OnHub - <AUTHOR> https://on.google.com/hub/ <comment><USER3> My biggest issue with this is that Google wants to inject a piece of hardware into my home that acts as the gateway to my data. A device through which all :

> Incoming data runs through

> Internal data runs through

> Outgoing data runs through

And then wants to be vague about what data they will be pumping to their back- end for analytics/data mining.

I have had a long standing proposal for home automation and I'm curious to know, in this era of insecurity and people vacuuming up all your data, how many of the tech minded people here would be interested in a device which ensures your 'home automation' data stays in your home. This can be quite clearly achieved in hardware and by having an out-of-band oversight controller that literally will not allow certain data to exit the physical domain of your home...

Cloud nonsense? It's called an application and a home automation application doesn't need to run in someone's cloud...

Whose interested? I think it's about time this cloud foolishness for the sake of monetizing someone else's data in an insecure manner come to an end. Everyone loves to rant about 'disruption'... I feel its about time this data monetization cloud bananza be disrupted.

<comment><USER3> I'm glad that people found this to be a point of significance. I've worked in the commercial networking hardware industry for some years and shelved several consumer ideas due to a lack of interest in security/privacy.

I have watched over many years as this 'cloud' software bonanza has eclipsed the tech industry. It went away from its original intent a long time ago and now is used as the holy-grail method of :

> ensuring (rent) is always paid for service(s) people should OWN

> vacuuming up and selling people's data.

I have several projects on my plate. However, I have a solid one for securing people's data when it comes to the IoT movement (in hardware)... It revolves around the same hardware/technology that the industry uses to scrape and funnel your data except the home user will now have it at their disposal as well.

Users should have 100% control of their data. If someone wants to 'monetize' it or use it to 'improve' their platform, the user should be rightfully paid for the opportunity to do so.

Disruption? Yeah, I think it's time. The foolishness has gotten far too long in the tooth.

.. And the backwards thing about it is: there are simple and straight forward ways to secure data (in hardware). It's only because everyone in the industry wants to ship your data all over the place and data-mine the snot out of it that things are as insecure as they are.

The very (loop-hole) or (door) that is used to funnel/mine/monetize/cloudify data is the very one used as an attack vector. Complicating the crap out of things at that point defeats the whole purpose.... Get rid of the door all together and the home is the least of all places where you should be exposing yourself.

<comment><USER4> I agree with the idea that the best protecting n for privacy is to make it expensive to snoop - it's worked for thousands of years so far.

My concern is _how_ to make the benefits of this huge amount of data (medical information, travel etc) possible while charging the other use.

It's just - how - does one attach the metadata and enforce the lolicensing?

<comment><USER3> Therein lies the 'product' ... I'm working on several projects so I wasn't shy to put the general idea of this one out there... It's one of many things I feel passionately are going to be changed by disruptive paradigm shifts ahead.

That being said, you come up w/ the 'solution' and you'll have your 'product'... I already have a general architecture/approach outlined for myself. Create one and, from the looks of the interest here, you'll have an audience to buy it.

Also, with the scale and depth of hacks occurring around the world, you'll soon have an even broader audience.

If you get funded, look me up ;). I'll be looking for work in the coming months =P.

<comment><USER4> I'm wondering if / how the identity problem, blockchain proof of physical ownership and ...

Well, firstly applications should stop thinking they are CoW - data is something that gets passed in and operated on.

Secondly data operations should be side effect free - and distributed, so that we can ask for processing- in many ways I would expect not to share my data but to accept payment in return for some slice of processing someone wants

This may work ok, and generally the things we want (social networks) will be fine with local data sharing - facebooks walled garden would have to be replaced with open protocol (ie AOL -> SMTP) and no idea how to achieve that.

So im not setting the world on fire here. But I think the shape of future is clear - just getting there ...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> From [1]

      Get started

      Welcome! To set up your OnHub, you'll also need:
      Google account
      Android or iOS device
      Broadband connection

Google account? That seems like an unnecessary requirement for a router.

[1] [https://on.google.com/hub/support/#get- started](https://on.google.com/hub/support/#get-started)

<comment><USER6> (Disclaimer: I work for the same former-division-of-Google-and-now-Alphabet- subsidiary that built this, though I don't work on OnHub.)

I think you need an account for cloud-based configuration, credential sharing, etc. Maybe it's not for everyone, but I think it makes sense as a product. I highly doubt they added a Google account requirement to improve ad targeting.

<comment><USER7> Thanks, but shouldn't these features be optional? I still don't get why I _need_ a Google Account.

<comment><USER8> The router is cloud configured from your mobile device, that is how it works.

Some cloud services for the device are actually optional. But AFAIK you still need a Google Account.

Here is the help page on the topic of data collection and privacy:

[https://support.google.com/onhub/answer/6246642?hl=en&ref_to...](https://support.google.com/onhub/answer/6246642?hl=en&ref_topic=6246470&vid=1-635755221172142181-18127440739027856314)

And see also, how to set a whole bunch of privacy settings:

[https://support.google.com/onhub/answer/6279845?vid=1-635755...](https://support.google.com/onhub/answer/6279845?vid=1-635755221172142181-18127440739027856314#change)

Disclaimer: I work on the project. I am not a spokesperson or legal or marketing, or anything like that.

<comment><USER9> > The router is cloud configured from your mobile device, that is how it > works.

How do I configure a router if I need an internet connection to configure it? Sounds like a circular dependency issue.

<comment><USER8> Out of box configuration of the device is done without the need for Internet access.

Also, these days a good % of customers are walking around with an Internet connection in their hands, separate from their home connection.

<comment><USER10> Does it mean that you can set it up without a Google Account, then? Or does it let you create one (without being set up for the internet) somehow?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Very interesting. From looking at the specs, it looks like they're packaging a server and marketing it as a router. The configuration app is a _very_ nice touch, routers have always a pain to configure. I'd love to stick this in my apartment (even though I can only receive a maximum of 10mb/s).

As a side note, I'm surprised this isn't marketed alongside the Nest branch. It really has the look and feel of Nest products with the LEDs and the speaker aesthetic. Also surprised this isn't an "Alphabet" product.

<comment><USER12> > routers have always a pain to configure

Eh? You must buy some shitty routers, no offense.

Compared to the rest of the market, paying $200 for a router isn't competitive. It just is not worth it given Google's "eh-we-will-do-it-and- stop-if-people-complain/sue" mindset.

\----

To Melvin, since I'm submitting to fast:

[http://www.amazon.com/dp/B013ALA9LA?ref=spks_0_0_2170510902&...](http://www.amazon.com/dp/B013ALA9LA?ref=spks_0_0_2170510902&qid=1439920378&pf_rd_p=2170510902&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_t=301&pf_rd_s=desktop- auto-sparkle&pf_rd_r=1GZB2QQ2TEH9Y8J6SS1B&pf_rd_i=TP-LINK)

> OnHub Wireless Router from Google and TP-LINK > by TP-LINK

1) You complain about the quality of TP-LINK products and think the solution is....another TP-LINK product, likely measured in the same way.

2) Honestly, I cannot think of a consumer AP that would actually perform to your expectations [apartment complex with 30+ competitors, saturating all the channels] that would be priced at $300, let alone $200. I can tell you right now, this Google AP won't do it either. Its "up to 1900mbps" for a reason. Trust me. Buying this won't be a magical solution to your problems if you real world gigabit speeds.

\----

To the folks complaining about "magical routers":

A) Buy something from Ubiquiti Networks.

B) Buy something you can flash with WRT firmware.

In both cases, as long as you understand the hardware specs, you'll get something better than the norm. In Ubiquiti's case, I'm 99% sure it will outperform a Google branded TP-Link AP unless Google is heavily subsidizing and QAing everything.

<comment><USER13> I have a 1 Gbps fiber connection at my apartment. I spent a good hour doing research and finally bought this [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00BUSDVBQ](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00BUSDVBQ). It had 4.5 stars at the time and was the highest rated router that Amazon carried. I bought it, plugged it in and ran speedtest on it. Max speed I could get was 250mb/s. Not bad but not the gb/s that was getting advertised. Additional, over time, it would always slow down to 10-50mb/s. I called TP- Link and they said this was likely the best it'll do and the advertised speeds are in an interference free lab environment.

If OnHub fixes that second problem as they claim to, that would be more than enough reason for me to spend the $200. If they can get higher than 250mb/s speed by optimizing around the congestion, $200 will be well worth the spend.

<comment><USER14> I was in the same situation as you. Same Router too.

I could actually get close to 1 Gbps with the stock firmware. But it was unstable, requiring a reset every other day. I used an open source firmware, but it didn't contain the NAT offload module, so I would not be able to get over 200-250 Mbps. (This was is all wired, not wireless).

Since I had a wifi access point, I ended up switching to an Ubiquity Edgemax router and haven't had any problems since.

Not really a fan of TP-Link.

<comment><USER15> Here's the thing about TP-Link: They're a "good enough" manufactur. Meaning if you care about something, don't buy a TP-Link, but if you don't care that much and just need it to basically work "good enough" (e.g. WiFi for your mom's house) then they're fine.

I got a cheap TP-Link repeater. It works fine, nothing special, no bells or whistles. But for the price it was a good buy.

<comment><USER16> TP-Link are hardly a manufacturer of "good enough" products. Their $100 Archer C7 router is the top recommendation on TheWirecutter for over a year.[0] Their $75 Archer C5 is also the top rated AC1200 router in _every single category_ on SmallNetBuilder.[1] It beats out more expensive models from all the bigger name manufacturers.

[0] [http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-wi-fi- router/](http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-wi-fi-router/)

[1] [http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/tools/rankers/router/result/1...](http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/tools/rankers/router/result/1971-tplink- archerc5)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> So what does this device primarily do that I need right now? Just throttling internet for certain devices and prioritizing others? I'm not even entirely sure what 'uses smart software to find the best WiFi connection' means. What's the value prop here given the device costs $200? It's not like it can better your internet somehow.

<comment><USER18> It has a 3rd radio that monitors the channels you _aren 't_ currently using to see if any of them are better. The first two radios in the device can't switch without dropping connections, so they can't go hunting for new channels once the AP is turned on.

My Airport Extreme chooses channels automatically at boot time, then never again. This is fine for my house though, because my neighbors are reasonably far away.

At work, our Meraki AP has this kind of 3rd radio, and we get very good performance in a terrible RF environment, where lots of other equipment (from Apple and Ubiquiti) has failed.

<comment><USER19> Which is a standard feature in a lot of other routers, too, like the Fritz!Box 7490. [http://en.avm.de/products/fritzbox/fritzbox-7490/](http://en.avm.de/products/fritzbox/fritzbox-7490/)

Google is doing nothing special here.

<comment><USER18> I don't see anything on the spec sheets for the Fritz!Box 7490 that show it has more than 2 radios, like most dual band APs out there today.

Google's spec sheet [1] specifically has 3 radios:

[http://i.imgur.com/x7CMktb.png](http://i.imgur.com/x7CMktb.png)

The first two radios do MIMO 3x3, and the third radio just has 1 antenna (since it isn't serving client traffic).

While this isn't completely new, it's definitely not common, especially for a consumer-grade AP/router.

[1]: [https://on.google.com/hub/#specs](https://on.google.com/hub/#specs)

<comment><USER19> The Fritz!Box 7490 has 3 radios, for exactly this purpose. That's how it supports automated channel search without disconnecting users, and how it is able to provide 1.3Gbps via WiFi.

<comment><USER18> If it does have 3 radios, that's awesome. They should make that much more explicit. I've looked all over their site, and I can't find anything that confirms this. Everything on their website just references plain old simultaneous dual-band with MIMO antennas.

For me, at least, a 3rd radio will be on the list for my next AP, so I'll take a close look at this one, too.

<comment><USER19> Well, they claimed it. I am not sure if they do have one, but switching channels and empty-channel-autodiscovery without disconnecting is a feature in the version that I have.

The issue is just that AVM produces different versions of the Fritz!Box for every ISP, so some have more storage, or more radios than others.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> OK, I'm trying really hard to figure out the $199 price tag. My cheap as dirt N+ router works pretty darn well connecting 12-15 devices at my home. I almost never had problems in years with it.

All the smart services Google offers, work through cloud, like Cloud Print. Not through a router like Airport express. Even Android Wear now supports Wifi so having BLE isn't that attractive to me. All the smart features that can happen with BLE and Wifi combined are always better offered with phone. So I don't see home automation/IoT benefit here either. Phone is a better hub. So what's exactly the point here? The only thing I can think of is security patches from Google. But $199 is very steep for that.

I know it has a bunch of smart engineering and more antennas. But I don't know anyone having connectivity problems that are related to their routers.

<comment><USER21> There's no reason to buy this device for $200.

It's the equivalent of Amazon's Fire phone. It's richly priced, and does very little feature wise to justify its high price. It'll flop accordingly.

$49 or $99 (max) was the correct price point. They have to beat or match routers on price (high quality routers having become dirt cheap), or otherwise provide astounding new capabilities (which this doesn't).

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I've been dogfooding the device for about 4 months now. Before, I was using the previous generation Airport Extreme. It is far better - the app makes it super simple to set up, the signal seems to be stronger throughout my apartment, and I love having a convenient way to monitor / admin it remotely (via the app). Well worth the price imo.

>inb4 shill :)

<comment><USER23> Hi,

Could you elaborate on what you believe to be far better than the extreme. AExtreme was super simple to set up and has an app too. Did you position your OnHub differently than your extreme?

I have had an Extreme for years but recently moved and found some issues with connectivity in the new location so I've been weighing options.

<comment><USER22> Just as simple to set up as the Extreme if you're on iOS, and even simpler on Android.

I placed it in the same spot where the Extreme was formerly located; my signal strength at the other end of the apartment and outside is noticeably stronger, perhaps due to the multi-directional antenna.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The biggest positive about a company like google releasing a router is the security updates. Most consumer routers out there are left to rot and you're forced to buy a one when its exploited.

<comment><USER25> You mean like phones locked on old versions of Android once Google moves on to new ones?

<comment> shawn-furyan And don't they have Brillo? Having this without Brillo duplicates (particularly security related) effort and signals that Google doesn't consider Brillo to be acceptable for use in its own products.

I imagine going w/ Brillo would have set back the release schedule, but Brillo, if their vision for both products were to come to pass, is by far the more consequential product. Also... The wireless router market isn't exactly teaming with competitive one-upsmanship. They could have waited 0.5-2+ years without losing significant ground.

Note: Brillo is the stripped down variant of Android aimed at IoT (internet of things) devices that Google announced at the last Google I/O. This is an ideal early device for Brillo, since it's relatively powerful and isn't battery powered, so constraints aren't quite as high as they are in many IoT devices, yet it shares much of the problem space.

[https://developers.google.com/brillo/?hl=en](https://developers.google.com/brillo/?hl=en)

[edited 6:39PM UTC to add the Note]

<comment><USER26> [http://nextmarket.co/blogs/smarthomeweekly/29309313-google-i...](http://nextmarket.co/blogs/smarthomeweekly/29309313-google- iot-os-brillo-effort-reports-to-barratt-targeting-home-routers)

Going by how closely this matches the leaks, I think the onHub actually is running Brillo. They've just chosen not to mention it just yet.

<comment> shawn-furyan Well, if that's the case then that's good. I had a line originally that had a parenthetical like "(or if they are using it, they should be announcing so with much fanfare, at least in the technical sections of the page)", but it got cut due to how cumbersome it made the sentence.

Thanks for the heads up. I genuinely hope that are using Brillo and using the experience to improve the OS. I think that Google is biting off a LOT with Brillo, and I don't think that they can afford to fragment their IoT efforts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The only privacy link I could find on the page was Google's generic privacy policy. Is there more information somewhere?

With its "advanced and always-evolving security features", I'm wondering whether and what information Google would be gathering about my local network and my network traffic.

<comment><USER27> From the Terms of Service linked from the support site [https://support.google.com/onhub/answer/6270620?hl=en&ref_to...](https://support.google.com/onhub/answer/6270620?hl=en&ref_topic=6246512)

"You agree that Google may collect and use technical and related information, including but not limited to information about your computer and/or mobile device, operating system, peripherals, applications, connected devices, network traffic, and data use to facilitate the provision of the Software and Services, including support and other related services."

It goes on to state "The OnHub Privacy FAQ describes the categories of data collected and how you can use privacy settings to change what data is collected by the Services."

But I couldn't find the OnHub Privacy FAQ and [https://support.google.com/onhub/search?q=privacy](https://support.google.com/onhub/search?q=privacy) oddly says "Your search - privacy - did not match any answers in OnHub Help".

<comment><USER28> I wouldn't trust Google with this much access to my internet traffic.

<comment><USER29> I would if I got Google fiber speeds. For this, though? Probably not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Interesting - but I'm not sure what this gives me over something in a similar price range, for example:

[http://www.amazon.com/RT-AC68U-Wireless-AC1900-Dual-Band- Gig...](http://www.amazon.com/RT-AC68U-Wireless-AC1900-Dual-Band-Gigabit- Router/dp/B00FB45SI4)

Presumably either you know something about routers and want to enable QoS, install your own firmware, or use some other advanced feature - and you spend money on a decent router. Or you don't, and use whatever your ISP provides (which if it's bad, you blame the ISP for without thinking twice).

So perhaps this is the new router bundled with Google Fibre?

<comment><USER31> The AC68U is the perfect AP for the discerning user who enjoys going into the basement every two weeks to reboot things.

<comment><USER29> I've had mine for over a year now, and I've only had to reboot it 3 times - <USER2> if you count the time I unplugged it and moved to a new city.

<comment><USER32> I've had mine for a similar time frame and I've never needed to restart it, except to install updates. My cable modem goes out more often.

<comment><USER33> My biggest issue with this router has simply been the media server, however the wifi connections and vpn have always worked.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Just interesting to note that the form factor is quite similar to Amazon Echo (slim cylindrical tube), although the function is completely different (router vs "personal assistant device").

<comment><USER35> It has a speaker built in. So they'll have that with Google Cast Audio, Google Now, etc. I am pretty sure they have a taken a leaf or two out of Amazons book.

<comment><USER36> The speaker is to talk to your phone, not to you. (Its a low-powered speaker that's used to communicate to a mobile device for configuration.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> From the design goals outlined in the FAQ, it seems clear to me that Google expects there to be a great deal more bandwidth hungry devices in the home speaking first to each other, and then out to the WAN, in the near term.

Including Bluetooth, Weave, and Thread, along with up to 128 devices, gives me a rough sense of the scale of connected devices they anticipate in each home. Given that it also has a reasonable compute capabilities and cooling as one of the highlights, I think it's far to say that it could do a lot of processing on its own before reaching back home to the GOOG DCs.

<comment><USER34> ...likely part of their "Internet of Things" strategy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Hard to believe there's a huge market for $199 WiFi routers, no matter how sophisticated.

On the other hand, even a sprinkling of installations is probably pretty valuable if it allows Google to derive more accurate ISP performance numbers. There's got to be some benefit in having thousands of devices directly connected to the ISP's network on the consumer end 24/7.

<comment><USER39> If you're not spending at least $100 on a wireless router, you're probably giving up significant amounts of the performance you're paying for from your ISP. Routers are computers. The $40 units just can't handle modern usage patterns (multiple phones / tablets / computers with relatively high speed caps) very well.

It's my single biggest recommendation when people complain about the speed of the Internet in their home. More often than not, they're underspending on their networking equipment, not their ISP package.

<comment><USER36> > More often than not, they're underspending on their networking equipment, > not their ISP package.

Often, their networking equipment is part of the ISP package because the ISP wants to provide a seamless experience, and doesn't even provide easy access to the information necessary to use your own equipment.

<comment><USER40> I don't even know what this means. Are you saying that your ISP doesn't allow you to plug standard ethernet devices into their lines? I own my own modem and router and do what I want with them. I don't follow you.

<comment><USER36> > Are you saying that your ISP doesn't allow you to plug standard ethernet > devices into their lines?

Using your own router rather than the ISPs preconfigured router requires more than just plugging a personally-purchased router into their line (even in the simple case where you aren't using the ISPs bundled cable/phone/internet service that's all delivered through a common system.)

At least in the simple case, someone with modest technical skill can figure out how to get that information relatively easily, but most ISP customers aren't even modestly technical.

<comment><USER41> When I've had a cable modem, all I've had to do is connect my router to the modem via Ethernet. When I've had modemless service via Ethernet jack, all I've had to do is connect my router to the wall Ethernet jack.

So what are you talking about? Purchasing your own cable modem? Or something else that I've never had to do?

<comment><USER42> If you have DSL, the modem and the router are the same box, so if you want your own, you have to throw out the one the ISP gave you, and configure yours by yourself. In practice, I bet you could just call up the ISP if you're having trouble, but I agree that an ISP has an incentive to give you a good unit to start with.

<comment><USER43> I haven't had DSL in a while, but when I did, the ISP just provided a modem with a phone line connector and a single ethernet connector. There's no requirement for DSL to bundle the modem and router.

<comment><USER36> Sure, lots of DSL ISPs used to do that in the old days before WiFi was a common consumer demand, and some still might.

Now, the ISPs that are using DSL (e.g., AT&T U-Verse which uses VDSL2 where it isn't FTTP) seem (from what I've experienced and seen with other people that have DSL-based service) to deploy all-in-one modem/routers (and, when they have services like TV and Phone as well as basic internet, to run them through the supplied all-in-one box, as well.)

> There's no requirement for DSL to bundle the modem and router.

Sure, its not a theoretical requirement, just practically what ISPs seem to do now.

<comment><USER43> Gotcha, I thought it was being presented as some sort of technical constraint.

An interesting variant on all of this is FiOS, which is often brought into the house on coax which plugs into their router. It's possible to buy something that will bridge the coax to ethernet, but they're pretty hard to find.

I think this _might_ be going away as they increase speeds. I originally had the coax, but then they replaced it with ethernet coming in to the house. I kept their router anyway because it actually seems to be pretty good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I'm just curious _why_ so many wireless routers are flakey, need frequently reset, have connection issues, etc. That, and what Google is actually doing differently than other high quality routers.

<comment><USER45> Most the consumer hardware networking industry is based on costs. Components are sourced based on the lowest cost and quality tends to be prioritized for SMB/enterprise products. Typically, routers are relatively inelastic in demand and industrial design, brand recognition, and price point make up the decision criteria for consumers. Testing is mostly spent on integrating all these various components and very little is spent on general UI. I'm a bit wary on Google's approach unless they have some great QA process or are bringing higher quality components to consumers at a lower price point. (Used to work for one of the big consumer networking companies)

<comment><USER46> Or they're selling this router at a loss by accounting the firmware as $0 so they can give the customer more for their money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> > _For initial setup, the Google On app on a device with Android 4.0 or higher > or iOS 7 or higher is required._

Bah! What's wrong with my Thinkpad?

<comment><USER48> Adding support for Linux/OSX/Windows is probably not a priority for them to get this thing off the ground.

<comment><USER49> How about, eh, you know... Web based? No need for this platform-specific bullshit.

Last I heard Google was pretty good at creating good web applications.

<comment><USER50> Perhaps it uses some local comms to bootstrap it. Like Bluetooth or sound waves.

<comment><USER47> Yes, it says somewhere on the site that it uses soundwaves to share the initial key with your device.

But that's NOT an excuse to make the device depend on the Mobile ecosystem.

If it can play a code on the speaker, it can just talk. In English. Via thirty-six audio files: a.wav, b.wav, ... 9.wav. Ok, thirty-seven recordings-- can't forget welcome_to_your_new_router_your_key_is.wav. :)

<comment><USER50> I'd wager that whatever they're doing, it's far more reliable than reading out English letters and doing speech recognition on it. Accomplishing the key exchange might not have been reliable in all browsers.

<comment><USER47> ... I meant, let the device speak directly to the user. "Your key is alpha nine hotel victor ..."

The goal was some sort of manual setup.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> From the comments in this thread its pretty clear that most consumers probably don't understand QOS/prioritization. While most routers allow manual configuration if Google's router can automate this task this is a huge benefit. Imagine if you're using your network for wifi calls and others are just browsing the net. Your calls should clearly take priority over other traffic. The same goes for gaming etc. The hardware specs are incredible for a home router at this price point.

I'm really looking forward to the intelligence aspect and how much it can actually improve the overall network performance. The nice integrated app to share passwords and see who's on the network is just a nice to have feature.

edit: appears to be sold out on google store, and amazon is only selling the blue model

</comment><comment><USER52> Interesting that it has a TPM[1]. Any guesses about the uses/implications of that?

I wonder if it can be configured to act solely as an access point--I already have a ubnt EdgeRouter Lite, but wouldn't mind replacing my aging access point.

EDIT: It does support bridge mode[2].

1\. [https://on.google.com/hub/#specs](https://on.google.com/hub/#specs)

2\. [https://support.google.com/onhub/answer/6240987?hl=en&ref_to...](https://support.google.com/onhub/answer/6240987?hl=en&ref_topic=6246470&vid=1-635755165356935124-14285033767779996327)

<comment><USER53> Just a guess, but the TPM is probably for secure boot, just like on a Chromebook. Since security is one of the selling points.

[https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chromiumos-design- docs/...](https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chromiumos-design- docs/verified-boot)

<comment><USER52> That would make sense. We'll have to wait and see if the OnHub has a "dev" switch like Chromebooks. Hopefully it will be possible to put custom software on it (even if the Google software is just fine, the flexibility would be nice).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> I wonder if these will be capable of lending spare (encrypted) bandwidth to anonymous mobile devices. I.e., can Google Fi[1] users benefit from Wi-Fi when walking past a house that has an OnHub running?

[1] [https://fi.google.com/about/](https://fi.google.com/about/)

<comment><USER55> Every time a company has tried to do open wifi sharing there's been a lot of kickback. Mostly because it's opt out instead of opt in but that's put a big damper on anyone doing similar things.

<comment><USER56> What I really want to see is an 'opt-in' service that allows you to use other peoples' networks if you opt-in to sharing your's. It should be extremely easy to opt-in, and a message should be displayed asking you to opt-in when you try to sign in to someone else's network.

Also, the guest network traffic needs to be sent over a vpn, so you are not responsible for it / don't have to deal with people torrenting, etc on your network. And it should be low priority traffic.

<comment><USER55> That's the problem they need to solve, opt-in and making it easy and visible enough to get enough people to enable it to make it actually useful.

A VPN or similar system to make sure you're not getting accused of things their free wifi is being used for too is a good idea. Not sure if anyone has done that yet in the various implementations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Coolest thing I see is on the NewEgg page where it says it's "weave" ready, and you can see the Zigbee/Bluetooth radios. It's a router, and it's the smart home hub.

<comment><USER58> I'm really surprised this part didn't generate more attention from the HN crowd. Currently IoT devices always end up having some kind of protocol adaptor unit, like wifi->zigbee and it sucks!

As far as I know, the Almond+ is the only other router with 802.15.4 support.

<comment><USER59> I've been quite pleased with my Almond+. Certainly more than I have been with other Kickstarter stuff.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> > To set up your OnHub, you'll also need:

> Google Account

No, thanks. SpyHub would be more adequate name.

I would reconsider it when I could put my own software on it, that would not require untrusted third-party accounts.

<comment><USER61> I suppose you should stay far away from Google Fiber then, as well. And anything else done by the evil Google. Much better to keep with the good guys like Comcast. They will never, _ever_ spy on you.

<comment><USER62> Thats a false dichotomy. There have always been fiber providers, its just that Google Fiber is the "sexy" one that people look to for salvation instead of locally campaigning for fiber (which has been successful in quite a number of cities across the USA).

<comment><USER63> This reminds me of how (in some parts of Europe at least) a lot of communities are trying to buy back the municipal water and power plants that were originally privatised "because privatisation benefits the economy". Turns out creating a (new) monopoly by selling all the public infrastructure to the same company isn't actually good for anyone (other than that company).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> This is one of those things that I would never use however I think is great for the majority of people out there that I know that probably have not opened up their router's interface since setting it up (years ago). Pushed (forced) updates is a good thing in some cases.

An interesting thought is also what if Google starts making use of that 4gb by prepushing/caching sites that you visit daily down to the device for instantaneous retrieval.

Another interesting idea is that this probably comes with a nice UI for people to see their inbound/outbound traffic for a given timespan. My guess is a lot of people (ie non Y! news readers) don't configure their current routers for this. Once they start seeing an exact number, it will be interesting to see how it compares to their ISP if it is similar to Comcast and has caps and overage fees for metered cities.

</comment><comment><USER65> I'm not sure what the advantage of this is over any other router, other than vague 'built for all the ways you wifi'. Simplicity is nice, maybe this is trying to duplicate Nest-like success in the router realm, but people don't actively fiddle with routers like they do thermostats.

<comment><USER46> Automatic security patches.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> My read is that this about Google Fiber. You get a 1Gb connection but your router gets you like 80Mb/sec... that's a bummer, this fixes it (if it works).

</comment><comment><USER67> on.google.com/hub for a product named OnHub? Does that mean more OnXXX products are on the way?

<comment><USER68> Maybe O is for On.

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> So can I use it to do all the nerdy things I use my DD-WRT flashed router for? Like QoS, adblocking at the router, a separate guest WiFi, VPN support, MAC address filtering, etc?

<comment><USER70> you are not the target audience!

<comment><USER71> Well maybe they are... If it can do all that without learning DD-WRT, then I'll buy it. I understand all those things and want most of them enabled at home, I just don't have the time or motivation to learn the configuration files despite being a programmer who's perfectly capable of it. The interface should be distinct from the capability.

<comment><USER69> You are thinking of OpenWRT, I believe. DD-WRT is pretty much flash and go. Ad blocking is a bit of a pain, but the rest of the things I named have a GUI.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> Hopefully this device actually has the CPU power to run QOS at more than 50mbps... the same can't be said of any other consumer router in the $200 price range.

<comment><USER73> Can you explain that? What's QOS, how much CPU does it take to run well, and why don't other expensive routers have the power for fast internet?

<comment><USER74> QOS is quality of service. It lets you prioritize certain traffic over others. So if I'm running BitTorrent but trying to watch Netflix, I can set up a QOS rule to prioritize Netflix over the BitTorrent. Netflix might only need 4Mbps but a torrent can take 100% of my connection. So I would set a QOS rule to make sure that Netflix gets what it needs then the torrent can have the rest.

Inspecting every packet as it runs through the network takes a lot of processing power. Many router manufacturers put just enough hardware in the box to handle fast connections, but not enough to handle complicated QOS rules on top of that.

<comment><USER72> Looks like Google is doing the same; that CPU probably isn't fast enough to handle NAT and QoS at the speeds the WiFi radio is capable of; much less a gigabit Google Fiber connection. While I understand consumers aren't going to spend $500 on a router, it's a bit disappointing to see Google engage in the same behavior that Linksys, D-link, et al do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER75> OnHub looks nice, but honestly the Apple AirPort Time Capsule is a great device, and also gives you Time Machine backups. The only feature I've found missing, is VPN site-to-site and VPN client connections.

<comment><USER76> It is missing SNMP or any kind of traffic monitoring. The WAN to LAN speed is also a bit lacking if you have a very fast connection.

</comment></comment><comment><USER77> I see no mention of being able to use 2 or 3 of these things in an Wi-Fi extender type of scenario that I can do with my current Airport Extreme routers.

<comment><USER52> Their FAQ suggests increasing coverage by having one unit act as the router (doing NAT), and having others act as (bridged) access points:

[https://support.google.com/onhub/answer/6275097?vid=1-635755...](https://support.google.com/onhub/answer/6275097?vid=1-635755167092747292-3029280237307171546)

<comment><USER77> This method seems really cumbersome compared to the Airport Extreme and their wireless bridging method.

<comment><USER78> Ehm... that's pretty much the exact same method you use on Airport Extreme if you care about speeds (one being the NAT machine, others APs connected with cables).

If you're doing the wireless bridge you're trading off a lot of wireless bandwidth (and added noise) just to get data from one Airport to another. Far from an optimal setup.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER79> In the Clommunity project, designed for the world's largest wireless community network (Guifi.net), we have developed a Linux Distro, called cloudy, for these kind of boxes: [http://cloudy.community/](http://cloudy.community/)

We are using the boxes to provide "cloud" services to other users in the Guifi network (30K+ deployments). We currently have 20 rolled out with another 20 coming soon. We're expecting 100+ by the end of next year.

It supports different hardware profiles, but Intel Atom and ARM are quite popular.

<comment><USER80> could you make a small local cloud with that, in Arizona?

<comment><USER79> Yeah sure. It's built using decentralized (gossip-based) protocols such as Serf ([https://www.serfdom.io/](https://www.serfdom.io/)) and you just need one IP to act as a bootstrap.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER81> Looks like a direct competitor to Apple's airport series: [http://www.apple.com/shop/product/ME918/airport- extreme](http://www.apple.com/shop/product/ME918/airport-extreme)

<comment><USER82> Nope. It is competitor for Apple TV which is going to be the hub for Apple Homekit devices.

</comment></comment><comment><USER83> $200 for the unit -- so it's competing on the higher end of consumer routers against offerings such as Apple's Airport. They seemed to have paid a lot of attention to human-friendly UI/UX though.

Would probably wait for reviews to see what's up.

<comment><USER84> At $200 you're in the price range of just building yourself a pfsense box.

<comment><USER52> You could, but at that price it would most likely be a full desktop running pfsense, and who wants that kind of power draw at home? Comparable low-power pfsense boxes are about the same price, or even more for the ones advertised on the pfsense website[1].

The OnHub spec page mentions a draw of <36W[2], which is more than I would have guessed, but it's still less than most desktops. For a device running 24/7 in a residential setting, it makes sense to be low-power.

1\. [http://store.pfsense.org/SG-2220/](http://store.pfsense.org/SG-2220/)

2\. [https://on.google.com/hub/#specs](https://on.google.com/hub/#specs)

<comment><USER84> I wouldn't really call it a full desktop. Intel DQ77KB mini-itx, lga1155 with dual Intel nics is what we use for $100 off Amazon. Pair it with a cheap Celeron and some used laptop memory off ebay. At the wall ~15W.

<comment><USER52> That's not bad! I'm surprised you're able to get the power consumption so low.

With a case, power supply, CPU, heatsink, and RAM the price starts to approach the OnHub though, without any Wi-Fi nics.

The DQ77KB is a cool little board. Have you tried running one as a VPN endpoint?

<comment><USER84> Right now I have one of them with pfsense and its openvpn server running. But that one was upgraded to an Intel i5-3470T so it pulls about ~25W. We went with that cpu for it's AES stuff but it turns out that pfsense (or maybe its freebsd, not sure) can't completely take advantage of it. But otherwise it works great for a vpn that we use when we're outside and on mobile.

Another with a Celeron G1620 is running as an vsphere server. I really love the board.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER85> Huh... Just thinking about what a smart router COULD do...

What if this thing allowed you to punch holes in the firewall through the app, wherever you are? That'd be fairly nifty...

And what if it had VPN built in to the router and the app? That'd be nice as well...

Viewing access log files remotely?

Hmmm - what if it has parental locks? Like, a whitelist of websites for THIS device (kid's tablet), but dad's phone and mom's phone can do anything...

I also can't help but wonder if this thing has Google Fi BUILT IN to it. Meaning, anyone driving by on your street gets to send some packets through your router with really fast switching.... If you allow it. And if you have Google Fiber (gigabit), why wouldn't you allow it?

Oh, and the other one that occurs to me... With all of those antennas... Do you think they might actually be able to estimate your radial location, relative to the device? To some amount of accuracy? Might be interesting. Probably estimate distance, too... Put them together...

If I were slightly evil, I'd be thinking about designing a router that I could market to small businesses. Walk in to your Starbucks, and the guy behind the counter automatically sees your picture, and your regular orders up on the screen...

</comment><comment><USER86> I have to say it looks like they may have taken some liberties with the product design a la Amazon Echo.

Before I read into the product specifications I was expecting an Echo competitor via Google Now tech.

<comment><USER87> Agreed. It looks a little like a squatter Echo. Cylindrical, ring of light at the top. But I suppose Amazon will avoid any legal action since it's pretty tough to win a court case with the argument "they copied my cylinder." Hopefully the different functionality of each device will keep any ugly legal battles from ensuing.

But with the a computer embedded in this router along with a speaker and bluetooth and zigbee radios this could be customized to offer a lot of the features that the Echo offers (minus the voice control). I hope that doesn't cause any problems.

<comment><USER88> About 80% of the space in the Amazon Echo is taken up by the speaker. The Google router just has a little 3w speaker in it, so I don't think Google is gonna be converting it into an entertainment device anytime soon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER89> While this looks very interesting and I'm sure is great for a lot of people, I think I'll stick to my Apple Extreme base station. It has pretty good software for configuration and provides Time Machine support for my multiple OS X machines in the house.

That said, I think that everyone on HN complaining about privacy and cost and how you can "just install your own firmware" is completely missing the point of the OnHub. Most people have a crappy router running insecure software and does terrible things to the internet and never gets updated. OnHub fixes all that and in a way that my Mom could actually install and use the thing. Almost no other solution (besides maybe the Apple products) would be able to cover all these bases.

So, I'm happy that someone (else) is finally making good hardware with easy to use software. More power to Google and keep the good stuff coming!

</comment><comment><USER90> This is definitely like the Nest in that it's an "entry" into the home, clearly it has ambitions to be more than just a router.

On the surface, a $200 router doesn't even make sense. 99% of the time congestion is probably not at the router/Wi-Fi level (any 5GHz wifi router should do) but somewhere upstream (ISP or WAN latency.) If you have a very large property there are plenty of routers already on the market with good external antennas. Number of people who think "man the wifi in my house sucks" is very small.

Clearly they're selling this as a boutique product (similar to Nest) with the hopes of expanding it to perform other tasks, probably similar to Amazon Echo. Heck it even looks like the Echo.

<comment><USER91> Clearly, you don't live in a city. 2.4Ghz on any channel is nearly unusable in my apartment (5Ghz fairs better I think because it penetrates obstructions less easily). My laptop can currently detect >50 wifi networks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER92> Only one LAN port? This reminds me of the HiWifi router which build by a Chinese company. I still think this one LAN port design is terrible.

<comment><USER68> Well, a nice 8-port metal gigabit switch will only run you about $20. True, it may be a lot harder or more expensive to do anything with port-specific VLAN tagging, but hardware support for that using something like DD-WRT is spotty anyway.

I'd also guess that the round design may play a part in that decision. It would definitely be less aesthetically pleasing to have a wagon-wheel of cables coming out of the base.

</comment></comment><comment><USER93> Can anyone explain why a Router needs 4GB of storage ?

What do they mean by "OnHub has 4GB of storage space, so there's plenty of room for auto-updates and the latest software features." ? Is software for a router that large ?

<comment><USER94> Let me tell you, if my Apple TV had any sort of storage, I'd be a lot happier. Getting a little old streaming everything from "the CLOUD".

<comment><USER95> The Apple TV has 8GB of storage, so when you start streaming a TV show or movie it begins downloading the whole thing so internet interruptions don't mess up your viewing.

<comment><USER94> Hm. I guess it's a UI issue. It always appears as if its loading/streaming.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER96> What a misleading video. When was the last time you got connection issues due to your wireless router? Uninformed people are going to buy this and then plug it in to their crappy 250kbps DSL and not notice any difference at all. The video make it seem like this solves every connection problem ever, a video will never ever buffer again! I would say, based on experience, the probability of YouTube being down or overloaded while I stream a movie is higher than the risk that I loose WiFi connection in my home, and yet my router is 5+ years old and dirt cheap then.

</comment><comment><USER97> The mobile Overview UI looks similar to Apple's Airport Utility. Looks like they took the best part (the graph). Hopefully the UI is more straightforward. Things got lost when Apple moved to version 6.0.

</comment><comment><USER98> The 13 antennas and form factor is kind of cool, but after that I'd rather install OpenWrt and if going for home automation, my own server.

Wonder how rootable Google will leave it.

<comment><USER99> I hope it will take after Chrome OS, not Chromecast, in that regard...

</comment></comment><comment><USER100> Just as a note, if range is really one of the selling points, I have found Mikrotik's RB951 class routers to be relatively affordable and have excellent range and features, for significantly less than OnHub ($20-80 for a good home router). OpenWRT routers with a lot of the same features, and the ability to boost range can also be sourced for even less.

<comment><USER101> Did Mikrotik stopped violate GPL already?

It's was big reason to not buy any of their hardware.

</comment></comment><comment><USER102> It's nice that we have Google ensure our TP-Link router to function correctly, hopefully. I'm frustrated with my current TP-Link router since it often needs a reset once in a while. Btw, should this design be changed because it looks to me that the top is very good at collecting dust and dead bugs. I don't expect to buy this and box it.

<comment><USER70> same experience here. I would never buy TP-Link again because of bad experiences. Flashing dd-wrt on one of its routers helped but it was still unstable from time to time. Well the same I said about LG phones (but having a LG Nexus). Seems software can be really important.

</comment></comment><comment><USER103> This is actually cheaper than what my current router - a Linksys WRT1900AC - is going for. On the other hand, said WRT1900AC was designed explicitly for OpenWRT support (and is even advertised as being OpenWRT-compatible - which it indeed is as of Chaos Calmer RC3), whereas OnHub's page makes zero mention of installing custom firmware.

</comment><comment><USER104> I had an original Google TV. They appear to have all but dropped that project, and in the process my device has become _terrible_ to use. I don't know how it actually got worse, but it did. I bought an Apple TV to replace it and I'm reasonable happy with it.

I wouldn't buy first or even second gen hardware from Google.

</comment><comment><USER105> It looks very polished, not sure of its distinct value preposition over other routers currently on the market

<comment><USER106> Looks like the advantages as listed are: \- Very simple visual configuration software \- Ability to view a graphical representation of device usage and prioritize a device \- Ability to update the device without interrupting the connection \- Sends setup information to Android devices via an audio tone

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> > We're streaming and sharing in new ways our old routers were never built to > handle. Meet OnHub, a new router from Google that's built for all the ways > you Wi-Fi.

Honestly, this is stupidly vague. How are modern routers failing us? This just looks like a high-end router, with nothing groundbreaking.

</comment><comment><USER107> Here in CH virtually everyone receives a modem/router combo for free from their provider (ie. they borrow it to you). They are also usually preconfigured - so you just need to plug them in. Is it the same in the US? I guess at a 199$ price point this will be a tough sell.

<comment><USER108> Yes, it's the same in the US. ISPs provide a modem/router combo and charge like $7 a month for it. The disadvantage is that the router portion of the unit is usually very poor. AT&T is still giving out modem/router combos that us 802.11b/g, not even n, much less ac. Purchasing a separate router lets you use better wifi technology as well as enable useful features like QoS settings that aren't available on the ISP-provided hardware.

<comment><USER109> Why do you get charged $7 for it?

Here in the UK most providers seem to offer the router as a sign up bonus.

The disadvantage is that router is mostly cheap garbage, but it's effectively yours once your contract starts, no rental/need to give back

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER110> Privacy issues aren't even the first thing I worry about with OnHub.

What I worry about is it being another project from Google that dies and leaves me with a brick cause it doesn't update any more. Or it is so connected, that when they kill the backend services, then it is a brick.

</comment><comment><USER111> Seems a little pricey. My TP-Link router was $45 and is amazing. I'm probably missing something but $200 doesn't seem "worth it" at first glance when set up really only consists of looking at the bottom of the router to find the WPA Key.

<comment><USER112> OnHub is made by TP-Link, it seems. I have a TP-Link and it has worked flawlessly too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER113> It speaks, but does it listen? (Have a microphone)?

<comment><USER114> No.

<comment><USER113> Oh, good.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER115> Do they allow you to configure DNS, or do they force Google DNS use like on Chromecasts?

<comment><USER116> Since it is a full router I'm sure you can change it, but on a side note you can re-direct the chromecast DNS pretty easily too

[https://www.google.ca/webhp?sourceid=chrome- instant&ion=1&es...](https://www.google.ca/webhp?sourceid=chrome- instant&ion=1&espv=2&es_th=1&ie=UTF-8#q=redirect%20chromecast%20dns&es_th=1)

</comment></comment><comment><USER117> It looks nice, but since there's more wired ethernet devices in my residence than Wifi, it really doesn't fit an immediate need for me.

Still seeing native ZigBee support is awesome. Wonder if the OnHub provides an interface to it.

</comment><comment><USER118> It seems like the moves by the FCC to closed source/keep proprietary the baseband firmware on routers is a move to ensure backdoors and exploits always exist on these wireless systems.

So, here's what I'd like Google, you tell me if this would be possible and I might buy your hardware.

Could you sell me a wifi router with an open source baseband firmware that you "own" and provide regular signed updates for to comply with the FCC rules? As for the rest of what you have to offer, no thanks - I would need to flash your firmware and run my own software on your router hardware. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER119> Will be interesting to see if Tomato works on this [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomato_(firmware)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomato_\(firmware\))

</comment><comment><USER120> About the only real improvement I'm seeing here is the automatic, silent updates. That could be a lifesaver if a crucial bug were ever found.

Aside from that, eh. It looks good, I don't doubt that with that number of antennas etc. it'll work well, but if anyone else is like me they've long since forgotten what their router even is - it just sits there, doing its job, and has done for years.

I find the intelligent NAS boxes far more interesting - I have a Synology box that basically provides it's own cloud storage, download manager, etc.

<comment><USER121> Most people with old routers don't even realise the router is randomly bugging out and slowing down your web page load speeds.

Fun fact: Old routers generally don't support WiFi power saving features. That means your phone battery will drain waaay faster than it could if you had a new router. Having WiFi switched on with a phone connected to a new router will in fact generally increase battery life because it can use the cell radio less often.

[http://www.techworld.com/mobile/a-guide-to-wi-fi-power- save-...](http://www.techworld.com/mobile/a-guide-to-wi-fi-power-save- technologies-4103/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER122> Why does this thing need an ambient light detector? Really? Since when should infrastructure care what the environment looks like? Also TPM?

Can't wait for the teardown to find that there is a microphone in it.

<comment><USER123> Ever slept in a room with a wireless router before? Those flashing lights get annoying.

<comment><USER50> Pretty much any modern hardware. I bought a nice das keyboard only to find that they don't know how to make lights on it. Instead of having some sort of diffuser or screen to light up, like normal numlock indicators, this projects light in a cone. At night, it projects a big circle on my ceiling. Emailed them and they were flabbergasted this was a thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER124> Not communicating by blinking lights is not a feature to me. Progressive enhancement all you want, have a nice app for involved communication, but keep some LEDs for core status please.

<comment><USER73> > OnHub uses a dimmable light ring that uses one of four color indicators to > give you feedback.

<comment><USER124> Ha, I didn't get that message at all. So the emphasis was on 'not blinking', the colored rim is the ~LED. My apologies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER125> As some others have mentioned, the hardware for this unit is made by TP-LINK:

 _" To develop OnHub, Google partnered with network hardware maker TP-LINK. Another model, built with ASUS, is coming later this year."_ [0]

0\. [http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/google-onhub-router- aims-t...](http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/google-onhub-router-aims-to-make- home-wi-fi-easy-reliable-1.3194948)

</comment><comment> mike-cardwell The market for this seems very small to me. Here in the UK, 99.9% of people just plug in whatever their ISP give them. They're not going to buy some box from Google to make their Internet faster. And even if they do, there's a good chance it wasn't the quality of the WiFi that was their problem, so they're just going to be pissed off at Google for taking their money and not fixing anything.

</comment><comment><USER126> Apart from having even more user data, I think if this gets to masses, it places google in a very strong position to own the IoT space.

</comment><comment><USER127> Man, 500 comments? At the end of the day, this is a 199$ WLAN router. Frankly, normal customers don't care for routers. They certainly don't care paying for them. Most of them are probably oblivious to even owning one.

The entire target market for guys looking at Android app graph visualizations of their home router network is about the size of HN.

</comment><comment><USER128> The thing that throws me here that others haven't commented on yet... it's built 'in partnership with TP-Link'. TP-Link makes budget hardware, that doesn't last much longer than it's one year warranty.

Charging $199 for a TP-Link device sounds... overpriced. If this had been built by ASUS, then maybe they'd have something.

<comment><USER129> There will be one from ASUS in the future:

> Google's hardware partner for the initial OnHub is TP-LINK; it plans future > devices with other manufacturers as well, including one from ASUS later this > year.

[http://business.financialpost.com/fp-tech-desk/cio/google- in...](http://business.financialpost.com/fp-tech-desk/cio/google-inc-unveils- cylinder-shaped-onhub-wi-fi-router-with-made-in-canada-software)

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> This is something that will be amazing to reverse engineer too actually. Something similar to bunnie taking apart the xbox.

</comment><comment><USER130> I wonder what sort of ramifications this has for improving indoor location services for Google's connected properties.

</comment><comment><USER131> I find it odd how it seems to be marketed to the general consumer, who usually won't need the high specs. What is the average person going to use USB on the router for?

I have a $200+ router myself, but would feel too restricted with the OnHub's single LAN port.

Still very interesting. Just wondering why the high price point and (imo) over the top specs.

<comment><USER132> > What is the average person going to use USB on the router for?

It's a good way to share a printer, especially if you don't have a printer that supports WiFi.

<comment><USER131> Ah, okay. Hadn't thought of that, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER133> I don't know how I would feel about Google having a device in my house that monitors all my internet traffic, I think they already know enough about me and I'm not sure I'm in a position to I trust them. Made me think of a funny comparison: I wouldn't buy a car or condom from Microsoft.

<comment><USER134> What about a car from Google? Perhaps one that drives itself?

</comment></comment><comment><USER135> I'll try not to put this in a way that may be interpreted as "gratuitous negativity", but I stopped caring about Google branded hardware a long time ago, since the odds of it being available in many countries outside the US sometime this century are near zero.

</comment><comment><USER136> I could see something great coming out from OnHub once you start connecting other devices around the home thru thread mesh network [http://threadgroup.org/](http://threadgroup.org/)

</comment><comment><USER137> Even with all these data privacy issues, I am still interested on how it performs since 2.4ghz and 5ghz has their own 6 anntennas. This is important for me since on the country where I am living now, 1gbps internet connection is the norm.

</comment><comment><USER138> The perspective of the phone on the desk in the hero shot of the "onhub" seems out of wack with respect to all the other objects on the desk, and the shadow of the onhub. Is that phone levitating slightly?

Oh, and it's clearly a telescreen.

</comment><comment><USER139> "Choose a password you can remember, and share it with a friend using the Google On app."

No, but no thanks. Not with Google. It's already hard to prevent people from syncing my wifi password with them as part of the Android cloud stuff.

</comment><comment><USER140> I get a 404 error when I try to pre order in Google Store. I have an Australian account - maybe that's why? [http://i.imgur.com/x0soYdJ.png](http://i.imgur.com/x0soYdJ.png)

</comment><comment><USER141> It's surprising to see this announcement in the wake of the Alphabet restructuring. Because of privacy concerns, I suspect they'd sell many more of these under the Nest brand, than they will under the Google brand.

</comment><comment><USER142> I have a new-ish Tp-Link router that's been driving me utterly batty, so I'm looking forward to Google getting into this game.

Hope they develop a full line of products, like having a second device for range-boosting.

<comment><USER143> Just an FYI, this is a TP-Link router that is being rebranded by Google. (TP- Link TGR1900)

<comment><USER46> It looks more like a Google-designed router that is manufactured by TP-Link. Notably, the firmware is from Google.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER144> it could have been better if google have added storage and caching facility right on the box, that would've helped people to reduce the total data usage for passive contents like videos.

</comment><comment><USER145> How does it–It's really fast! Yes but how can it be faster–Why is fast good? Because of all the things you do in your life. Okay, but what technology does—Circular antenna LOLz!1

<comment><USER146> It's fast because it supports the 802.11ac standard, which offers faster rates than 802.11n. The 802.11ac standard provisions for various rates, including the 1900 Mbps rate supported by this device. That's 600 Mbps over the 2.4 GHz band, plus 1,300 Mbps over the 5 GHz band.

802.11ac enables faster rates primarily by supporting wider bandwidths, more antennas, and larger symbol constellations (each symbol transmitted over the wireless channel can take on one value from a larger set of possible values, thereby conveying more information per symbol).

</comment></comment><comment><USER147> Does it have a microphone? Did not see it mentioned in the specs...

</comment><comment><USER148> The wireless radios in routers deteriorate and should be replaced every two years. The ones on your device deteriorates too, but not as quickly because it's not constantly in use like a router's. I will not be buying one of these as I consider these to be infrastructure and infrastructure should be built to industry standards so that it's easily maintained by swapping components.

The privacy concerns bug me, but what bugs me more is the prospect that my lifestyle might start relying on a product that the company putting is out has a nasty tendency to discontinue when it's no longer convenient to support. See: Google Reader.

<comment><USER149> > The wireless radios in routers deteriorate

Citation needed. What exactly do you think is deteriorating here? It's not like the antenna is oxidizing from use…

</comment></comment><comment><USER150> 199 in exchange of google having another active spy system directly at your network edge, in case you run non google devices.

What a privilege. Think I'll pass thanks.

</comment><comment><USER151> now available for order on Amazon. [http://amzn.to/1HUa2oB](http://amzn.to/1HUa2oB)

</comment><comment><USER152> All the features and problem are solved by EERO, and solved in a much more elegant and consumer friendly way.

I mean Christ, do google even understand UX?

</comment><comment><USER153> Why is wifi so darn expensive? Does this thing really have $200 worth of electronics? Is it that much better than the $12 TP-links?

</comment><comment><USER154> their rel-alternate

        <link href="https://on.google.com/intl/en_ca/hub/" hreflang="en-ca" rel="alternate">
        <link href="https://on.google.com/intl/fr_ca/hub/" hreflang="fr-ca" rel="alternate">

points to a 404

<comment><USER155> This seems to show that they will launch the device in Canada (en_ca, fr_ca)

<comment><USER129> The OnHub will be available for $269 on Aug. 31 in Canada, from Best Buy and the Google Store.

More at: [http://business.financialpost.com/fp-tech-desk/cio/google- in...](http://business.financialpost.com/fp-tech-desk/cio/google-inc-unveils- cylinder-shaped-onhub-wi-fi-router-with-made-in-canada-software)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER156> Here's one for the FAQ:

"Does OnHub send all my browsing information including SSL SNI header information to Google?"

</comment><comment><USER157> This had to come out two weeks after I upgraded at home to a Cisco 1252AG, didn't it? I still want one...

</comment><comment><USER158> The design reminds me of something between a Mac Pro, Amazon Echo, and D-Link's "cloud" routers.

</comment><comment><USER159> Cool. Can I flash with Tomato or DD-WRT?

</comment><comment><USER160> Which Operating System(OS) does it use? Will it be open sourced? Can you use it without a Google Account?

</comment><comment><USER161> Am I the only one thinking this is Google's stealth echo competitor? It has all the right pieces. It's constantly connected to internet and power, zigbee/bluetooth/wifi, speaker, decent (enough) CPU, front end app.

I'm sure they already have an API built into the back end. All they would need to do would be to build a gateway API for developers and add a mic.

<comment><USER162> Far field speech recognition is _really_ hard. You can't just throw any random set of mic / speaker into a tube and expect it to work. The echo is almost exclusively mic / speaker, in a very specific configuration. There's no way the product they're shipping will be able to do far field speech recognition (much less while playing music).

</comment></comment><comment><USER163> So how does it connect to the app? Buttons and lights are a lot better than no connection.

<comment><USER164> They tell you, they just tucked it away at the bottom:

      >When you set up OnHub using an Android device, it uses an audio tone to send a setup code directly to your mobile device for easy and secure setup.

<comment><USER165> I imagine it's like Echo, and the various sticks out now; if not on Android, you connect to it from your phone as a wifi access point, and set it up from there. When done it reboots and becomes part of your regular network.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER166> A Google branded TP-Link router

</comment><comment><USER167> If there's one thing Google doesn't know its WiFi. Stupid Chromecast cannot connect to like 95% of Hotel WiFi. For something named after a web browser I find it mind boggling that it can't display a web page for you to enter your room number in or agree to terms.

<comment><USER168> The splash screens aren't the only problem, some hotels enforce device isolation on the network too.

Some kind of travel router (or laptop) sharing the hotel's WiFi to your own little hotspot is the way to go. You probably wouldn't want your chromecast open to other guests connected directly to the hotel's wifi anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER169> I love the design but I wish it had an ethernet port (or two).

Edit: I spoke too soon.

<comment><USER170> From the specs section:

Networking

      2.4 GHz wireless  802.11b/g/n 3x3 with smart antenna
      5 GHz wireless    802.11a/n/ac 3x3 with smart antenna
      AUX wireless      802.11a/b/g/n/ac 1x1
      Ethernet switch   QCA8337 Gigabit sw
      WAN port          1x 10/100/1000 Mbps
      LAN port          1x 10/100/1000 Mbps

<comment><USER169> Oh awesome. I didn't see it in the illustrations so I assumed it just had one internet hookup.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER171> These articles about Google's past with wi-fi might be relevant.

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/google-wifi- snooping/](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/google-wifi-snooping/)

</comment><comment><USER172> Newegg says "Release Date: 08/31/2015"

</comment><comment><USER173> "Our product is not available in your country".

How predictable.

</comment><comment><USER174> Did anyone see whether it supported IPv6 on Comcast?

</comment><comment><USER175> in before "another project that google use it as a toy and then just throw it away if it fails"

</comment><comment><USER176> why would i invite google into my home?

</comment><comment><USER177> Not available outside the US. :-(

<comment><USER178> Available in Canada, technically not the US.

<comment><USER177> That must be new because I am in Canada, and it said "not available in your country".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> Step 1: Get people to buy a ChromeCast to view their media

Step 2: Make ChromeCast randomly vanish from WiFi

Step 3: Get people to buy an OnHub to fix their WiFi

Step 4: ???

Step 5: All your data

</comment><comment><USER179> and dust? it can't be for out in the open with an open rim around the top.

</comment><comment><USER180> "From Google". Oh OK, a spying device. No thanks.

</comment><comment><USER181> site is written in AngularJS :)

</comment><comment><USER182> TAKE MY MONEY

</comment><comment><USER183> Google is taking over the worrrrld

</comment><comment><USER184> WOW!!!

Now they can monitor all activities without injecting any tools at OS or application level.

<comment><USER85> Because they couldn't already, when they were an ISP. Google Fiber.

</comment></comment><comment><USER185> No Z-Wave support? That's a huge FAIL for home automation.

Sooooo close Google. Add Z-Wave support and you'll have an instant winner. Make the speaker high quality (if it isn't already) and encroach on Sonos and Amazon.

But without Z-Wave, you won't sell enough to make an impact.

</comment><comment><USER186> Google #OnHub slogan: "Because if we didn't already know most things about you now we'll know exactly everything you do on the internet"

</comment><comment><USER187> Why would anyone want this over the latest Asus AC1900 router? Asus' web interface is easy to use and their QoS is surprisingly good out of the box.

Also, Asus isn't going to spy on everything you do.

<comment><USER74> Because it's pretty, it's made by Google, and look at all of the fancy marketing they've done.

More seriously, it offers a lot more integration with non-wifi wireless devices than the Asus does, tighter integration with Android and other Google services, and some value-add features like password-less pairing and a friendly app.

<comment><USER188> "look at all of the fancy marketing they've done"

They are trying to be Apple even the design seems close to what Apple might do at least to my eye. The thing is Apple does this and gets business because there was a core of important and vital products and software that got people using Apple for a different reason. So if I buy (as I have) Apple's Airport extreme it's because I am buying other Apple products. I can't say if that weren't the case that would be what I would go with. (I mean I might but since I am already buying the brand I am biased and just go for the IBM choice so to speak...).

My point is that a company can't simply take a product here and a product there and hope to have great success with just a great isolated device for a particular purpose.

Which means that since google is not stupid they must be doing this for another reason (as others have mentioned). They aren't doing it because they honestly expect and need to sell routers and make money from that or even another play that they are building on that we don't know about. Must be something else going on here.

Lastly, end users in flyover country don't care about all of this unless they know about or have a particular problem. And how many people even have these problems? (I don't as only one example..) If they did they would be protesting outside of cable companies and demanding better remote controls for their fios or comcast dvr's.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> You can almost hear the TLA's grunt of relief. Maybe they won't 'go dark' after all.

I mean, hell, even if the consumer monitors the thing, a constant X mbps stream of strongly encrypted traffic to Google is _normal_.

What do we do? Demand that the device must give us (per-device) keys for the purposes of audit? Somebody will argue that that would open an attack vector...

@EFF, what do we do?

</comment><comment><USER189> Woohoo, another phallic gadget, almost exactly looks like a Mac Pro!

<comment><USER190> I'm not sure you understand what "phallic" means...

<comment><USER189> I really do - round and tall. This was supposed to be a joke, but I guess I don't know how to interact with HN community yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER191> Not sure if this is the best place to ask, but since it's a router thread, I'll go ahead.

I'm looking to buy a router with better performance than the Linksys E3200 that I currently have.

Lots of VMs, torrents with many connections, etc are taking a toll on it, especially towards the NAT connection count limit (wifi signal/speed is enough for me).

ERLite from Ubiquiti Networks seems interesting, but it's not so popular and I'm past the days where debugging routers was fun.

Any suggestions?

<comment> jon-wood The ERLite is a fantastic router. I picked one up with the same worries you seem to have, but there's a decent community around them, and even then you'll likely only need that if you're doing something exotic like failover connections (although even those are now supported through the web UI).

For $99 the only drawback is that it doesn't also do wifi, but given how poorly my previous all in one APs have done that's possibly a feature. Ubiquiti's Unifi APs piss all over older access points I've had, I just wish I'd ponied up for at least one AC standard one instead of cheaping out on the G band ones.

<comment><USER191> Yeah, I'm starting to consider it a bonus if the devices are separated (router/wifi).

Thank you, I'll give the product another look.</comment></comment></comment>


Finding Amelia Earhart's Plane Seemed Impossible – Then Came a Startling Clue - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/12/science/amelia-earhart-search-robert-ballard.html <comment><USER2> Tighar, the group mentioned in the article, has been pushing this photo for many years, and about every 18 months or so they manage to get somebody new to do a story about it. Considering nothing has ever come of it, I'm less than convinced.

Here's a reasonably good skeptical summary of their efforts written a couple years ago:

[https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4580](https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4580)

<comment><USER3> Thanks for sharing this very well written article. I loved the part about the picture of Hitler turning out to be Moe from the Three Stooges.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't have a ready reference, but my recollection is:

1\. she wasn't a master of the airplane, having crashed it on takeoff before due to overloading

2\. she had a history of overruling her navigator and being wrong

3\. she tried to find a tiny island at the limit of the airplane's range in a time when navigation wasn't that accurate

4\. did not have proper training on the radio and direction finder equipment

5\. flew into a headwind and kept going

6\. proper technique at the time was to fly towards the centerline between Howland and another island, doubling the likelihood of one being in visual range. She did not do this.

This was at a time when such an attempt would be very, very unforgiving of mistakes. I don't think there's much of a mystery. (WW2 saw a lot of airplanes disappear over the Pacific with no trace.)

Lindbergh would have had a very hard time missing Europe. His biggest problems were fatigue, icing, and headwinds. I think Lingbergh took a much more calculated risk. His predecessors disappeared without a trace.

<comment><USER5> Citations needed for pretty much all of that. Especially the bit about Earhart having a history of overruling Noonan, since by most accounts they had a very open working relationship built on trusting and relying on each other's respective capabilities.

Also, you followed up with a post about _trained Navy pilots_ going missing on relatively simple flights between two giant landmasses where all you have to do is literally fly east or west. Earhart and Noonan were able to handle the navigation for much more difficult flights than crossing the Atlantic. So yes, there's still very much of a mystery as to what happened to them.

<comment><USER4> > Citations needed

A fair question. Here's some detail:

> Especially the bit about Earhart having a history of overruling Noonan

My reference for that was a documentary on Earhart on TV, sorry don't recall the title. When they crossed the Atlantic and hit Africa, Noonan said turning right to find out where they were, Earhart overruled and turned left, and was wrong. Fortunately, they had enough fuel to correct the mistake. The documentary said their relationship was not as collegial as you characterized it.

The headwind thing came from it, too.

B-17s were Army Air Force, not Navy. The WW2 planes going missing over the Pacific were often B-29s flying great distances over water to attack Japan. They didn't have trouble finding Japan, but finding Iwo Jima on the return wasn't easy.

The bit about how to navigate to a tiny island came from my father. Him being a trained navigator, I think that's fair. Besides, don't you think it makes sense?

The radio issues you can find in the wikipedia article about Earhart. The crash with the overloaded airplane you can find a brief mention of there, too.

> So yes, there's still very much of a mystery as to what happened to them.

Not to me, not to a trained navigator, either. For comparison, when JFK jr disappeared, the first thing my dad said was spacial disorientation, a perennial killer of inexperienced pilots flying into poor visibility conditions. After weeks of investigations and conspiracy theories, the investigators reluctantly made that conclusion, as well. Nobody wanted to believe a mistake that simple could have taken down JFK jr.

<comment><USER5> I saw that "documentary" as well, as I recall most of it was speculation unsupported by any third party sources.

Also, the Wikipedia article doesn't say what you claim it says. It in fact states that the overloaded plabe was a test flight attempted to determine how much weight the plane could hold, and that neither Earhart or Noonan were able to use Morse code but could otherwise operate their radios.

<comment><USER4> Much of it should be documentable, like the headwinds, the overloaded plane crash, and turning the wrong way at Africa which should be in the flight log.

It's well known that an overloaded airplane can handle very different, and for a pilot inexperienced with it it can be very, very dangerous. Heck, I was watching "Alaska Crash Investigations" just the other day, where the cause of a crash shortly after takeoff was determined to be due to the airplane being overloaded by 500 lbs. Crashing overloaded bombers at the end of the runway was a popular way to die in WW2, as they were always deliberately overloading them.

Linbergh famously overloaded the Spirit of St Louis and figured his biggest risk of death came from getting the machine off the ground.

<comment><USER6> >overloaded the Spirit of St Louis

Can we use the word 'overloaded' here? Lucky Lindy's plane was custom-built, basically a flying gas tank.

It is not like he took an off-the-shelf plane and loaded it beyond its design specifications.

<comment><USER4> That's a good point.

Lindbergh wrote:

"No plane ever took off so heavily loaded; and my propeller is set for cruising, not for take-off. Of course our test flights at San Diego indicate that it will take off—theoretically at least. But since we didn't dare try a full load from Camp Kearney's stony ground, the wings now have to lift a thousand pounds more than they ever carried before—five thousand pounds to be lifted by nothing more tangible than air."

He also indicated that the airplane was not stressed to land with such a heavy load.

\-- The Spirit of St. Louis

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> In my opinion, the most fascinating corroborating evidence of the location of Amelia's crash is the diary of a 15yo girl in Flordia that purportedly received a reflected shortwave radio broadcast by Amelia after the crash and wrote notes contemporaneously as she heard the transmission. On the last page, she recorded that she heard something that sounded like New York. The visible shipwreck on Nikumaroro is SS Norwich City. [https://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/Archives/Documents/Noteb...](https://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/Archives/Documents/Notebook/notebook.html)

<comment><USER8> Wow, that gave me chills to read the transcript. If true, that's an amazing story. Do we know if Earhart had a shortwave radio onboard?

<comment><USER9> Long-range wireless communication necessarily limits you to shortwave bands, exclusively if you don't have satellites. Earhart most certainly had a shortwave transceiver onboard. It is totally plausible and unsurprising that hams in the United States would have been able to hear Earhart's distress calls. Additionally, this was in the age before vacuum tubes opened up frequencies higher than HF for widespread commercial use -- for example UHF (used for television broadcasts) was still largely experimental around the time Earhart disappeared. So consumer wireless devices were still mostly clustered in and around the shortwave bands.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> My first thought was they should have Dr. Ballard searching for MH370.

A quick search found this in an AMA he did.

"I offered immediately on hearing of its loss to help in any way possible either advising them on how best to hunt for the airliner or to do it with my own ship and technology but they turned me down. You can't help unless you are invited to help and they clearly wanted to do it themselves. Recently, I met the president of Malaysia Airlines who offered to send me the search data to look at just in case they might have missed something. I am still waiting for the data but don't expect to get it."

[https://www.reddit.com/r/history/comments/7eim7p/im_dr_bob_b...](https://www.reddit.com/r/history/comments/7eim7p/im_dr_bob_ballard_and_im_the_oceanographer_who/dq5c12d/)

<comment><USER11> > or to do it with my own ship and technology but they turned me down. You > can't help unless you are invited to help

Didn't the guy who found the initial wreckage do it on his own inspite of the Malaysian gov't?

<comment><USER10> His tale adds yet another bizarre twist to the story

[https://www.news.com.au/national/mh370-private- investigator-...](https://www.news.com.au/national/mh370-private-investigator- getting-death-threats-warning-he-will-be-killed-if-he-keeps-probing-flight- disappearance/news-story/90d61d16e1594c8ca467c3e5abb6a282)

There's a big difference between picking up wreckage on beaches and putting your ship in the middle of a coordinated search pattern.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The island he's singled out was flown over within days of her disappearance and the pilot did not see any signs of an airplane.

It would be wonderful to finally solve this mystery, but it's not as though this idea is some recent breakthrough. It was thought of at the time, which is why the pilot was sent to look.

<comment><USER13> I was on a SAR mission a couple of years ago for a lost aircraft outside of Truckee, CA. In that case, there was flight radar data available for most of the flight path, Civil Air Patrol was out in force with multiple overhead flyovers, CHP and Air National Guard were also out, we were receiving intermittent ELT signals, there were hundreds of ground searchers and UTVs/ATVs/snowmobiles, and all of our search activity was recorded and coordinated through a well-organized incident command with specific search assignments for each day.

We still failed to locate the aircraft. It was found a month or so later by some random recreationalists.

Any number of circumstances may have prevented it from being spotted the first time. It's far, far harder to locate missing aircraft than most people realize.

<comment><USER14> Just a thought exercise to show why this is so hard: let's say you know where the aircraft was a minute before crashing but not the direction of it. If an aircraft is flying at a modest 200 km/h (that's a Cessna 172 cruising) then in a single minute it can fly more than 3km. The area of a circle with a radius of that is close to 35km^2. That's half of Manhattan Island.

<comment><USER15> How difficult would be to fly one hd filming plane above, then scour the imagery with a fine comb, possibly computer vision aided?

<comment><USER16> Sometimes there are no traces left behind. In 1947, Avro Lancastrian airliner flew into a mountain in the Andes and triggered an avalanche that buried the wreck. Compressed snow slowly turned into ice and became a part of the glacier. Over the next 50 years, the wreck moved down the mountain with ice until it eventually melted and revealed parts of the aircraft. They were found by two mountaineers in 1998.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1947_BSAA_Avro_Lancastrian_Sta...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1947_BSAA_Avro_Lancastrian_Star_Dust_accident)

If an aircraft goes missing, we're usually dealing with mountains, oceans or remote areas with dense tree covers. Remote sensing is very limited in these environments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > Mr. Campbell shared the photo with experts at the National Geospatial- > Intelligence Agency, who used classified technology to enhance the picture.

I was curious about this since I hadn't heard of this agency before. I have no experience with GEOINT but they seem to have a pretty impressive GH organization

[https://github.com/ngageoint](https://github.com/ngageoint)

<comment><USER18> As the NSA and NRO have gotten more PR, I think the NGA has taken the mantle of "biggest intelligence agency you've never heard of".

Probably the most famous thing about the NGA is the time when President Obama was doing a meet-and-greet at a Five Guys in the DC area. He asked someone in line where they worked, and when the answer was "National Geospatial- intelligence Agency" it sounded like it was Obama's first time hearing about it Edit: Link to video [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1TxMKaYHYA&t=5m55s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1TxMKaYHYA&t=5m55s)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Archive of linked analysis of photos showing landing gear and 3D rendered / lit landing gear. (Because original server might be overloaded I could not reach it)

[https://web.archive.org/web/20190812112844/https://tighar.or...](https://web.archive.org/web/20190812112844/https://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/Archives/Research/Bulletins/82_BevingtonAnalysis2/82_BevingtonObjectNewAnalysis.html)

<comment><USER20> That article seems rather tendentious. It claims that 'Jeff Glickman and the State Dept. photo analysts looked at the image and asked, "What does the thing on the reef look like?" They concluded, "It looks like Electra landing gear wreckage."' but, as told in the article, the only candidate they considered for "what does the thing on the reef look like?" was, in fact, the wreckage of an Electra landing gear, damaged, and adjusted until it was possible to say that the image was "consistent with Lockheed Electra landing gear components" (at least they did _not_ attempt to sharpen the image, on account of the risk of "introducing information that isn't really there.") (Update: after seeing several other zooms of the object, I get the impression that the one chosen for this article did undergo some form of processing.)

AFAIK, "consistent with" merely means that the hypothesis cannot be ruled out, but that does not seem to be a high bar when the image is very small and blurred.

So what else might they have considered as a candidate for the object? How about anything that might of been swept off the nearby wreck by nearly eight years of storms to start with, not to mention tree stumps, pieces of coral and other natural detritus that storms regularly move around? There seems to be a lot of confirmation bias here.

<comment><USER5> The island was in fact one of the original suspects when Earhart's plane _first_ went missing but by the time the US Navy arrived several weeks later, storms and natural wave action would have washed most of the plane away.

The point of the analysis was to see if there was photographic evidence to suggest that it might have been the correct island all along.

Yes, it could be a tree trump or some other debris--but it also looks exactly like the wreckage of a particular part of her plane, which is enough to justify a more detailed search.

Like the Bismark's final resting spot, this island has a significant underwater seamount. If the plane landed on the beach and sunk, if could have slid thousands of feet into crevices in the seamount or even all the way down to the abyssal plain surrounding the island.

<comment><USER20> I agree that there are _other_ factors that make Nikumaroro a candidate for Earhart's final resting place.

Calling the image _exactly_ like an Electra undercarriage leg is quite a stretch, IMHO - even that interpretation's proponents merely called it "consistent".

<comment><USER5> It does look exactly like a blurry, distant photo of an Electra leg...

That's why they're launching another search. It could be other things, but it could also be debris from the exact same type of plane she was flying.

<comment><USER20> > It does look exactly like a blurry, distant photo of an Electra leg.

At least for the sake of argument, I will grant that a blurry, distant photo of an Electra leg might look exactly like this one, but in such a case, the exactitude would be in the correspondence of two blurred, small images, and that exactitude does not transfer to the identification of the imaged object as an Electra leg. You have to ask what else could produce a matching photograph, and if it is sufficiently distant and blurred, just about anything of approximately the right reflectivity would work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> [http://archive.li/BKq3S](http://archive.li/BKq3S)

<comment><USER22> The text is still in the page.

        console.log(document.querySelector('#site-content').innerText.replace(/(.{80}\w*)\s*/g, '$1\n'))

<comment><USER21> Sure - but if that changes down the road, the archive.li link will still show the proper content.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Ballard you say, so what does US military need to cover up this time around?

</comment><comment><USER24> Funny, I just watched this last week - [https://memory- alpha.fandom.com/wiki/The_37%27s_(episode)](https://memory- alpha.fandom.com/wiki/The_37%27s_\(episode\))

</comment><comment><USER25> This is exciting news!

</comment><comment><USER26> I subscribe to the Wash Post. Not the NYT. Wish I could read it, though.

<comment><USER27> The paywalls are implemented in javascript FYI, no javascript: no paywall.

<comment><USER28> I thought NYT at least had switched to "the content loading beyond the teaser is implemented in JS, so no JS => no article".</comment></comment></comment>