly/rtn66u_(verb1)/HelpDesk_Dow...
[3] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.asus.aihom...
[4] https://forum.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Supported_devices#As...
Source: I worked on the team (iOS app) for the first two or three years.
