PC Magazine - USA (2021-03)

If you’re new to networking, you might be worrying that
DOORIWKHDERYHZLOOOHDYH\RXVLWWLQJRQWKHÀRRU
surrounded by router documentation and questioning
your life choices. Fortunately, there’s an alternative:
Consider installing a mesh Wi-Fi system instead.

WHAT IS A MESH WI-FI SYSTEM?
Designed to blanket your home with wireless coverage,
Wi-Fi systems are a hybrid of sorts, made up of several
networking components. They include a main router
that connects directly to your modem and a series of
satellite modules, or nodes, that you place throughout
your house. These components are all part of a single
wireless network and share the same SSID and
password. Unlike range extenders, which communicate
with the router via the 2.4GHz or 5GHz radio bands,
most Wi-Fi system satellites use mesh technology to
talk to the router and to each other.

Each node serves as a hop point for other nodes in the
system. This helps the nodes farthest from the router
deliver a strong Wi-Fi signal as they are talking to other
nodes and not relying on one-to-one communications
with the router. Not all Wi-Fi systems use mesh
networking, though; some use a dedicated radio band to
communicate with the router and with one another. As
with mesh, the dedicated band frees up the standard-
use 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands for client use.

Pho

to^ c

redi

t:^ Jo

ni^ H

ane

butt

/shu

tter

stoc

k.co

m

A mesh Wi-Fi

system’s

components

are all part of a

single wireless

network and

share the same

SSID and

password.