I tried a range extender to get better WiFi coverage at one end of my house. I got a great signal to the extender but the bandwidth wasn’t very good, in fact, indistinguishable from connecting directly to the router with a very low signal.
I am checking out these mesh systems, but how do they work? How do they differ from simple extenders, and are they really that good?
I’ve never used a mesh system so I can’t comment on that, but, if it’s all possible to run an ethernet wire from your router to the problem area (or at least part of that distance), you can get a wired wireless access point. I use one at work since the only place we use wifi has next to no wifi signal. I ran a wire from the router to that area, stuck a WAP on it and now the wifi signal is perfect in that area.
I’ll second @Joey_P on this. Hardwire a second AP if at all possible.
Mesh systems talk to each other, whereas extenders only talk to one AP. If you have the base station and one mesh AP, there is no effective difference. If you have 3 mesh devices plus the base, you will have better results than the base plus 3 extenders.
The differences are going to vary depending on what specific extender vs mesh system you are considering.
In general, extenders are repeating and forwarding signals, so performance is going to suffer. Mesh devices typically have multiple transceivers built-in, one for backhauling network traffic to-from the primary AP and one or more additional transceivers for connections to client devices. This provides better performance, but increases the price of the device. The dedicated backhaul wifi network in a mesh system is configured as a separate wifi network and is used only to transmit traffic among the mesh APs; it has a different SSID than your end-user network.
I’m currently using a NETGEAR Orbi mesh system and it works great. Assuming an extender works as advertised (and it sounds like you’re having poor results with that) the big difference that will be noticeable is that it’s going to look like two distinct WiFi access points. So you’ll be on the “MyAccessPoint” WiFi network close to the main router and the “MyAccessPoint_extension” (or something like that) WiFi network close to the extender.
That can actually be quite irritating. In my experience from a few years back with mobile devices the switch to a WiFi network with the stronger signal is not a seamless or quick action. It may hang onto the weaker original network even when you’re next to the extender. Which defeats the purpose or requires you to manually switch. Either way, annoying.
Mesh systems basically look like one big, strong WiFi network. As said they have a separate dedicated wireless backhaul between the mesh access points that is unlikely to interfere with your client device connections. I find I can go anywhere in our house now (we have three access points including the main one) and the connection and speed is extremely robust.
I think mesh is the clear superior solution if price isn’t a consideration. But they are significantly more expensive (I think I paid $300 or something close to it for my three access point system).
Well, I can run a cable but it would be ugly. If I wanted to run it through walls and floors I would need a pro to do it and it’s not worth that. Right now I am using a PowerLine setup that actually works pretty well, but I am always wondering if there is something better.
I’d say if the power line setup serves your needs and is reliable stick with it over an extender. I don’t think you’re going to see much of an advantage that way. Power line or extended is potentially fine depending on your use cases: if you have a few devices at the far side of the house that don’t move around and can just connect only to the close by network (either a WiFi router at the end of the power line or an extender) it’ll be good enough I suspect.
But if you like to wander around your house and have a reliable WiFi connection while you do that a mesh system will be much more satisfying.
You can get WAPs for powerline setups. Here’s the first one I saw when looked for it. I can’t vouch for it other than to say netgear is generally a reliable brand.
How does this work, though, with the client devices (phones, laptops)? Why would they roam differently between two mesh access points and two regular APs/extenders? On the network level, does the phone somehow know “oh, I’m on a mesh network now, I can roam to the next access point quicker”?
Each access point creates a direct connection back to the router (or whatever it’s connected to). So if one gets you an extra 100 feet, but you want 200 feet, you get two and daisy chain them. If the one in the middle goes down, you lose everything downstream of it.
The mesh ones create their own secret network of their own. If one goes down, they’ll find the next closest one and resume moving information that way. IIRC, some (all?) of them use that ‘secret’ network to move all the information back and forth only moving it to the ‘regular’ part of the network when communicating with your devices. The reason being to cut down on traffic that all your devices (and router) have to listen to.
Look at it like this. Setting up access points is like the wireless version of wired ethernet. Everything is tied to a specific node and if something goes wrong with a switch in the system, someone has to go and deal with it to get their internet back up. OTOH, a mesh network is more like the internet. You tell your computer to send something to another device (inter or intranet) and the mesh system gets it there, even if a node is down, it’ll find a different path.
Right, I get that part.
Phone → Mesh A → Mesh B → Mesh C → Router → Internet
And if mesh B goes down, it goes phone → A → C → etc.
But I’m asking what happens if you walk, with the phone, closer to Mesh C than Mesh A. To the phone, that’s no different than if you walked from a regular extender AP to the router’s built-in AP, right, in that the operating system still takes forever to roam to a new AP, even though the signal is now much stronger? A mesh network won’t help that part, or would it?
In other words: Would a mesh network decrease the annoying delay that is imposed by your phone while it decides whether to switch to the AP that you’re newly standing next to? (which can sometimes take minutes, or a wifi toggle on/off, to effect)
If every node is operating with the same SSID (and everything else), I would guess your phone wouldn’t even notice the switch since it’s not dropping one connection and picking up the other, so much as a different node is transmitting/receiving and the previous one ignores anything from your phone. But that’s just a guess.
When you walk between to WAPs, the phone drops it’s connection from the first one and creates a new connection with the other one. From it’s POV, that’s no different than leaving your house and reconnecting when you get to work.
However, I have heard people mention that you can give your router and all your WAPs the same SSID/password. From what I was told, that makes the transitions from one WAP to the next either smoother, or more like a mesh where the phone doesn’t even know it happened.
I was under the impression this is also what a mesh router does (separately from the backend secret channel between themselves): creates a bunch of access points with the same SSIDs, but different MAC addresses, that the phone can roam between. Am I wrong about that?
The alternative you propose, if I’m understanding it correctly, is that ALL the mesh points broadcast the same signals all the time, almost like a dumb network hub, essentially copying & broadcasting the entirety of network traffic across all the access points, all the time, just in case a client device happens to move around (as opposed to routing it to the nearest mesh point that the client is connected to).
I’m not trying to be pedantic here… I’m actually in that situation where I do have multiple APs, connected by ethernet to the same router, using the same SSID. Roaming between them hardly ever works and always takes a manual wifi reset on the client. I was hoping a mesh network would be better, but want to make sure I understand the mechanism of that improvement before I ran out to buy one.
Someone once explained it to me that a mesh system acts like one big antenna. Each node operates in synchrony with the others and can adjust its transmit power depending on whether or not any devices are connected to it. In a way, it’s like the cellular phone system. Your phone connects to whatever site it’s closest to and you’re none the wiser to the technical goings-on.
I’ve got an eero system here, and it’s been flawless. The only time I need to think about it is when its control app pops up a note about a new device connecting, or I’d there’s a firmware update, which is not very often. Same SSID from one end of the house to the other and I’ve never noticed any handoff issues.
Yes, but the difference is that all the nodes (the mesh access points) communicate with any other mesh nodes they can connect to. So if you set up a mesh network with 10 nodes around your house, each node will use whatever path is the best to get communicate with it’s destination (be it a router or another device on the network). If you unplug one, the remaining 9 will all communicate with each other and work out a new fastest path
If you were to put 10 access points around your house (and 10 access points in a house is likely redundant enough that it’ll act like a mesh), each access point will only communicate will only communicate with the one device it’s wired or wirelessly paired with. YOU create the path it takes back to the router (even if it’s via other access points). If one device breaks, you’ll have to deal with it. For example, if WAP C, is connected to WAP B, which is connected to the router and WAP B breaks, you’ll have to manually connect C to the router. In a mesh system it would figure this out on it’s own.
Think of it like the electrical grid within your house. if open up a random junction box and cut the wires, you’re going to lose power in, say, you’re bedroom. Now, imagine if every single junction box was connected to every other junction box (ya know, ignoring code and expense and safety and hot neutrals). Now I can open up a junction box, cut all the wires and the outlet in your bedroom will have no problem finding a different path back to the mains.
Here’s a random picture I found. Take the first access point going clockwise. In the picture on the left, if you lost that first access point, the two devices connected to it would lose their internet. In the picture on the right, if you lost that first mesh router, the two devices would simply connect to the next closest one. If you lost the switch, everything goes down. If you lost the mesh router that’s connected to the modem, the network would figure it out and a different one would connect to it.
This would be even more important if the networks were bigger. Imagine another concentric ring of APs or mesh routers, each one connected to every other one (within range) that it can. Lose an AP, even more devices go down, lose a mesh router, not so much.
Also, something else to keep in mind. Mesh networks aren’t so much meant for dealing with a random dead spot in your house or just trying to extend your wifi to a specific area, that’s where APs shine. This is more meant for when you have lots of dead spots or when you have a big area and you want a quick easy way to deploy wifi without having to program a ton of APs. A big house or office would be a good candidate for a mesh network. But there’s no reason they can’t be set up anywhere, and while I’ve never set one up, I’ve done plenty of home/office networking, and I’ll bet they’re a lot easier to set up than access points, which do require some knowledge of networking.
I don’t know if consumer grade equipment is smarter nowadays, this is based on information up to a decade old, but…
When your device (phone, ipad, laptop) connects to a wifi access point or router, it connects to that particular radio device. They use MAC addresses as very basic identifiers, just like wired ethernet. It will continue talking to that device until it cannot get through any longer or you manually switch to a different network. So if like me, you have 3 access points (one a relay) in your house, whichever one responds fastest or is “loudest” (Strongest signal) is where you connect.
The downside is if you move to a part of the house where the signal is poor, as long as it still works, you will still use it at a more limited speed. To connect to the stronger AP (with the same SSID network name and password) you may need to turn your wifi on the device off and on again.
Higher end multi-AP systems like you find in institutions have a controller box that manages the AP’s, whether mesh or wired. The controller monitors all connections. If you move about the building, it can tell that your device’s signal can be heard “louder” on a different AP and will force the device to disconnect (simply by breaking the connection) and your device will attempt to reconnect and get a response from the louder, nearer AP. Usually this happens so fast you don’t notice the change-over.
Some systems also provide the capability to "“jam” rogue wifi points; by analyzing traffic, can tell that an unauthorized AP is attached to the same wired network (by traffic patterns) and using a spare AP, broadcast an interfering pattern on any attempted traffic. Some controllers are also smart enough to transfer (by disconnect) some devices to nearby AP’s to reduce load, and to change the channels the AP’s use to limit cross-talk interference, etc.
Unless your AP mesh or extender is wired to the network, it uses relay to communicate. It has to be between the base station and the far client device. Obviously, by receiving and then retransmitting each packet, it will be slower than direct connect; but since wifi speed falls off pretty fast with distance and obstacles, relay is still faster than a much longer slow connect. The only difference is that a plain extender is connected to your (main) wifi source. Mesh devices will talk to each other to find any route to the wired network - multiple hops, even multiple wired access points. They constantly communicate to ensure they have the most efficient route. But unless you have a really really big house you probably don’t need more than one or two extenders so mesh is not that relevant.
This was a little harder to look up than I anticipated, but apparently there are protocols that do allow for a more seamless handover to stronger access points in a mesh network.
In particular IEEE 802.11k-2008, IEEE 802.11r-2008, and IEEE 802.11v-2011.
An Apple centric write up for example is here: Wi-Fi network roaming with 802.11k, 802.11r, and 802.11v on iOS.
If I’m reading all of that correctly it’s largely up to the client devices to make good decisions about jumping to more effective access points, but these standards make it easier to do seamlessly. In particular 11r simplifies the authentication process so a handoff can actually happen quickly and 11k/11v provide additional access point information (load levels, etc.?) to help the device make a decent decision.
It looks like support for these are pretty common now. My mesh system claims support, as do most of my devices.
All of this I believe is only applicable for mesh style networks with a single SSID. For regular extenders with multiple SSIDs I think the handover is going to be manual unless you actually lose connectivity with the weaker signal.
FWIW I have a mesh system (Google currently, used to have Eero) and I will never go back.
They are expensive but they are brain dead easy to setup and use and provide great coverage in your home. I live in a hi-rise with lots and lots of other WiFi systems all around me and the mesh system has no problem coping.
In a bigger house I have seen friends get coverage to their back yard that they never had and more solid connections inside.
This is one of those things that is worth paying the money for these days. WiFi is so ubiquitous to all you do from TVs to computers to phones to tablets to your appliances.
I think it is well worth the money. It is a lot up front but it is a setup and forget system and worth it IMO.
My one complaint is, while my Google system has a 2.4Ghz band they do not let you access it. When I got a robot vacuum it worked on a 2.4Ghz band. I called Google support and they had me carry my robot down the hall till I was out of the 5Ghz range but just inside the 2.4Ghz range to set it up.
That actually worked but seriously…WTF?
Thank you for this detailed investigatory writeup! One presumes, then – though I should probably verify this when I can – that some mesh networks implement these protocols, with each mesh AP actively communicating with the others to facilitate handoffs.
With two random thrift store routers from different manufacturers, on the other hand, it’s unlikely they will negotiate these handoffs correctly even if they were both on the same SSID.
That’ll be my working theory, then, as to why meshes are far more stable than unrelated routers on the same SSID, even given the same signal strength. I’ll try to verify this at some point.
But thank you for this explanation!
It’s hard to say. I think we’re deep into the weeds of proprietary implementations when it comes to managing the actual handovers so it’s very difficult to research how well devices and access points handle this.
My impression is that it is largely up to the client devices (your phone, laptop, etc.) to actually manage the handoffs, but mesh WiFi systems can make this work a lot better by supporting things like the standards I mentioned (i.e. so that the access points do indeed provide information about the available other access points and their current loads, etc., as well as supporting the much more lightweight handover protocol).
So I would guess that any mesh system that claimed support for these standards would give you the handoff you would expect, but that would also imply your devices could do a good job at this too. I speculate than any modern Apple or Android phone would do this correctly, but I have no way to verify that …
