Home Network Upgrade, Part II

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(And in case you missed it, here’s link to Part I)

A home mesh network typically is comprised of 2-3 devices, doing triple duty as a router, a range extender and a wireless access point.

For example: You buy a system of 3 devices. They can be interchanged, and whichever you pull from the box first will get plugged into the cable/DSL modem and act as the primary router. The other 2 (or more) generally puck-shaped devices can then be plugged in and set around your house, and they’ll automatically pair with the primary puck to act as additional access points. This system of pucks will determine how best to share your internet signal between each other, and also among all the client devices asking for WIFI. This is often orchestrated by an app on your phone or tablet.

Wireless mesh networking has been explored and implemented by academic institutions, corporate IT infrastructure, and military use over the past 20 years. The first company to bring this technology to the consumer market is eero. It received rave reviews and sparked techie consumer lust in early 2015. When it started flying off the shelves (at $500 for a 3-pack) in the spring of 2016, established home networking players (including Google) quickly realized there was a market for a coherent and bundled system that promised to fill a home with WIFI.

eero.0

eero

Every interesting tech device by a major manufacturer is torn apart and closely analyzed, and the dissection of these provided a few head scratchers. There were unused radios that hinted at smart-home integration. One had a speaker that was only used at the time of set up. The TP-Link model has thirteen (13!) antennas but is purple. Basically, as it turned out, these were experiments that provided the foundations for Google WIFI.

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Google Wifi

Google WIFI was the first successor to eero’s legacy, providing similar functionality – more complete network coverage without dead zones – and with a household name. Sure, it has less robust data throughput, but it is also at a lower price point. It has become the consumerized offering and has grown to be the leader in this niche of the market.

Some competing products tackle the problem in similar ways – all nodes are created equal – and others have gone back to a traditional base/extender system (albeit with fresh eyes and improvements).

Over the past year, eero has discounted its initial product line, and introduced a new version that is even more effective at getting every bit of the available bandwidth to every square inch of your property. Netgear has introduced its Orbi system, and is neck-and-neck with eero on performance. (Though, theirs is technically not a “mesh network”; it’s a hub-and-spoke model wherein all Orbi extender devices use a 3rd radio specifically for robust “backhaul” communication to the router. If you can imagine the layout of the space you want to fill with WIFI, eero is going to be better at “hopping” and Orbi might excel at taking a signal from the central living area of a house out to the periphery. I digress.) These two would be the performance leaders of the market.

Netgear-Orbi-Router-RBR20

Orbi

Among these, the most interesting from an innovation standpoint is probably Plume, which suggests sprinkling your living space with tiny, hexagon shaped pods which only take up one spot in an electrical outlet. An apartment might use 3 (at $180) and a 5+ bedroom house in the ‘burbs might use 9 (for closer to $500).

plume

Plume

As I see it, the key benefit to upgrading to a mesh WIFI network is coverage at a reasonable price point. Of course, there is still a chance that you have an old forgotten chimney, or kryptonite in your walls, or the beautiful old tile bathroom in your vintage modern shotgun house hides some kind of lead foil that malevolently thwarts all efforts at modernity.

All this said, I enjoy playing around with technology, and if you’re getting ready to drop $300-500 bucks, I should warn you that you might need to do some tinkering with any new system. For instance, you will probably need to move the pucks around a bit. The system will identify whether placing one above the fridge or behind the picture on the dresser moves the mesh rating from “Good” to “Excellent!” but somebody has to move ‘em and click “test.”

The moral of the story? There’s too much good technology to deal with bad home WIFI. You don’t have to cobble together a bespoke Rube Goldberg style home network just to get a reliable signal in the guest bedroom. Several companies have put in some clever engineering into making these turn-key solutions (with the above caveats). So go try one, already.