Range Extenders vs Mesh Systems

When a customer has a large house it can lead to problems where on the edges of their WiFi coverage devices may drop off the network ("intermittent disconnections") or encounter very slow speed. In order to increase coverage customers can add range extenders or mesh systems to their WiFi setup.

Range Extenders, aka Wireless Repeaters

Range Extenders, also known as "repeaters" or "boosters" depending on what country you are in, are an older method to improve wireless coverage. As their other name implies, they are used to repeat a wireless signal in order to extend the area covered in WiFi. They look like smaller versions of routers.

Range extenders have many drawbacks:

1. They must be set up properly by customers

2. They do not truly "repeat" or "extend" a network, they create an entirely different wireless network for another area of the home

3. There are many cheap models that do not work well

4. Cheaper extenders do not always have a 5GHz network option

The main issue to look out for with range extenders is that they should not have the same name (SSID) as the main WiFi network. This is because this secondary network is NOT the same network and devices will not gracefully switch between the two networks just because they are named the same. They will show up as separate networks in phone WiFi menus and this causes a lot of confusion over which network each device truly connects to. More typically they should have a name such as Network_Name_EXT.

If customers name the extender network the same as their main network it can cause:

• Slow speeds

• Intermittent disconnections of devices

• Customer confusion on why the network is worse with an extender

Mesh Networks

Mesh Network Systems have become popular over the past couple of years, with many ISPs offering upgrades which add Mesh "pods" (aka "pucks" or "nodes") to the home network to improve coverage. Common lines of mesh networks pods are:

• Eero (owned by Amazon)

• Google or Nest WiFi

• Netgear Orbi

• Asus ZenWiFi

• Linksys Velop

• TP-Link Deco

• Other ISP-branded mesh systems such as BT Whole Home

Mesh networks are typically controlled by a mobile application and may lack a traditional login page for customers to make changes. As well, they improve over Range Extenders as the networks produced by each pod will have the same name as the main network, with software which tries to gracefully transition devices from pod to pod as they move throughout the house, maintaining a strong connection.

Mesh networks such as those listed above are the consumer version of the type of WiFi that has been used in schools, offices, and public spaces for a long time.

Mesh Networks have pros:

• Create a single WiFi network name (SSID) you connect all devices to

• Less work to make sure it is working properly

• Will try to keep devices connected to the closest "pod"

• Have both 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands available to maximize speeds in each room

• Support more than 1 pod to create giant networks

And cons:

• Some smart devices have problems connecting to mesh networks for the first time. In these cases, unplug all but one pod for setup.

• The software in charge of getting devices to connect to the closest pod can mess up and not transition devices. Customers may need to turn WiFi on their phone off then on again, for example, as they walk through their homes

• Usually the 5GHz and 2.4GHz networks cannot be split so it is really up to the software to optimize which band each device connects to and it will not always pick correctly

• It is easy to position pods too far apart which will create a worse network than before

Mesh System Coverage with 3 Pods (from TP-Link)

Range Extender and Mesh System Positioning

The most common customer mistake when setting up either type of system is positioning the devices too far from the router. Because both systems work by reading from the main router and re-broadcasting that signal, they need to be close enough to get a good signal to re-broadcast!

This means that if a customer goes to the area of the home that has bad coverage and plugs in a range extender or mesh pod, coverage will still be bad!!

Instead, customers should be walking halfway between the area of bad coverage and their router and setting their extender or pod up there, so it has a strong signal to copy.

In this example GREEN is close enough to each device that the signal is strong. RED is bad signal. If the extender or pod is set up in a RED area it will just be copying a bad signal.

Device WiFi Maximums (Link Speed)

Depending on the WiFi chip used on a smart device, it will have different maximum speeds. In practice, this maximum speed is referred to as the Link Speed of the device.

Link Speed is the maximum speed between the device and the router it is connected to. It is dictated by the WiFi chip, distance from router, congestion, etc.

If the customer pays for a plan speed (max bandwidth) which is higher than the Link Speed that device will never show a speed test result higher than the Link Speed.

This is useful to know because it means that customers with 1Gbps bandwidth plans may never be able to see that speed over WiFi. They either need to test wired, get a newer/more expensive wireless device like a laptop, or be educated on device limitations. Typically one might explain to them that:

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Your plan speed is like a pie. The reason to get such a large pie like you have is so that each device can have a big enough slice to do what you want it to do, not to feed the entire pie to a single device.

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Device Age

Older devices, just like cheaper devices, will have worse WiFi chips with older protocols that cannot support the high speeds that some customers are purchasing today. They will be able to get enough speed to work, but a Samsung Galaxy S2 won't be able to run speedtests as fast as a Galaxy S10.

If a router is getting older (5 years+) it can start to cause problems as it may degrade over time but also it won't have the newest protocols and standards. If a customer is having speed or coverage issues on an old router, it may be time for them to buy a new one!

The following flashcards run through some 2020 buzzwords in faster technology which even most 2019 products won't support:

• WiFi 6 - The newest WiFi spec. Not used much today. Theoretically 11 Gbps speeds!

• IPV6 - The 6th version of the IP system. A more complicated looking IP address which is needed because we are running out of shorter addresses. Looks like "2001:db8::8a2e:370:7334"

• 5G - Not a WiFi term at all, it stands for the fifth generation of cellular networks. Faster than ever!

• WPA3 - A cutting edge encryption for WiFi networks, many smart devices will not support this if set up on a router.

How many is too many (devices)?

There are two reasons why too many devices cause problems for a router:

1. As mentioned in a previous section, more devices running at once uses more of the overall bandwidth "pie" which can lead to slow speed issues

2. Routers have a chip which acts as their "brain", just like our brains if too much information is going in and out the whole thing starts slowing down!

You can sometimes google the number of devices a router can support but a good rule of thumb is that at around 30 devices connected routers will start acting a bit slower. Mesh networks help to spread this load over multiple pods and most people with very "smart" homes should move to a mesh system to support dozens of devices simultaneously, even if they are low bandwidth.

Have you tried turning it off an on again?

Rebooting devices and routers is often recommended but not many people know why! Here are a few of the benefits a good solid reboot will have:

• The longer something is on for there is more and more likelihood it can't do it's job well. Software and hardware issues will stack up over time.

• Just like when you have too many apps open on your phone it slows down, a reboot makes sure the device or router completely stops everything it is doing and empties its "brain" and "memory"

• Sometimes reboots cause important software updates that fix problems

• Reboots will re-establish network connections from scratch and perform automatic optimizations such as picking the least congested channel