Those who live in large apartments or private houses are often faced with a situation where a wireless router, however good it may be, cannot provide complete and constant Wi-Fi coverage throughout the house. As a result, in one room the speed is perfect and in the other part of the house there are so-called dead zones where the signal level is too low to be useful or it disappears altogether.
Until recently, this problem was ‘fixed’ by installing a second router, and its most important feature was support for repeater mode. What does that mean? In short, more effort and often more problems. You can configure the second router to expand the signal of the first one making the connection a bit more stable. But although the coverage area increases significantly and stabilizes, there is another problem: the connection speed in each new repeater drops noticeably.
Eero is a great example of the new generation of WiFi systems as they developed the first home WiFi products built specifically to solve this problem, using a technology called ‘Mesh Networking’. Unfortunately, sales of eero have previously been limited to the US, but now you can buy eero in Australia, so we thought it was time to help people understand the new way of doing things and why Mesh Networking is the way to go.
The eero Wi-Fi system (or any mesh network) consists of several devices: at least one “base” station and several smaller, cheaper beacons, designed to fit anywhere as needed and expand network coverage . Most products have pre-configured packages aimed at particular sized homes: eero has packages for 1-2, 2-4, and 3-5+ bedroom homes consisting of 1 eero + 1 Beacon, 1 eero + 2 Beacons, and 3 eeros respectively.
To set it up, simply connect an Eero device to the network and place other access points in remote rooms that provide a stable Wi-Fi signal. Eero engineers implemented the mesh network model, which means that all nodes are formally equal and the system manages itself.
So, unlike the “router, to repeater 1, to repeater 2” scheme, where the main router is used to handle all networking and routing issues and the other devices just try to pass that information along as dumb extenders, all three eero devices they are complete routers that create a mesh network where each node serves as a transition point for another node in the system, working together to deliver a powerful signal evenly distributed throughout the mesh. This eliminates dead spots and weak spots in your home WiFi – wherever you have WiFi within the mesh, you’ll have a strong signal.
Also part of this new generation of WiFi systems is the possibility of integration with a dedicated application on your phone to easily allow management of all aspects of the system, speed tests and more. If you’ve ever had to log in to a strange web address and use an ugly and confusing web interface to configure a router, you’ll know how important this is. For example, in addition to providing all the management functionality you’d expect, the eero app can automatically connect to your wireless network, see how many devices are connected to the network, test your network speed, and see how much traffic is being consumed. These new systems are also smart enough to automatically install updates and upgrades that make the system run much more stable: they stay secure and up-to-date, with no ‘touch’ required.
While we’d love to list all the features that are made possible by these systems having a dedicated app, they vary and time is short! That said, we think being able to easily create a new network from your smartphone or quickly add a guest without having to share or remember your password (super simple timesaver with a few taps on your phone) qualifies a quick mention.
Finally, while routers in general can be ugly beasts, peppered with antennas and cables, some of this new generation of routers are pretty enough to take pride of place in any home. Given that we all have Wi-Fi in our homes, it’s surprising that it’s taken this long for the design of these devices to be a major consideration (I guess Apple used to make cool looking routers, but they were the exception and now they’re completely out of date with their technology). of Wi-Fi router). Again, as an example, eero’s design is extremely minimalistic and sleek – it looks like the kind of device Apple might release if it decides to get relevant in WiFi again…
We hope this has helped you understand what Mesh Networking is, why it is better than older WiFi systems and how it manages to be so, and we hope you are now interested in seeing the options available. Faster and better WiFi is possible! If you’re looking for more information, typing keywords like ‘Mesh Networking’ into Google should give you a lot.
Best of luck, and may your videos never pause for buffering again!
