With the arrival of optical fiber we have experienced an incredibly great increase in navigation speed, and now we can navigate the internet, download and share files in the blink of an eye. But this connection speed isn’t always the real connection speed that we experience. And since we live in a technological age that is more and more mobile, when we move away from the location of our WiFi router we see that we lose signal strength, and with it, speed. Therefore we need a method to extend the coverage of our internet connection.
The solutions that existed until now
Any large or multi-story house has this coverage problem: one single WiFi router, even a powerful one, is not sufficient to reach all points of the house with high-quality coverage. So the most classic solutions to increase the range of coverage until now was to use repeaters or PLC, each of which had its advantages but also its inconveniences.
WiFi repeaters, for example, require a configuration which sometimes is not simple for everyone, and also, when moving around the house with a laptop or mobile phone, the device has to keep changing the SSDi, or point of access. This means breaks or less smoothness in the connection. And the PLC, on its side, limits us to a concrete number of devices and depends on the quality of the electrical installation, which means that if we live in an old building it doesn’t tend to work correctly.
What are mesh routers and how do they work?
To find a better solution to the problem of coverage in large spaces and with many rooms, the new mesh routers have arrived, which in English means “screen.” That is to say, it consists of various WiFi transmitters (normally 2 or 3, though there can be many more) which create a web or mesh distributed throughout the house. These transmitters have to be dispersed throughout the house and then all of it will have a high-speed WiFi connection.
That is to say, they are like the WiFi repeaters that have to be placed in the areas where you want to amplify the signal, but with the difference that mesh routers don’t receive the signal and then send it amplified: they simply create the same network signal from various points at the same time, so we could say that we always have the original signal. In this way it makes no difference if we move around to different rooms or floors of the house, because we will always receive the signal as if from one access point.
They have great advantages
– As seen above, with mesh routers we can forget about breaks in coverage when moving from one access point to another, since as we move through the house our device will change from one transmitter to another transparently, smoothly and without breaks, giving us the security of a more stable and trustworthy network than if we were using repeaters.
– In addition, these new routers are very easy to set up, since most of them have an app for your phone which allows you to configure it how you want without all the classic problems of having to configure each repeater from your browser.
– At the same time, they stand out for having a careful design and some of them don’t even look like routers, since they are attractive and discreet, unlike the majority of the PLC or repeaters that we find on the market.
But also some inconveniences
- Since they are so new and oriented to provide a high-quality Wi-Fi connection, mesh routers tend to have a higher price than the other, standard solutions like buying a more powerful router, using PLC or placing repeaters.
- Since the majority are controlled by a phone app designed for the average user, they have less configuration options, and more advanced users will miss the lack of options. At least this is the case with the models which we find available right now.
Wi-Fi Mesh Router Tenda Nova MW6
This mesh router includes 3 units in the form of attractive white cubes, which can cover a house of up to 550 square meters. It has an app for Android and iOS which allows the creation of networks for guests using QR codes or parental control passwords.
Kit 3 Router TP-Link Deco M5 Smart Wi-Fi
TP-Link, the famous brand for wireless systems, has an attractive three-piece mesh router that can be expanded at any time and permits a connection of 5GHz up to 850Mbps. In addition to a very intuitive app with monthly usage reports and parental content control, it includes an integrated three-year antivirus subscription so that you can navigate with complete calm.
Read More:
Best Wireless Router Router
Best Wifi Range Extender