Wi-fi is something I think about every day. I have a low end enterprise wi-fi (unifi) and high end enterprise wi-fi (Xirrus) in my home office network. Six access points, open source firewall appliance (Pfsense/Gateway), and two cable modems allow me to experiment, test and develop solutions for a better gateway.
To give you an idea how hard it can be to figure out how this stuff works check out this Arstechnica article where they found out what they didn't know about testing wi-fi mesh network solutions and how "easy" means different things to the vendors.
“More details are coming, but one important quick takeaway is that “Easy Mode” means different things for different competitors. Plume didn’t actually get an “Easy Mode,” because it roamed properly and rapidly everywhere. Orbi’s “Easy Mode” was the addition of a second satellite AP, which was ridiculous overkill in the 3,500-square-foot test house. Google Wifi, AmpliFi HD, and Eero all received quite a bit more cajoling in Easy Mode. This could mean running a few extra tests at a site where roaming happened late or manually unplugging and re-plugging my USB3 test wNIC when roaming went badly. In AmpliFi HD’s case, Easy Mode even involved some rather heroic measures and a lot of cursing.”
Xfinity announced xFi its home wifi solution.
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The xFi app for iOS and Android works with the internet “gateway” boxes that Xfinity customers can rent. They work as both a cable modem and wireless router; while we’d probably recommend buying your own gear rather than leasing from your service provider, the truth is that millions of people just go with what Xfinity offers. ”
The one company I think will make an interesting Home Gateway move is Amazon. They have Amazon Echo and Fire TV as home hardware. And even bigger is they have AWS with all that cloud experience. There are AWS hardware devices like Storage Gateway.
“AWS Storage Gateway is a hybrid storage service that enables your on-premises applications to seamlessly use storage in the AWS Cloud. You can use the service for backup and archiving, disaster recovery, cloud bursting, storage tiering, and migration.”
Google has Google Wifi as a home gateway. Apple has Apple TV.
There is a battle going on for who will own the home gateway to connect all the devices.
My choice is to build my own and have complete control. The trouble is once you go with the home solutions all too often you give up control for easy of use.