What Is Mesh Networking and Will It Solve My Wi-Fi Problems?
Do you know how when you sit on your couch the Wi-Fi on your laptop turns off? Or when you’re in the bathroom, your phone refuses to connect? From Google to Netgear, everyone is rolling out expensive “Mesh Network” kits that promise to fix Wi-Fi dead spots. But only a few people have to fork out $ 300-500 for one.
How Wi-Fi Mesh networks work
As a technology, mesh networks have been around for a long time, mainly used in the military, hospitals and large-scale commercial applications. Mesh networks work with any type of radio signal and allow different types of devices to combine each other as nodes in the network, with each node propagating the radio signal slightly further than the last. You may remember hearing about the mesh network after Hurricane Sandy , when the mesh network at Red Hook helped people communicate when the Internet was disconnected, or when protesters used the mesh network in Hong Kong for autonomous operation.
Mesh Wi-Fi is a novelty in the consumer space, but the technology works essentially the same way. In addition, we are seeing an explosive development of consumer-friendly mesh networking kits. Eero took the lead with his $ 500 kit, but others quickly followed suit. In just over a year, we’ve seen kits like Luma , Netgear Orbi, and of course Google WiFi . All of this promises one simple thing: they eliminate Wi-Fi dead spots by covering your home with a Wi-Fi signal.
Your average mesh kit includes several routers called nodes, which essentially act as satellites for your Wi-Fi network. One of these nodes acts as a gateway and connects to the Internet through your modem. Each node then communicates with each other, expanding the wireless coverage each time you add a new node. Instead of communicating with a single access point like in a traditional network, each mesh node communicates with each other and amplifies the signal, which creates dense Wi-Fi coverage, like a large invisible Venn diagram. Although only one node is physically connected to the modem, each node must be able to send data back and forth at the same rate. If the quality of a Wi-Fi connection depends on your distance from and around a traditional router, a mesh network expands that coverage, so distance and direction doesn’t matter no matter where you are in the house.
Large homes get the most out of the mesh network
Mesh kits are most useful in large homes that a single router cannot cover anyway, or when you cannot move the router to a central location in the home. Most of the manufacturers we mentioned recommend that you have a 2,000 to 4,500 square foot home to make the most of their kit. They are also suitable for homes built with old bricks, plaster walls, or any other building material that blocks Wi-Fi signals.
For everyone else, mesh is overkill if your home is less than 2,000 square feet. Even then, depending on its layout, a good router in the right place ( in the center of your home, away from dense walls ) makes a big difference. Even moving the router a couple of inches can help. Of course, you can’t always reconfigure your home just to move the modem, so if your modem gets stuck in the basement, a mesh network can help propel that signal up to the second floor.
Mesh meshes also have one quality that has nothing to do with their actual function: shape and usability. These devices are not like traditional routers. The installation process and management tools are user-friendly. Eero, Google WiFi, Luma and others take a little more than a smartphone and five minutes to set up. Once configured, you perform all network management from within the app, including rebooting your router, creating guest networks, etc. This is great for techies and luddites alike, and the convenience itself is well worth the cost of entry for technically illiterate people who just need working network without any problems.
If cost doesn’t scare you, you just have to choose which mesh setup is best for you. Wirecutter loves the $ 380 Netgear Orbi two-cell , and the Mac Observer found the $ 500 three-cell Eero to be the most convenient option for most people . There is also a new Google variant, Google Wifi , which costs a little less at $ 299 for three devices, at the same price as the Luma Home . Early reviews for Google Wifi were positive, but we’ll have to wait and see how well it performs when tested thoroughly.
All of this goes to show that unless you have a big house, a weirdly shaped house, a house with a router awkwardly tidied up, or a house built with Wi-Fi-killing materials, you can probably skip the mesh kit. if you don’t mind doing some work yourself. For those of us with one or two weird but annoying dead spots, Wi-Fi extenders are a much cheaper solution.
Don’t waste money on mesh if the wifi extender does the job
Wi-Fi extenders (also sometimes called repeaters) get a bad reputation because they pose their own technical problems, but that doesn’t mean they can’t solve your Wi-Fi signal problems.
As the name suggests, a Wi-Fi extender extends the range of your current Wi-Fi network. It connects to your current Wi-Fi network and relays its own signal like a hotspot. If there are nodes in the mesh network that communicate with each other to create a network-like coverage network, then the expander creates a single new access point and is essentially unaware of the devices on the other network.
While a repeater may technically repeat the same network name and password as your base router, this is generally not recommended because your devices don’t always know which access point to connect to for the most reliable connection. This means your client devices will switch between connecting to a repeater and a core router. If your device is mobile, such as a smartphone, this causes problems because your phone usually does not switch between the two routers when you move around the house, instead clinging to the last network it connected to, even if the connection is poor. Mesh networks do not have this problem because they intelligently route data to the nearest router and work together to efficiently move data back to the gateway. Mesh networks do not create new access points, they are all part of a single network. A router-repeater combination cannot do this.
Alternatively, you can name the repeater network something other than your core network, but then you will have to manually switch between the two networks. For example, if your dead zone is at the top, each time you go upstairs, you need to manually switch to the repeater’s network name. This means that repeaters are best for troubleshooting Wi-Fi connectivity issues when the client device is stationary, such as a desktop PC or TV.
Let’s take my own Wi-Fi nagging as an example. My current router is an old TP-Link WDR3600 . Its Wi-Fi signal spans the entire house, except for two places: the living room, where the TV is, and the odd part of the kitchen, two feet wide. In the case of a TV, this means Netflix stops working in the middle of a stream, Chromecast sometimes refuses to connect to anything, and Apple TV just logs out spontaneously.
But the good news. The TV, like all the devices connected to it, never move, so a Wi-Fi extender is a cheap way to fix this problem. I set up a repeater with its own network name so the TV doesn’t get confused about which network to connect to and everything has been fine since then. In my case, I opted for a cheap $ 40 Linksys N600 range repeater because I didn’t need a lot of power. I plugged the repeater into an outlet halfway between the TV and the router and the TV connected to it with no problem. When I compared the strength and quality of the connection with what I got when testing the Eero , they were almost identical, although the repeater definitely loses in speed compared to the Eero. A more sophisticated home with concrete walls or signal blocking fixtures could benefit from a more powerful extension cord like Wirecutter’s master key , the $ 92 TP-Link AC1750 . If you have an old router that collects dust, you can convert it to an expander for free. The setup process requires a little trial and error and a little technical know-how, so it is definitely more cumbersome than a mesh network. Expanders may be cheaper, but they are certainly not as convenient as mesh networks.
Even after installing the repeater, I still have a strange dead spot in my kitchen, and even if the repeater works there, I don’t want to change Wi-Fi networks every time I go to the kitchen. In such cases, a mesh router solves the problem much more conveniently than an extender.
If there were several of these dead zones in my house, I would sing a very different melody, one with a three-part harmony, praising the positive effects of the mesh. It is undeniable that they work and can cover a home with Wi-Fi without much effort on your part. It’s about whether you want to experiment with moving your router around and maybe buy an affordable repeater to spend a little time getting it set up and tweaked, or just buy one expensive kit and never think about it again.