<story><title>Network handover in Google Fi</title><url>http://nicholasarmstrong.com/2015/08/network-handover-google-fi/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>KirinDave</author><text>&amp;quot;but that doesn’t change the fact that Google has produced a service that works, is easy to use, switches quickly between networks,&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve had what can only be described as a hellish experience with Google&amp;#x27;s Fi service since I got it. My bugs include but are not limited to:&lt;p&gt;- SIM cards randomly not being associate with both networks, the fix for which is clearing the Fi app data, restarting the phone, and then re-running the app. With wifi, which is tricky when your car breaks down on highway 1.&lt;p&gt;- Interment and VERY poor data performance, but no interruption in voice service.&lt;p&gt;- Data service working fine, but all incoming and outgoing calls failing.&lt;p&gt;In the support category, Project Fi has also been a nightmare. None of the support staff know what to do when you encounter a problem. They don&amp;#x27;t know why my account (or my friend&amp;#x27;s account) are broken. They&amp;#x27;ve suggested (just to me) and had me do the following things:&lt;p&gt;- Reboot the phone.&lt;p&gt;- Reseat the sim card while the phone is on.&lt;p&gt;- Factory reset the phone&lt;p&gt;- Factory reset the phone again without the sim card in.&lt;p&gt;- Buy a new SIM card. They gave me free shipping, at least?&lt;p&gt;- Flash the phone to a version of Shamu that is not compatible with other carriers.&lt;p&gt;- Remove all other user accounts from the phone.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve been repeatedly asking to cancel my service and get my number ported back to google voice, and I&amp;#x27;ve actually had service reps ignore me claiming they want to explain &amp;quot;[their] side of the story.&amp;quot; I have a chat transcript explaining that.&lt;p&gt;And of course, let&amp;#x27;s not forget the weird callback system bugs. Like last night 4 hours after I scheduled a call they called me 2 times at 1am, and when I asked them not to call me I was told, &amp;quot;If you don&amp;#x27;t want us calling then don&amp;#x27;t schedule a service call!&amp;quot; When I said I didn&amp;#x27;t, they said, &amp;quot;Well that&amp;#x27;s odd because I see it right here&amp;quot; then hung up on me.&lt;p&gt;I still have not successfully cancelled my Fi service. The web form version 500s.&lt;p&gt;I do not think it is very easy to use, or ready. It seems pretty terrible to me.</text></comment>
<story><title>Network handover in Google Fi</title><url>http://nicholasarmstrong.com/2015/08/network-handover-google-fi/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>jewel</author><text>When Fi was announced they mentioned that public wifi traffic would go through a VPN to google&amp;#x27;s datacenters.  At the time I assumed that they&amp;#x27;d just run ALL traffic through the VPN, since that&amp;#x27;d make for some very seamless switching.  As bad as that would be from a privacy perspective, I trust Google more than T-Mobile or Sprint.&lt;p&gt;By running everything through the VPN, you&amp;#x27;d be able to have TCP connections that didn&amp;#x27;t break when the network switched, since your device&amp;#x27;s public IP address would be in a datacenter somewhere.&lt;p&gt;Also with a VPN you&amp;#x27;d be able to send voice traffic over both a carrier connection and the wifi connection at the same time to avoid dropouts.&lt;p&gt;There is something similar called Multi-path TCP (MPTCP) which uses latency to decide which TCP path to send traffic over.</text></comment>