Mesh WiFi or Whole Home WiFi systems consists of a main router that connects directly to your modem, and a series of satellite modules, or nodes, placed around your house for full WiFi coverage. They are all part of a single wireless network and share the same SSID and password, unlike traditional WiFi routers.
Picture this: You’ve just set up your home network with the latest WiFi hardware and a 100 Mbps Internet connection. But for some reason, you still encounter buffering when you try to stream video in the bedroom. You called your Internet Service Provider (ISP) and everything checks out, so what’s the deal? Chances are, your WiFi isn’t set up efficiently for a mesh WiFi system.
What’s Slowing Down Your Network?
The weakened signal or WiFi dead spots could be the result of physical obstructions. Simple things like the floor, doors, and walls of your home can come between you and your router, especially if they’re made of metal, brick, or concrete. Or perhaps the distance is simply too great in a large home, and your traditional router is only capable of reaching as far as the kitchen, but not to the backyard, the garage, or a distant bedroom. Interference from other devices could also be the culprit, whether it’s your microwave, cordless phone, or baby monitor. If you live in close quarters with other WiFi networks and devices—such as in an apartment complex—this problem increases tenfold. Think of it like a room full of people who are all speaking at once—nobody’s going to be heard very well.
Blanketing Your Home with WiFi
A better solution is WiFi that works with your home design, instead of against it. Think of a standard router like a speaker. You could be playing music loudly in the front of your home, but the office in the back will only hear a faint echo. A standard router works the same way—you can only move so far from it before the signal starts to wane, and eventually it’s going to cut out altogether.
Instead, why not install a “speaker” in each room of the house? That’s how whole home WiFi or mesh networks work, with multiple nodes installed around your home so you’ve got solid WiFi coverage from one end to the other.
Standout Features of a Whole Home WiFi System
Here are a few key features to look for in a whole home WiFi system:
1. Wired and Wireless Expansion
In a modular system, there’s one node connected to your modem that acts as a router. Each additional node finds the best channel and path to wirelessly connect to the previous one, creating a seamless and reliable WiFi connection throughout your entire home.
To further strengthen the whole home WiFi, you can make use of Ethernet cables and run them in every room, this way you can connect the nodes together using an Ethernet cable to create a stronger whole-home WiFi system. Using the wired option, you’ll be able to expand your signal to hard-to-reach areas such as the garage or basement.
2. One Network and Seamless Roaming
The name “mesh network” itself implies that every component of your WiFi system is working together, and seamless roaming is a perfect example of that. When you use a router and range extender combination, you have to switch between the networks manually as you move from one coverage zone to the other.
But with seamless roaming, you only have one network with one name and password—that means that as you move about your home, you’ll never have to manually switch from one network to the other. So go ahead, stream video in the living, kitchen, or bedroom without worrying about buffering or a dropped connection.
3. Guest Network
Using a guest network keeps your primary WiFi network safe from intrusion, blocking outside users from accessing your personal data. But never fear, you can still provide Internet access to your dinner guests or babysitter without compromising the security of your main network. This can be done but creating a separate guest network on the router.
Why Not Use a Range Extender?
Comparing range extenders to whole home WiFi is like comparing apples to oranges. Range extenders are certainly effective when it comes to increasing the range of your router, but they do so at the expense of WiFi performance, which gets cut in half.
In a large space where WiFi struggles to reach every corner, a range extender can actually diminish the overall performance of your network, creating a bottlenecking effect. You might also experience connection issues when jumping from the router to the extender, because you’ll need to switch networks manually. For example, even when standing next to the range extender, you can still experience dead zones or slowdowns if you haven’t manually changed your device over from the router’s signal. These two separate networks also have different names and interfaces, which can be a serious hassle.
