MESH NETWORKING SYSTEMS Linksys Velop Dual-Band
By shrinking its original design, Linksys has created a middling mesh system with little to recommend it
PRICE £183 (£220 inc VAT) from pcpro.link/288velop
We’ve always liked the original tri-band Linksys Velop. One of the first consumer mesh networking systems on the market, it did a superb job of extending wireless coverage in the home. Only the price was hard to swallow: even now, a three-node pack will set you back £375.
Enter the Velop Dual-Band, a simpler, smaller system that ditches one of the 5GHz radios from each unit and slashes the price. The more petite design is rather endearing: at only 141mm tall, the nodes are easy to tuck away – but in the world of Wi-Fi, smaller dimensions imply shrunken aerials and a weaker signal.
That’s borne out by the fact that Linksys recommends this triple-pack for homes up to 4,500 square feet, while the original system can cover up to 6,000 square feet. The loss of one 867Mbits/sec 5GHz radio means there’s only one per node instead of two, so both client and backhaul traffic have to share the same channel, squeezing the available bandwidth.
To find out how much difference this makes, I put the Velop Dual-Band through my usual set of domestic tests ( see p79 for details). Things started well: in the living room, the Velop Dual-Band model gave me a respectable 13MB/sec – slower than the 17MB/sec I’d got from the regular Velop, but still enough bandwidth to get the full benefit of a 100Mbits/sec internet connection.
But, once I started roaming about the house, speeds fell precipitously. In the bedroom, I got only 7MB/sec, versus the original Velop’s 17MB/sec. And in the bathroom – always a tricky spot to reach, owing to a thick wall and a radiator – I got download speeds of merely 5MB/sec, compared to 11MB/sec for the larger units. The reason became apparent once I delved into the technical details: the 5GHz signal from the Dual-Band nodes had proved too weak to project consistently through the walls in my home – a problem I hadn’t had with the larger units – and my test laptop had automatically fallen back to the slower 2.4GHz band. This provides better penetration but, as we saw, slower speeds. And if you’re tempted to force a 5GHz connection, you’re out of luck, as the firmware doesn’t support band splitting. What you lose in advanced features, though, you make up for in ease of use. The Velop Dual-Band is deployed in exactly the same way as the original Velop, using the Linksys smartphone app. The setup wizard guides you through each step of the process, and it’s convenient to carry the phone around the house with you as you configure each node. The setup process is painfully slow, though – installing each unit involves a lot of waiting while connections are tested and established, and the whole rigmarole took me more than half an hour. Still, you should only have to go through it once. By default, the Velop system replaces your existing router – although you’ll still need to use its built-in ADSL modem, or buy a separate one – so once the nodes are in place, you may also want to spend some time configuring your home network. This can also be done through the app, or you can use the
“If you want to extend a stable wireless connection around a medium-sized property, it provides everything you need”
(rather sluggish) web portal. It’s not the world’s most feature-packed router, but you can reserve IP addresses for specific devices, set up port forwarding for local services, blacklist specific websites and enforce scheduling for individual devices.
If you want to keep your router, you can set up the Velop nodes as access points. You may also want to do this if you have a lot of wired clients, as each Velop unit only has two Gigabit Ethernet ports – and, on the primary node, one is taken up by the connection to your modem or router.
Once set up, you can pretty much forget about the Velop: the three nodes appear as one network, with the firmware automatically steering clients onto the strongest available connection from wherever they happen to be.
So should you buy it? The price above is for the three-pack version, but smaller homes could make do with the two-pack edition for £150. These prices bring it in line with the BT Whole Home Wi-Fi, but note the Tenda Nova MW3 opposite.
If you simply want to extend a stable wireless connection around a medium-sized property, the Velop Dual-Band provides everything you need in an unobtrusive package. But it’s too lightweight to deliver top performance, even at medium range. For a faster network, check out the BT Whole Home Wi-Fi kit, and if price is key, look no further than the opposite page.
SPECIFICATIONS
3 x 802.11ac Wi-Fi units 400Mbits/sec on 2.4GHz 867Mbits/sec on 5GHz 2 x Gigabit Ethernet ports per unit iOS and Android apps 79 x 79 x 141mm (WDH) 1yr warranty