Tech has answer to weak WiFi
Immersive Home quiets the noise
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. – When your children’s online schooling starts bogging down your Zoom presentation, wouldn’t it be great if you could just send their electronics to their room?
That won’t work, of course. At least not today. Because the laptops and tablets the kids are using make just as much conversation-snuffing chatter on the network when they’re out of sight. If their rooms are farther away from your router, it could even make things worse.
But a new mesh Wi-Fi technology Qualcomm announced Tuesday could soon change that. The technology, called Qualcomm Immersive Home, is designed to conquer the battle of the bits by covering the house with network zones, each with its own wireless satellite. So when you send a child into another room for virtual class, it not only would quiet the room, but also improve performance for your virtual meeting.
Router systems with Immersive Home built-in are expected to start coming available early next year.
Videoconferencing wouldn’t be so hard on our home Wi-Fi networks were it not for one simple fact: twoway meeting apps like Cisco’s Webex, Microsoft Teams and Zoom depend as much on the pace of information leaving the house – that is, upload internet speeds – as what’s coming in, or download data rates.
For most broadband connections, upload speeds are typically a fraction of download rates. The national average last month, according to Ookla, was 161Mbps download and 60.26Mbps upload.
videoconferencing demands upload performance in order to transmit our part of the conversation. Upstream traffic is now three times prepandemic levels, according to Open Fiber, an internet wholesaler.
Qualcomm’s Immersive Home technology takes mesh Wi-Fi to the next level. If you’re not familiar, mesh splits Wi-Fi routers into two or more pieces, with satellites positioned to extend wireless connectivity to every corner of the house. The pieces are all connected by a slice of spectrum reserved for router-to-router communications, called backhaul.
The idea behind Qualcomm Immersive Home is this: If you break up the home network into chunks, each with its own small Wi-Fi satellite connected to the main router, then traffic will be faster and smoother. On any given satellite, only a few devices will be contending for the spectrum. And they will be closer to the Wi-Fi source, which means faster speeds.
The success of a technology such as Immersive Home hinges on its ability to keep traffic on the Wi-Fi satellites from bothering each other.
If it works as advertised, and we can steady the home network by plugging Wi-Fi satellite into an outlet in the kids’ room.