If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. Learn more.
You probably don't give your router any thought once you've shoved that spidery doodad with all the antennae under your TV, in a cabinet, or behind the shoes in your closet. You buy it, install it, and forget about it until something goes wrong. Then you unplug it and plug it back in, or type in a weird URL that starts with 192.168 to change the settings, or just toss it and go back to Best Buy, where you spend as little as possible on another one. Rinse and repeat.
But over the last year, stalwarts like Netgear and Linksys, plus newcomers like Eero and Google, started shipping routers you might consider usable and attractive---two adjectives you never thought you might see describing a router. Now those companies plan to turn their routers into speakers, voice assistants, and more, while using smarter back-end tech to make sure every connected device you bring into your home stays online and secure without interrupting your Netflix binge. The day is coming when you'll consider your router one of the most useful and important gadgets you own. No more hiding that plastic Linksys box; internet connectivity matters too much for that. Besides, Alexa won't be able to hear you from inside the closet.
Until recently, even the companies making routers considered them an afterthought. "Everyone's selling the same box," says Nick Weaver, CEO of Eero, which hopes to reinvent the router. Every company followed the same formula: Buy the latest chips from Qualcomm and Broadcom, package them in a plastic shell, call it something like RT-ACRH13 Dual-Band 2x2 AC1300 Wi-Fi 4-port Gigabit Router with USB 3.0 (a real name, by the way), and sell it for as much as the market would bear.
Then, in 2015, Google introduced the The OnHub router, a matte blue cylinder that looked like a lamp from West Elm, and declared it the wireless router of the future. Google made The OnHub easy to set up and easy to fix when something went awry. It looked great on a reclaimed-wood coffee table, and being in a more prominent location in the home improved performance. So began the era of the pretty router, with companies like Starry and Plume improving their devices simply by improving the aesthetics. Mesh systems like Eero and Google Wi-Fi followed, where adding two or three small boxes around your house and linking them ensured better Wi-Fi coverage.
The newfound visibility offered tech companies an opportunity to rethink the router. "As a Wi-Fi system, we’re starting to be throughout multiple spaces in a home, and of course there are things we could think about within that regard," says Ben Brown, the senior product manager for Google Wi-Fi.
Brown won't elaborate, but The Information recently reported that early versions of Google Wi-Fi included a microphone, speaker, and voice assistant, and that the next Google Home could include a built-in router. But Google may have scrapped those plans, Brown told me, to focus first on solving the huge but necessary challenge of solving connectivity problems. "First and foremost, we care about making sure you have the best Wi-Fi connectivity to your devices," he says.
If Google does combine Home with a Wi-Fi device---and it seems obvious it should---such a device could easily become the most-used gadget in many homes. Think about it: A wireless speaker and shopping-list keeper combined with a weather oracle and magical question-answerer that beams internet throughout your house. All of that, in a box shaped a bit like an air freshener.
You can easily see Amazon doing the same with the Echo, placing Alexa in even more homes. And it's equally likely that other companies will integrate Alexa into their products. The Linksys Velop or Netgear Orbi already offer Echo integration. It takes just one more step to natively support voice control and remove Amazon's gadget entirely. When you suddenly find yourself with two ways of talking to Alexa, you know which one people are going to keep---the one that also provides the internet.
You don't have to wait for all that, though. Routers already represent so much more than internet delivery tools. Think of them more like home operating systems. More than 10 billion devices will fill people's homes by 2019, according to research firm IDC, all of them connecting to their routers. Something must regulate all that traffic and ensure plays together nicely. Many new routers already prioritize specific devices or services, or turn off the internet at homework time. That's just the beginning. Once you can identify a device, who it belongs to, and what it can and should do, "your network can do control, it can do permissions, and it can give you insight into the capabilities of your home," Weaver says.
When the network becomes more than a dumb broadband stream, your router turns into something like a smart home hub. (Samsung fashioned the new Connect Home, for example, to do precisely that.) It also places your router squarely in control of the security and privacy of your network, simply because it oversees what comes and goes---when even baby monitors can be enlisted in destructive botnets, something must keep watch. "Most of the devices that are currently in your house, on your internet, you couldn’t install antivirus on them if you wanted to," says Paul Judge, CEO of router-maker Luma. "Who’s going to protect that world? It has to be built into the network." Sixty percent of Luma customers have seen their router discover a network security problem the user knew nothing about. Everyone I spoke to agrees the router bears a responsibility for protecting users from attacks.
Routers like the Gryphon and the Fltr, which raised huge crowdfunding sums earlier this year, are designed specifically with this kind of security in mind. The Fltr automatically offers VPN protection, ad blocking, and total anonymity through Tor. The Gryphon can automatically disconnect devices when they act up, and kill viruses before they reach your computer. Everything happens on the router, between your computer and the hackers or spies and hackers eager to get their hands on your data.
Like everything in the tech world, good ideas spread fast. A year from now, most routers will probably look the same again---just nothing like the tentacled boxes you've kept hidden. Instead, they'll provide thoughtful and constantly updated security features, dead simple set up and management, and the ability to do everything from get online to check the number of teaspoons in a cup. You'll talk to your router, and it'll talk back. And who knows. You might even start to like the thing.
