[Roritharr]

"With the ASUS OnHub, we’re also introducing Wave Control, which lets you boost the Wi-Fi speed for a particular device by simply waving your hand over the top of the ASUS OnHub—great for busy houses."

This sounds like a horrible feature.

"Honey, WiFis not working in the bathroom, could you wave over the router, that might fix something?"

[IgorPartola]

Yeah. When your ISP's DNS server starts having hiccups and you are standing there waving at your router, feeling like an idiot... I never want to interact with my router. Why would I? And messing with QoS on demand like that is probably a terrible idea.

Having said that a router like this is a huge step forward for the masses. Most people don't bother configuring their routers, changing admin passwords, etc. They never update the firmware. These new routers from Google solve that, which in itself is fantastic. Here's what I'd love to see happen in addition to all this.

- OpenWRT + automatic updates. Why don't we have this yet? I am contemplating building an x86 based router just because of the auto-update thing.

- Wi-Fi AP's that double as smoke detectors. I already have a bunch of those in the house on every floor. As a bonus they could probably use the wires they already have to set up a high speed backbone. I currently use a Ubiquiti Uni-Fi that looks like a smoke detector and it's fantastic.

- Ability to sign onto a Wi-Fi network that is less painful than sharing the passphrase. For example, if a guest comes to my house all we have to do is bump our phones to get them on my guest network. My router is hidden and my access point is on the ceiling of the second floor.

[thescriptkiddie]

> if a guest comes to my house all we have to do is bump our phones to get them on my guest network.

InstaWifi does this. I think you only need to have it installed on the sending device. It hasn't been updated in a while but it probably still works. Would be nice to have this feature built in to Android.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.jessechen....

[simoncion]

> - Ability to sign onto a Wi-Fi network that is less painful than sharing the passphrase.

If you use WPA-Enterprise, you can create a rolling username/password that's deterministically generated. [0] And/or you can load a passphrase into a Yubikey or similar for laptops that have a USB port and other devices that have NFC.

> - Ability to sign onto a Wi-Fi network that is less painful than sharing the passphrase.

If all smartphones came with a QR code reader (seriously, why doesn't every Android phone come with ZXing's Barcode Scanner??), you could print the passphrase and frame it or something. Additionally, if Google got their shit together, they could make a URI of the form

    $wifi_crypt_method//$uriescaped_ssid:$uriescaped_username:$uriescaped_pass

that every Android phone would recognize and understand what to do with.

I'm not sure why they've failed to do so for the past several years.

> I currently use a Ubiquiti Uni-Fi...

Ooh! Which one? I have a UAP-AC v1 and a UAP-AC-LR.

[0] Actually, you can do a lot more than just this. I've been having so much fun with FreeRADIUS over the past week. >:D

[IgorPartola]

I just have the UniFi AP Pro. I thought I'd need two or three of them, but one covers my whole house and an acre of land: something that my TP-Link WDR-4300 with three huge antennas failed to do. I could not be happier with this product. Got the non-AC version because I have no devices that support AC yet and it was about double the price. It also did not support the seamless handoff feature which I thought I'd need with multiple AP's.

[simoncion]

If you ever decide to get an AP that supports 802.11ac, and decide to purchase one from UBNT, I strongly recommend not purchasing the square ones. Pick up an AC-LITE, LR, or PRO.

(From what I understand, the LITE and LR use the same (Qualcomm-Atheros) radio, but the LR has a much better antenna, and the PRO uses a 3x3 version of the radio used in the LITE and the LR.)

[IgorPartola]

Thanks for the tip!

[vhold]

Good ideas except I think the whole concept of fancy smoke detectors is really bad, including the Nest Protect. A smoke detector is something you want to be as simple and reliable as possible, and operate independently. They shouldn't be prone to software bugs, or be reprogrammable or controlled from a network so they can be compromised.

[lucaspiller]

I'd actually prefer my router didn't need updates. When I buy it I expect it to 'just work', like my microwave or toaster. If I wanted to upgrade from ADSL to Fiber or have the latest 802.11z standard I'm going to need different hardware, so I don't see an issue with replacing it then.

[witty_username]

No security updates either? Even normal updates in general can bring better performance, user experience, etc.

[IgorPartola]

I don't update my router often, but I did it the day HeartBleed came out. Security updates are a big deal for something that sits on your network like that.

[AdmiralAsshat]

I don't think anyone actually WANTS updates to their device. But I'd certainly prefer that I be ABLE to in case some sort of catastrophic security failure occurs like the router having the telnet port open or a default root password open. I'd much rather have something that can be patched than something that is "locked down" yet vulnerable.

And yes, I'd prefer that the routers not have security holes in them in the first place. But I'm also realistic.

[andybak]

On the contrary it sounds like an remarkably pragmatic feature which - assuming it works as advertised - will solve many actual real-life issues with wifi better than something less manual would have done.

[jasonmp85]

No, it patches over actual real-life issues by requiring intervention from users. This is a terrible strategy. Pretty soon, every person in a crowded apartment complex will be waving over their router any time they need to do something.

Channel congestion is a huge problem in urban environments. From my home office I'm seeing 20 networks right now. Even a rudimentary dynamic channel-switching implementation could help a lot, but that's not what happens. Instead, a power outage occurs, all devices reboot, and some pathological combination causes my wireless to degrade because my router came up faster and picked a channel that my neighbor's stupid ISP-provided POS decided to squat after-the-fact. Used to be I could sidestep a lot of this by using the 5GHz band, but it appears that ISP-provided devices are starting to show up there, too (though I _think_ the newer 802.11 protocols have better behavior around channel congestion? Maybe?)

Anyways, that's my $2: this is an issue, and involving the user will just result in magic-thinking/cargo-culting being taught to non-techies for problems that could be solved through better standards. It's 2015 and the best I can get from my 802.11n network is still ≈ 50mbps, even in the same room. If wireless is the future, we need solutions, not band-aids.

[vardump]

> It's 2015 and the best I can get from my 802.11n network is still ≈ 50mbps, even in the same room.

Odd. My 2007 laptop gets 160+ Mbps goodput in the same room using 11n @5GHz.

New Macbook Pro gets routinely 500 Mbps+ goodput using 11ac.

Maybe you should get a better router?

[simoncion]

> It's 2015 and the best I can get from my 802.11n network is still ≈ 50mbps, even in the same room.

That's a pity. I have a two-antenna 802.11n client that gets between 160 and 200 mbps transfer rate one room away from the AP and between 100mbps and 160mbps two rooms away in the pipe-obstructed, tile covered bathroom.

Are you -by chance- trying to do 802.11n in the 2.4Ghz band? [0] If you are, and have any other networks around you in that band, that's a recipe for sadness:

* If you don't use 40Mhz channels with 802.11n, you'll -at best- only see slightly better than 802.11 a/g transfer rates.

* AIUI, if you try to use 40Mhz channels in the 2.4 Ghz band, you have to either use channel 1 or channel 11 as your base channel. You'll also be stomping on every other channel in the band. What's more, some APs will detect interference from other users in the band and automatically drop back to 20Mhz channels. (This is a long-winded way of saying that 40Mhz channels in the 2.4 Ghz band are often impossible for any urban or semi-urban site.) [1]

[0] If you're advertising the same SSID on both bands, and don't have band steering that you know works, you really can't rely on your client's software to be smart enough to prefer the 5Ghz band. WiFi client software is almost always oh so dumb and chooses signal strength over throughput.

[1] Adjust channel numbers and interference advice appropriately if you're not in the US.

[mikeash]

What exactly does it do? I can't figure out how to translate "boost the Wi-Fi speed for a particular device" into any technical process.

[barlo]

It likely uses QoS to prioritize traffic to the device.

[8_hours_ago]

"To make the Facebook fast, I keep the computer thingy pointed at a fan!" - My Grandmother, if she had this device.

[pjc50]

What was that discussion about the Internet of Things manifesting like "haunting"? That people would engage in ritual activities in the hope of fixing their technological problems, because understanding your IoT devices or even knowing how many you had would become impossible?

[ape4]

Or competition between family members.

[rasz_pl]

horrible? its BRILLIANT, just think of the placebo effect alone!