Over the holidays, the Wi-Fi extender in our lounge randomly decided to stop working for no reason. Disconnected from existence with no wireless connectivity in one entire half of the house, and the ever-increasing prospect of my husband and I reverting to a Neanderthal state of bewildered, incoherent screeches and panic-incontinence, it was time to upgrade.
First, some visual context. We have a fibre internet ONT hooked up to a gigabit router in our bedroom, and an ethernet “backhaul” of two custom RJ-45 cables from this router going through the ceiling and connecting to switches in my office and the lounge because we’re old skool like that. My PC is wired into the office switch, and most of the devices in the lounge (TVs and consoles) are wired into the other switch. The Wi-Fi extender – a second gigabit router, but in bridge mode to function like an access point – was also plugged into this switch to provide wireless connectivity on that side of the house.
Some of you probably have more or less the same setup. And it’s not a bad setup, but it has limitations – besides some complex technical bandwidth and channel problems that I’m not going to get into, the most obvious one to most users is that although it’s on the same network, a Wi-Fi extender must have a unique ID. So, a device connected to one wireless source will maintain that connection until it’s completely out of range before re-connecting to an alternate wireless source, which can result in a slow or wobbly connection in some spaces. Before upgrading our network, for example, my phone would frequently maintain its connection to the router in the bedroom even if I was in the lounge and I’d have to manually swap to the Wi-Fi extender like it’s 2013. The Wi-Fi extender’s speeds were also inexplicably inconsistent, despite the ethernet backhaul – maxing out at 100-150Mbps most of the time – but other connected devices clocked the expected 200Mbps.
Frustrating.
A mesh network system is different. Instead of linking up a router and extenders and a zillion IDs, a mesh network system comprises multiple “node” units and a single ID. Each node shares its internet connection wirelessly with other nodes in its range, automatically choosing the fastest, most optimal transmission route between them. If one node fails or becomes too congested, the system re-configures its connections and transmission routes to accommodate this. Devices connected to a mesh network system swap from one node to the next according to proximity and connection quality with zero perceptible latency or interruption to the user.
Think of it like this – a regular Wi-Fi network is a traffic jam at the intersection of six streets, two bus lanes, a toll booth, some guy selling trash bags, and an incomplete off-ramp into a toxic waste dump. A mesh Wi-Fi network is a neon-cyberpunk superhighway.
I purchased TP-Link’s M4 Deco mesh Wi-Fi network system, which includes two nodes, supports up to 100 (!) connected devices, and is compatible with an ethernet backhaul. This is adequate for the size and layout of our house, but without an ethernet backhaul, I think maybe one or two extra nodes would’ve been necessary because these walls are thicc, yo.
Setup for the TP-Link M4 Decos is managed via a super EZPZ-to-use phone app, starting with the “main” node and then adding the other nodes. Most mesh network systems are flexible and can replace or integrate with an existing network. As such, the Deco’s main node can establish an internet connection through an ONT or ADSL modem, but each Deco node has only two ethernet ports and I need three – one to connect to my ONT, and two for the backhaul. I guess I could’ve solved this with a new switch to expand the available ports, but… I didn’t. Instead, I just connected this Deco node to my router and the other node to the ethernet cable and the switch in the lounge, and enabled access point mode on the new mesh network. I also disabled the wireless broadcasting on the router to keep things simple.
Although the ethernet backhaul to the lounge previously connected to the switch with the Wi-Fi extender and other wired devices, I’ve connected it directly to one of the Deco node’s ethernet ports, with the switch connected to the Deco’s other ethernet port, because the back of this cabinet is a Lovecraftian transdimensional tangle of cables and I’m not messing with it. In theory, however, it should work connected to the Deco or the switch.
The result? A network with no dead zones, a totally seamless transfer from one node to the next, and 200Mbps wireless speeds on both ends of the house, dropping to about 100-150Mbps in the middle.