Create the ultimate home network
Confused about what you need to set up the best home or SOHO network? Nathan Taylor reveals all in our detailed guide.
So the time has come to rebuild your home network. Perhaps you just got upgraded to the NBN. Perhaps you’re just sick of crummy Wi-Fi performance and you’d like to be able to stream Netflix without buffering to anywhere in your house. What should you be looking for in a 2017 home network?
THE HOT NEW THINGS FOR 2017
There are changes afoot in the world of consumer networking, and it’s absolutely worth knowing a little about them if you’re planning on upgrading your home network any time soon. There are three primary things you should be looking at this year:
MU-MIMO, FOR REALSIES.
Back in 2015, we started seeing enormous routers and access points with forests of antennae producing tri-band networks for serving multiple devices. Thankfully, we’re starting to see the end of that trend as we move to MU-MIMO and mesh networks.
This all probably requires some explanation. It comes down to how clients in the real world access the network. MIMO was a technology introduced back in the 802.11n era, allowing multiple antennae to transmit spatially diverse signals, multiplying the effective speed. If you had two antenna arrays (called 2X2 MIMO), each array could send its own stream, doubling the speed of the network. In 802.11n, you could have up to four streams (4X4) and, in 802.11ac, you can technically have eight streams, though we’ve never seen more than four in consumer devices.
But the thing about MIMO is that for it to work, the devices at both ends of the link need to support it. A 4X4 device talking to a 2X2 device only talks at 2X2. And almost no consumer devices have more than 2X2. Laptops, mobiles and most USB adapters tend to be limited to two streams (at best). So that fancy 1,766Mbps four-antenna router you bought is mostly wasted because the client device can’t go faster than 867Mbps.
Then we had the tri-band network devices (not to be confused with 802.11ad devices). Because most client devices supported only slower speeds, they split the network up into multiple
independent Wi-Fi networks, each with their own SSID and band. So instead of one six-stream network, you had two three-stream networks. That way, several devices could access the network at once without getting in each others’ way. It was ugly, but it kind of worked.
But MU-MIMO, introduced in so-called ‘Wave 2’ routers in 2015 and 2016 solved that. Now multiple devices can talk to the network without competing for bandwidth, using the same spatial division multiple access technique used by MIMO, but this time from the client side. Your two 2X2 devices can talk to a 4X4 MU-MIMO router at the same time at full speed, for example.
For MU-MIMO to work, however, you need clients that support it. And while it’s far from universal, the number of devices that support it has grown considerably. Many phones support it, including the Google Pixel, Samsung Galaxy S7, Microsoft Lumia 950, some ASUS ZenPad and ZenFone models, new HTC One models and others. It’s not just the super-expensive phones either; Microsoft’s Lumia 640 and Sony Xperia M2 support it as well.
On laptops, the story has got better as well. The Acer V13 Ultrabook and Aspire V Nitro, Dell Latitude, XPS and Alienware models (look for devices with Killer 1535 wireless), as well as some MSI gaming laptops support it, and the list is growing.
All that means that you’ll get good speeds, from multiple devices at once, without having to massively overprovision your home network or deal with multiple Wi-Fi networks. It makes things much simpler.
802.11AD
OK, to be honest, we’re not really sure how ‘hot’ 802.11ad is. It may be just another one of those periodic ideas that falls by the wayside. But we are seeing a few more routers coming out that support it.
The idea behind 802.11ad routers is that they use a third band, the extremely high frequency 60GHz radio band (regular Wi-Fi uses the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands). At this high frequency, the radio signals can carry a lot of data — up to 7Mbps — but they can’t go through walls.
That makes it essentially a sameroom/line-of-sight technology for fast connection to wireless peripherals. It’s seen as a useful tool for connecting to external SSDs and displays, and especially useful for wireless virtual reality headsets.
Given that the devices and the access point or router need to be in the same room, we’re not sure how much traction it will get with users, and almost no client devices support it right now. So it’s not a high-priority inclusion in home networks... for the moment.
MESH NETWORKS
Perhaps the biggest story in networking this year is the growth in wireless mesh networks for the home. Mesh networks aren’t new — they’re frequently used in hotels, airports, museums and office buildings — but in
“For MIMO to work, the devices at both ends of the link need to support it. A 4X4 device talking to a 2X2 device only talks at 2X2.”
the home, we’ve been stuck with single-router solutions for a long time now.
However, last year, we saw the first mesh networks for home users appear. Ubiquiti’s AmpliFi, eero, Netgear’s Orbi, Linksys’ Velop and others were released in the US and they worked fantastically, finally solving the range problems so many people in larger and multi-storey homes have endured. Unfortunately, we’ve yet to see many of those solutions come to our shores. AmpliFi and Orbi are widely available for retail, but you might have to go to eBay importers for some of the other products.
Mesh networks use multiple access points to provide better coverage and allow smaller cells, so that there are fewer wireless signals overlapping with each other. With a mesh network, you don’t just place a single router — you strategically position two or more access points around the home to provide proper coverage everywhere.
These access points talk to each other using a wired or wireless backhaul network, and your device will automatically connect to the nearest access point to maximise speed. As you move around the house, there should be an invisible (to you) hand-off, so that you’ll always be connected to the fastest access point.
From a user perspective, they’re very easy to set up. You buy a network mesh kit with as many access points as you need to cover your house. You position the primary router/access point next to wherever your internet comes in. Then you position additional ones around the house where needed. If you’re using wireless backhaul (rather than connecting them via an Ethernet cable), each access point has to be within Wi-Fi range of another point — though they don’t necessarily have to be in range of the primary, since the secondary points can relay. Once you’ve positioned them, you can usually use a mobile or desktop app to configure them all at once.
Although there are multiple access points, you’ll only see a single SSID when you connect to a mesh network from a wireless device. Connecting to that one will automatically connect you to the closest access point — and as you move around, you’ll be handed off to the best access point.
We’ll talk a lot more about mesh networks in the section on range expansion (opposite), since they’re a big deal for home users.