AI helped me choose a router without becoming a network person

I'm not a network person. I tell everybody that all the time. And there's this assumption that because I know my way around technology, and I can build websites, and I can usually repair my own computer, that I must also understand networking. I do not. No, seriously. Modems and routers might as well be extremely expensive paperweights for all I know.

I can do the basics. I can set up a router. I can get us online. I can make things connect. But once we get much deeper than that, my brain just sort of goes, no, thank you. Maybe it doesn't interest me enough. Maybe I have a hard time with the concepts. I don't know. It's just not my thing.

Right now we're on Xfinity, and the internet has not exactly been inspiring confidence. We've had speed problems, data caps, and it's expensive. Fortunately, a new fiber company is coming in and they're supposed to start installations in December. We're looking at a two-and-a-half-gig plan for less than we're paying now, which is very exciting. Except our current Eeros would limit how much of that faster connection we could actually use.

So now I needed new routers. Fantastic. My favorite subject.

And, yes, we could absolutely get a slower internet plan. We may never use every bit of two and a half gigs. That is entirely possible. Or maybe the first week we have fiber I'll walk around the house behaving like I personally invented broadband. I don't know. We'll see. But we do a lot of uploading and downloading, remote connections, streaming, all of that stuff, so faster internet is useful enough for us that I at least wanted to look at the better option.

In case you don't know what an Eero is, they're these fantastic little square devices. You plug one into the router and then set the others in different rooms around the house, and suddenly the internet and the Wi-Fi and the network all know what they're supposed to do, despite the fact that I have absolutely no idea. We've used Eero mesh for years because our house is long and skinny, and honestly it has worked really well for that. It gets Wi-Fi from one end to the other, and it leaks just enough signal outside that the smart bulbs and the other outdoor devices work without me having to go install something else outside.

And, more importantly, Eero is easy. I do not want networking to become a hobby.

Then I got an email about an Eero promotion. And I'm suspicious of promotions on principle, because sometimes they're genuinely good, and sometimes it's the exact same offer you've seen sixteen times before except now there are pumpkins on it. Or snowflakes. Or fireworks. Whatever month we're in. So I took it to ChatGPT and started comparing the upgrade options.

And naturally ChatGPT liked the Pro. Of course it did. More capacity. More capability. Better use of the new fiber connection. Very exciting. Very impressive. Also considerably more money.

And that's where I started pushing back, because, yes, okay, but there are two people in this house. We are not simultaneously running ten computers, four televisions, and three gaming systems. A lot of the things connected to our network are light bulbs, switches, Alexas, and other smart-home stuff that is not exactly devouring bandwidth. So I was like, no, no, no. Look at what we actually do. Not what this thing can technically handle. What do we actually need?

So we looked at it again. And, yes, ChatGPT had gotten a little enthusiastic.

We compared the cheaper version with the middle option and looked at what the differences would actually mean in our house. Not what was technically better, because obviously the more expensive thing can do more. That's not the question. The question was, what would we notice? What would we use? What would we be paying extra for mostly because it existed?

And for us, I decided the original recommendation was overkill. We'd probably never see enough benefit from it to justify the extra cost. So we're going with the cheaper version. I haven't bought them yet. That's coming as part of the fiber upgrade. But I feel a whole lot better about what I'm actually shopping for now, because I understand why I'm choosing it, at least enough to make the decision.

And I still didn't have to become a network person. I did have to know enough about our house and the way we actually use technology to tell ChatGPT when it was solving a problem we don't have. That, I can do.