Home Wireless Technology

With the emerging of mesh wifi system products, folks are busy switching and upgrading their aging wireless routers to using this trend – the mesh wifi system or mesh whole home wifi system. All the networking vendors introduce their flagship products, some are successful in the market become best mesh wifi system and some are not.

Why mesh wifi system

Mesh wifi system or whole home wifi system is easy to setup and deploy within small to large homes. Typically it comes in two or three packs for most home size. One unit connects to the modem to act as the mesh wifi router, the other units work as its satellite something like the wireless range extender. Mesh wifi system replaces the wireless router and the range extender..

With wireless extender, the router talks to the extender head to head while in mesh wifi system each unit talks one to another in a mesh connection so data can find the best route from node to node to destination point efficiently. Communication between nodes typically uses wifi backhaul either using dedicated radio band @5GHz band or shared radio band with connected clients. And today with latest mesh wifi 6e system; generally the dedicated backhaul uses 6ghz radio band or share with other compliant 6ghz band devices.

One network name

One of most important features with mesh wifi system is that it creates a single wifi / network name (aka one SSID name) so you can move with your mobile device roaming from one room to the other rooms seamlessly. With wifi range extender when you roam from one network name to wifi range extender you need switching from one SSID to another SSID name.

Mesh wifi system is also applied to wireless access point such as Unifi uap- Flex HD mesh wifi access point.

Now which one is best whole home wifi system (many people call it a mesh wifi system) suitable to meet your home need?

Best mesh wifi system

Not all vendors are successful with their mesh wifi system products they offer either two or three band models. Some of them cannot compete with the others. Now, here are top 3 best mesh wifi system products with either dual or three band you can find in the market. again, when it comes to which one is best you need to assess your home requirement, so choose the one that is best to suit your home.

1. Amazon eero 6

The first generation of eero whole home wifi system is claimed to be the first mesh wifi system in the market, it was a startup project that becomes very popular and got the best rated in the market at the first time released.

At the end of 2019, eero was acquired by Amazon and modified to work with Amazon Alexa and becomes compliant with Amazon smart home environment. Then the body is modified so that it looks more elegant and stylist than the original model which is only a flat square box with smooth curved edges.

And today, with the emerging of wifi 6 technology products, amazon released its eero 6 series including the standard eero 6, eero pro 6 series and the latest one is eero 6e pro.

For small to medium home, amazon eero 6 is suitable and adequate.

Highlights

1.          Simultaneous dual band with 2x2 MU-MIMO technology with ax1800 mesh wifi 6 whole home system
2. ·         Typically sold in three pack to form whole home wifi system covering up to 5,000 sq ft replacing your wireless router and extenders
3. ·         Comes with two auto sensing Gigabit Ethernet ports (WAN / LAN ports), you can start from one unit Amazon eero and add more to cover larger area
4. ·         Automatic firmware update, no hassle of downloading and manually updating the firmware
5. ·        You upgrade to subscribe for eero Secure service gives you essential tools like threat scans, content warnings, and ad-blocking and the eero Secure + add top-rated security apps — Encrypt.me, 1Password, and Malwarebytes.
6. ·         Works with Alexa, Amazon WiFi simple setup, Bluetooth LE 5.0 for smart home connectivity
7. ·         Powered by 1.2 GHz quad-core processor, 512 MB RAM, 4 GB flash storage

Under Amazon umbrella, Amazon eero is now tagged with cheaper price (around $249.99) than the original eero when it was first launched in the market. See also the pro version of amazoneero pro 6 mesh wifi.

2. Orbi Rbk962

Most available mesh wifi routers today come with either dual or three radio bands, and with the three radio band models one of the radio bands @5ghz is used as dedicated backhaul in general. even though few models use dynamic backhaul to let the system uses the best wifi for backhaul link between the nodes.

What I would like to discuss here is the Orbirbke963, the first quad radio band mesh wifi 6e system with total aggregated bandwidth up to 11,000Mbps. Orbi doesn’t use the 6ghz radio band as dedicated backhaul like mesh wifi 6e products in general, however orbi uses one of @5ghz radio bands as dedicated backhaul link. This way, Orbi offers all available three distinct radio bands (2.4ghz; 5ghz and 6ghz) for connected devices.

Highlights

•      Quad band axe11000 mesh wifi 6e with 16 data streams
• .      Total aggregated bandwidth up to 11,000Mbps consists of 1,200 (2.4Ghz) + 2,400 (5ghz) + 2,400 (6ghz) + 4,800 (5ghz as dedicated backhaul)
• .      10Gbps WAN Port, 2.5Gbps LAN port, and 3x Gigabit LAN ports. For satellite nodes are 2.5Gbps LAN plus 3x Gigabit LAN ports
• .      Powered by Powerful Quad-Core 2.2GHz processor 512MB NAND Flash and 1GB RAM
• .      Works with alexa

Cons

• 1.      No usb port for storage
• 2.      No free network protection kit

This orbi rbk963 is still costly today, however it is ideal for large homes with heavy duty bandwidth applications including 4k and 8k video streaming, online gaming and still more. This Orbi rbke963 is very popular and becomes one of best mesh wifi system with premium model so far.    

Continued to best mesh wifi system part 2