Southport Magazine

You are asking your router to do too much, and it is time to get rid of it in favor of something better.

By Jeremy Seeliger

Routers were really made an essential piece of home networking equipment about 20 years ago,
and for that reason they address the way we were using the internet 20 years ago. The implications of this are increasingly archaic. If you had Wi-Fi back then, it might be because you had a laptop, but that is
pretty much all you needed Wi-Fi for in those early days. Nothing else was connecting the internet wirelessly.

Think about how different that is to how we use the internet today. Not just computers, but now our phones, printers, televisions, Blu-ray players, tablets, e-book readers, and video game consoles are all connecting to Wi-Fi. As smart home devices get increasingly popular, we have smart thermostats, doorbells, locks, and speakers. I recently got a Wi-Fi connected robot vacuum. Smart refrigerators and ovens exist now, and if you want to get nuts you can buy a smart toilet. And make no mistake, this list is woefully incomplete.

I would bet whatever combination of devices you have in your home, you didn’t have most of them five years ago, and that trajectory is not slowing down. More and more devices will be made to connect to Wi-Fi with varying degrees of success and usefulness. You will no doubt have more devices connecting to Wi-Fi in another five years.

The router in your home may be more powerful than the ones you’ve had in the past, but conceptually it has gone nearly unchanged in all that time. There are two big problems with routers in the modern world. One, you are asking this one little box to manage all of these connections simultaneously. Two, you are asking all of these devices to maintain a usable connection to this single access point, not matter how much distance or interference there may be. In a world where Wi-Fi devices are spread throughout your home, this is a problem.

The solution is mesh networks. If you haven’t heard of them yet, don’t worry. Most people still haven’t. Rather than a single access point in your home like a router, a mesh network is multiple access points all broadcasting the same Wi-Fi. Think of it like your cell phone. If you are ever driving and talking on your phone, your phone will switch connections constantly as you move in and out of range of towers. The tower you are currently connecting to gives your connection to the next tower once that next tower’s signal is better for you. Mesh networks do the exact same thing inside your home.

Do you have an office in the back of your house but you need to serve a living room in the front? Do you have two or three floors to give Wi-Fi to? Are you likely to move and you want a Wi-Fi solution that can adapt to any layout? Do you just want to set up a Wi-Fi network in your home that just works so that you don’t have to think about whether or not your connection is sufficient to do whatever you want? A mesh network is the way to go in all of these cases.

A good mesh network is going to set you back $300 – $500, depending on the brand, feature set, and the number of access points. And if you’re concerned about overspending, feel free to start out at the lower end. If you get a two-piece mesh network and decide it is insufficient, that’s no problem. Just get another piece and add it to your existing set. They are modular like that.

It’s the final piece of freedom that your home electronics need. We already have mobile devices with battery lives that last days, as well as the need for electronics at all corners of the home including outside. Make a Wi-Fi environment for your home that can handle everything you will ever throw at it.