Mesh network can boost your Wi-Fi

Question: Have you had a chance to test any of the mesh network products for a larger house?

Answer: Wi-Fi can be a challenge when you have a large area that you’d like to cover or when you have construction materials that impact coverage.

Concrete walls, metal structures and lots of metal air conditioning ducts are common reasons that a Wi-Fi signal can be obstructed, even in a smaller home.

In the past, if you wanted to improve your Wi-Fi signal in low-signal areas, you either installed another access point or a range extender.

Neither of those solutions was perfect, as one required you to run new cables and the other would generally give you half the signal strength as connecting directly to your router.

A newer technology known as a “mesh network,” while more expensive, is significantly better when dealing with large areas of coverage.

A typical system will consist of three “nodes” that all talk to each other and provide the same level of performance as a result. It’s almost like having three access points in your home.

In our tests using the Ubiquiti Labs AmpliFi HD, we found dramatic improvement in coverage over a traditional single router in a large home.

Ubiquiti has long been a supplier of commercial-grade networking devices and recently entered the consumer market to provide some of the same technology at a lower cost.

The setup was pretty simple, with a base station that took the place of the original router and two additional wireless mesh nodes that simply needed to be plugged into an AC outlet in the areas where we wanted to improve the signal.

The wireless mesh nodes automatically find the base station and connect themselves within a few minutes of plugging them in. All three will appear as the same SSID throughout your house.

A signal-strength meter on the nodes lets you know how strong the signal is in your chosen location.

Not only did it fill in the gaps within the home, it extended the signal reach far outside of the house. It allowed for connectivity by the pool, which was a good distance away from the house, and the garage, which never had a signal before.

Ken Colburn is founder and CEO of Data Doctors Computer Services. Ask any tech question at: facebook.com/Da taDoctors or on Twitter @TheDataDoc.