Why I’m considering sending back Google WiFi

After using it for a couple of hours, I have determined that Google WiFi must have been designed with the intention of taking over the running of whatever network it’s plugged into. That’s not always a bad thing, but when you’re more technical than average, it’s going to get annoying, fast.

It’s worth noting, we decided on Google WiFi without going through our usual, rigours comparison spreadsheet exercise, so I don’t know whether competitor systems would be any better.

First, the positives. The setup was easy, and it detected the fact that it was connected to an existing network, so didn’t prompt me to enter any PPPoE credentials. The reception was good. It covered a similar (but not quite) area as our existing TP-Link TD-W8980. With an additional AP, added using the mesh capabilities of Google WiFi, it reached into or garden (the reason we wanted mesh WiFi in the first place), which was great. Speed tests are great no matter if you’re next you the primary AP, or out in the extended mesh area in the garden.

Now the less positive stuff. The options are very sparse. There doesn’t appear to be a way to change the DHCP server configuration, so you’re stuck with `192.168.86.0/24`. What’s worse, is that there’s no way to disable it [alone] to instead defer to an existing DHCP server, so you then have a NAT between anything on the Wi-Fi and the wired network.

You can turn the unnecessary features off, but only by switching the device to 'Bridge Mode'. This comes with the warning that, if enabled, all mesh features and many other features, like Family Wi-Fi, will be disabled. This renders the Google WiFi devices quite useless in terms of their original purpose.

The claim in their support pages is that it "needs to do special things to control settings and communication within your Wi-Fi network". If be interested to understand what special things they're doing, as I can't see a reason why they couldn't do mesh with an existing DHCP server and simple bridged connection.

So, you may ask, what are we using that makes me resistant to replacing our entire network infrastructure?

I use an Ubiquiti EdgeRouter X, which has very nice, transparent features for both setting up, and maintaining the network. It's also known for its good security. We're yet to utilise it fully, but the plan is to create a VPN server rather than simply port forwarding SSH, and create a segmented network using VLANs, so that our IoT kit can be slightly quarantined from doing harm to the rest of the network.

All-in-all, I'm very disappointed with the first impressions Google WiFi has made. I may be sending it back if I can confirm that a competitor system will work as hoped.