Gryphon Tower (1-Pack) Adv Security Mesh WiFi Router

We purchased this router several years ago, sold on the promise to be "your family's first line of defense against digital dangers". You can't buy into the hardware without considering the software though, including the app you install on your phone and the firmware that the router runs on. The hardware has provided a reliable wifi connection, but the software has been very unreliable. Initially, most of the features went unused aside from creating a few profiles with different levels of access (high school vs elementary school, etc) and adding a few devices to each. Everything seemed to be working okay, but the more we've relied on its various features, the more obvious it's become how broken the software is. Here's a list of problems we've had in the last couple of years. Caveat emptor. PROBLEM 1: Vanishing Schedules The app isn't particularly easy to use, especially scheduling. It's confusing to setup, with a rule (seen as a "Note" in the UI) about how setting up a time span after midnight defines access for the early morning, whereas a time span that crosses midnight actually defines access for the late evening into the next day's morning. To see why this is confusing, imagine this scenario: - Creating a schedule for 11p - 6a on Thursday applies it to late Thu night / early Fri morning. - Applying the same 11p - 6a schedule to Friday as well applies to late Fri night / early Sat morning. No surprises. - But then changing the Friday schedule to 12:30a - 6a (image 2) applies it to very early Fri morning instead, which now conflicts with a portion of the Thurs schedule, popping up a prompt that "this bedtime overlaps with other events". - Choosing "yes" applies it and completely removes the now-conflicting Thurs schedule, which means the 11p - 12a portion of late Thursday night is now gone too. Oops. I could create a separate schedule for Thurs night to cover the 11p - 12a spot, but why should I need to? Why couldn't the app figure that out itself? In fact, why not just show a spread-sheet style grid with 7 days on the left (rows) and 24 hours across the top (columns) and let users fill in the times (cells) when they'd like to disable Internet access? The software can do whatever it needs behind the scenes to apply the selections. Okay, that's annoying and requires some mental gymnastics, but it's not a showstopper. This is, though. The kids wanted to stay on a little later with friends one night. There's a feature for temporarily overriding a user (aka profile) schedule for a single evening, but it can be confusing and inconsistent too. So I made the previously described changes instead, intending to change the schedules back the next day. When I jumped into the app the next morning, the entire schedule was gone. I restarted the app a couple times, tried refreshing it, but even though the schedules for other profiles were still there, the one for this profile was just completely gone. Was it a glitch in the UI? Would restarting my phone fix it? Wiping the app cache? Reinstalling the app? Rebooting the router? Who knows. Did it delete the profile when I tried to view it, or did it happen the night before when I changed it? Did it happen in middle of the night? I have no answers, so I just recreated the schedule. Will it delete it again? Delete them all (an issue we've had in the past)? Several days later, 3 other profiles had their schedules vanish too, although it didn't affect this same one again. I contacted support about this (and several other issues), and a week later they said there was a firmware update to apply. I had the router install it and reboot immediately, cautiously optimistic. The next day, another profile disappeared and one that was set to disable the Internet at 11p had inexplicably changed to 8p. This is the kind of stuff that drives a person nuts, wondering if they accidentally pressed something or did something wrong. PROBLEM 2: Ignored Schedules We had an issue not too long ago, where a certain profile was set to disable the Internet at 11p on school nights, but someone got carried away and stayed on talking to friends later than they should have. But wait.. how was that even possible? I rechecked the schedule for the profile, and it was absolutely set for 11p. Then I checked the logs and it was absolutely allowing Internet access from a device in that profile anyway, an hour later than it should have been. That led to a good conversation about cultivating good habits, and being given extra leeway when other things (like grades and life in general) are going well, so uh... thanks Gryphon for busting again? I now have huge doubts that the schedules actually work, even when they aren't being randomly deleted. PROBLEM 3: Inaccessible Devices My work laptop, sitting just a few feet away from the Gryphon mesh (repeater) device I purchased last year, kept getting assigned to the main tower sitting 30+ feet away on the other side of the house. The point of a mesh system is that devices should be automatically assigned to whatever device is closest, and there's no setting in the Gryphon app to give it a gentle nudge, so I dealt with a weak connection and disconnections from meetings for a couple weeks. Out of ideas, I selected the device in the app and hit the "Delete" button, intending to let it be rediscovered and reassigned. The device disappeared from the UI... but still had Internet access. So now I had a ghost device that didn't show up in the app anymore (so I couldn't do anything with it) and yet still had Internet, despite having the system configured to block devices by default. Later in the day, I restarted the router. When all else fails, reboot, right? Then the laptop popped up as a new device and had no Internet until I assigned it. On a more positive note, it seemed to be using the mesh router after that. PROBLEM 4: Blocked Sites (that shouldn't be) After a firmware update recently, the kids couldn't get to a bunch of sites they regularly access. I opened the app and noticed a couple dozen sites that were blocked, many of them educational sites and other services which weren't even in the list before. I had to spend 45 minutes going through every profile, one by one, re-enabling the sites, dealing with the slow UI and periodic timeouts, all the while wondering if I would have to go through this again... A couple days later, when things seemed okay, we realized no one could search for books at our local library. They could see the library site, but the search feature was broken. Was the site down? Maybe some unexpected maintenance on their end? I checked the list in the app, but there was nothing blocked for our library's domain. Then I typed in the subdomain (search.whatever.com) that the library uses just for the search page, and that was marked as blocked. Why?? PROBLEM 5: Unhelpful Errors From time to time, the app alerts me of vague issues but no information with which to make an informed decision. I'm a fairly technical person. I know what port scanning is and why it's wise to keep ports locked down if you don't need them open. What I don't know is why a kindle (in one case) would be trying to scan ports inside the network, and the app isn't helpful about directing the user anywhere for more information. This is a device sold on ease-of-use and for non-techie people. Okay, maybe that warrants more research. But what does "anomaly detected" mean for a Chromecast device? Is Google hacking our network, lol? I selected the "Ignore" option, but it popped up again for the same device later anyway. This is not the "simplified network security" they promise on their site. PROBLEM 6: Kludgy UI There are many, many times when I go into the UI and what I see doesn't reflect what I know to be reality. A schedule for bedtime or homework isn't right. I wait 10 seconds to see if it needs to update or something in the UI, but it doesn't. I swipe down to refresh and then it updates and reflects the correct time. Why should I need to do that? I now doubt every screen, swiping down everywhere I can in the app, just in case something's out-of-date. Which leads to another fun issue... Swiping my finger upwards on most screens will scroll down just fine. But swiping my finger down to scroll back up on certain screens has a random chance of either scrolling the screen up or refreshing/reloading it. While it's refreshing, I can scroll up and down just fine, but then it finishes a few seconds later and reloads the screen, taking me back to the top. It's maddening. FOR THESE REASONS... I'M OUT Dealing with a few of these problems a few times is asking a lot. But taking them all together, happening more frequently, is way too much. I don't know if the schedules are going to disappear, or already have. Should I double-check right now? Even if they don't disappear, I don't know if they're being correctly applied. Sites that shouldn't be blocked suddenly are.. are sites that should be blocked actually being allowed? The vague errors like "anomaly detected" aren't helpful either, especially on a Google IOT device that certainly isn't hacked. I'm annoyed to be left with something I can't trust, that's proven unintuitive and unwieldly - ironic given the statement that this was created because "Our CEO ... found existing solutions were often unintuitive, unwieldy, and worst of all, ineffective. Most systems were also difficult to use..." I appreciate Gryphon's efforts and what they're trying to achieve, and I sincerely hope they get their software figured out. I'm going to hang on to the hardware (which generally works great) even after I find another solution, and hopefully in a year or two it's a more stable product. WHAT'S NEXT... After a bit of research I settled on the Synology RT2600ac, a router with good specs, from a company I've heard of (they sell highly rated NAS servers, as well as other network equipment), and the reviews for the parental controls are overwhelmingly positive. My favorite review is from Dan, who took the time to list out everything he did, why he did it, and he even included screenshots which is enormously helpful, especially for someone (like me) who wants to see exactly what he's getting into. After using it for a couple weeks, I can say I'm extremely happy with the RT2600ac. It's fast, the UI has a learning curve but I find it easy to navigate, you can administer it through the web site as well as a phone app, and Synology has a proven track record through its NAS products. The scheduling system is laid out in a grid where you can select/deselect times (in 15 min increments) for any day of the week, which is far easier than how Gryphon's UI is laid out. It's retaining the schedules (yay) and comes with additional security features that, while not needed to use it, and disabled by default, you can enable them if you have the time to figure them out.