This is where I am on this matter. I saw the functionality listed in the Alexa App but I am not sure how they are going to get thither from hither. When I originally bought an Echo, I was an early beta tester, I tore it down and hooked it up to my PC acting as a phantom hotspot so that I could Wireshark the line and see what it was doing. Physically it has all of the component hardware to be able to act as a hotspot. Think of it like your cell phone. Normally an Echo just connects to a Wifi system and sends and receives data from the Wifi Router. Some phones, actually most nowadays, have the ability to turn on their Wifi antenna to broadcast as a Hotspot.philip964 wrote: ↑Thu Jun 03, 2021 11:05 am
Seemed very odd that Amazon would do this with out sending me an email or something.
After reading this thread I’m still confused. Do echos broadcast WiFi now? I thought they just received. Considering how poorly my super fancy four antenna hyper powerful expensive xyzgh band 5.1 2.9 WiFi router fails to reach all of the house now, I’m wondering how my echo with no antenna is going to reach my sidewalk?
Do we have a conclusion? Fact or fiction? Or as one poster suggested no different than your current WiFi now.
I think this is how they are going to achieve what they are purporting to do. The Echos have all of the hardware necessary to act as a hotspot but it would require a pretty large firmware stack rewrite in order. My guess is they had some sort of similar functionality planned all along and the code has already been there just waiting to be turned on. I am fine with it if they are upfront about it. If they tell you were are going to do XYZ and they do XY and Z then that is the price of admission. I get made in cases like this where they say XYZ but wind up down AB and C!