I got a bunch of Gale (Google Wifi devices) on an auction site as broken. The owner of the devices was basically saying that all the devices were working but randomly shutting down. To make them work again, they had to be unplugged and replugged. So he/she auctioned them off as replacement devices at an ultra low price (3 AC-1204 and 2 GJ2CQ models) of 30$ for all 5. I of course had to get it. Power doesn’t seem to be an issue. Mostly a SW conflict due to the configuration being used by the previous owner.

Gale-Gatekeeper is a security tool that allows you to control devices on your Wifi. Gale-Gatekeeper is a Telegram-based network access control system for OpenWrt routers. When a new device connects to the network via DHCP, the system sends a Telegram notification with interactive Approve/Deny buttons. Devices with static DHCP leases are automatically allowed. Temporary devices require manual approval and have timeout-based access (30 minutes default).

I was so tired of the impossibility to control the wifi devices on my network. My kids used to jump devices from one to another. I also got a host of devices from school which I had no control over. So my kids basically got access to the internet almost 24x7 jumping devices. I have been trying very hard to implement a effort-reward mechanism but it was not working as I had no/almost 0 control over the screen time for my kids.

OpenWrt is a great router firmware with lots of features, flexibility and security updates. It is basically a small Linux distribution and does a smart job at adding enhancements to any “supported” router. One can read more about it here.

I have been using Google Wifi for a while now and it has been a great experience. It has an amazing HW (4GB of storage and 512MB of RAM). Google SW can be controlled using Google Home but privacy, DNS, parental controls, firewall, ad-blocking and other features are either not supported or are not as good as I would like them to be. And also my version of the Wifi AC-1304 does not receive any new features.

About a couple of months ago, I went from OpenWRT to Gargoyle on my Netgear R6220 router. You can read more about it here. I had setup a couple of networks with one hidden and not isolating clients whereas the other one doing the reverse. Now everything was OK but the Gargoyle used to crash my kernel whenever a new device tried to join the unadvertised network. The different interfaces were also brought down. Again, there are certain features of OpenWRT that I really missed with one being the ability to create multiple virtual radio interfaces and the other being the flexibility with adblock host lists.

I recently got a Netgear R6220 router, an AC1200 dual-band router with very impressive specs. It was awarded the best router in 2016 and now in 2019, I still think it is a very good router. It has a 2 core Mediatek MT7621 (MIPS) processor with 128 MB RAM & 128 MB ROM i.e. ample space with some good processing power. Below you can see the impressive specs. BTW: I got this for almost 15 USD which was a steal!