Plume "Pod" WiFi Ships

[thiggins]

Plume, the maker of tiny wall-plugged Wi-Fi mesh "pods" that emerged from stealth in June, announced it now shipping all pre-sales orders and has moved to regular sales of the product.

Plume's order page now shows "Ships in 3-4 weeks" instead of the pre-order notice. Pricing has increased to $69 per pod from the previously announced $49 (and $39 / pod pre-order price). But you can now buy pods individually instead of the minimum 6 pod order. Three packs are now $179 and six packs are $329. Plume still recommends one pod per room.

Each pod is an AC1200 class mesh access point controlled by Plume's cloud service. Buyers contemplating trying Plume should keep in mind it has only one Ethernet port. So while it can function as a router, it can't directly route to wired devices.

 

[L&LD]

Will they continue to function without Plume's cloud 'support'? Are they manually configurable?

At $55 'per room' (when bought in packs of six), this makes for a very expensive and not very usable (if wired devices are involved) network 'solution' in my opinion.

 

[pete y testing]

Will they continue to function without Plume's cloud 'support'? Are they manually configurable?

from the faq

• Will Plume continue to function when the Internet or Plume Cloud is down?
  
• Yes, WiFi services will continue to work in the event of an Internet or Plume Cloud outage. The Plume system remembers the configuration right before the outage and maintains operation so you can access your local network.

however it doesnt say you can set them up without the internet and its cloud or change the config without the cloud , basically without the cloud you be screwed

you know what this would be good for , when you are on holidays and the motel just supplies an ethernet port , its small and you can buy it as a single now , instant wifi access point

 

[thiggins]

Don't expect a review anytime soon. Plume says all review units are "unavailable".

 

[sfx2000]

however it doesnt say you can set them up without the internet and its cloud or change the config without the cloud , basically without the cloud you be screwed

I'd be ok with a cloud enabled device, but not one that is cloud dependent - it looks like Plume is cloud dependent, e.g. it stores local config, but to manage it, it still might require phoning home to it's management platform.

you know what this would be good for , when you are on holidays and the motel just supplies an ethernet port , its small and you can buy it as a single now , instant wifi access point

Kind of spendy for a travel router - and it's been a good three years since I've seen a hot ethernet port in a hotel room - at least here in North America - the trend seems to be WiFi only..

 

[pete y testing]

and it's been a good three years since I've seen a hot ethernet port in a hotel room - at least here in North America - the trend seems to be WiFi only..

lol dont forget we aussies still live back in the stone age network wise , hell most of the country is still on adsl with speeds sub 10Mbps , still see lots of hotels here with ethernet ports

 

[RMerlin]

Don't expect a review anytime soon. Plume says all review units are "unavailable".

Have you come up with a plan to properly test all those Mesh (and the fake Mesh ones as well) products appearing lately?

 

[pete y testing]

Have you come up with a plan to properly test all those Mesh

it will be quite difficult to even know where to start to get a repeatable and comparable model as the factors multiply with the additional mesh points , you would almost have to turn the whole house into a faraday cage and have complete control of the environment within the space so that conditions where the same for every test

 

[RMerlin]

I guess some specific scenarios would have to be tested: how's the hands-off time when moving between two nodes, how resiliant is the network if one of the nodes suddenly disappears from the network - do other nodes get quickly rerouted to another one, that sort of things.

 

[thiggins]

I guess some specific scenarios would have to be tested: how's the hands-off time when moving between two nodes, how resiliant is the network if one of the nodes suddenly disappears from the network - do other nodes get quickly rerouted to another one, that sort of things.

As much as I'd like to "properly" test mesh, I'm fighting a losing battle trying to keep up with already doing more testing than any other publication. At this point, I'm looking primarily to automate mesh tesrting.

 

[RMerlin]

As much as I'd like to "properly" test mesh, I'm fighting a losing battle trying to keep up with already doing more testing than any other publication. At this point, I'm looking primarily to automate mesh tesrting.

I can certainly understand the amount of work involved in doing all of these yourself, and the need to automate things. Not something easily doable in this case, unless you wanted to make just one in-depth test at some point to see if at least one of these Mesh products lives up to its claims.

 

[sfx2000]

As much as I'd like to "properly" test mesh, I'm fighting a losing battle trying to keep up with already doing more testing than any other publication. At this point, I'm looking primarily to automate mesh tesrting.

Testing mesh networks can be a really tough challenge as it does depend on how the implementation by the vendor is done - I can appreciate the level of work needed...

Automation will help with obtaining consistency across a given implementation even...

 

[SeanFL]

Just got 6 of them delivered to Florida. Tim, when it's really cold and snowy in the north, you should come to Tampa and test these things

Is there anything you want me to test briefly? I have 150/150 fiber service which makes it nice to test throughput. Sean

 

[thiggins]

Thanks Sean. I'd set them up as instructed, which is I think one per room. Then go to the room the farthest away and do a throughput test. That will see how well backhaul works.