What is Mesh Wi-Fi And Should You Get It? (Wi-Fi 6, Wi-Fi 7?)

so I have recently made some networking videos and I saw in the comments below that people were asking what is a mesh wi-fi system what are the benefits of it do I need it should I invest in it so I thought I would make this video today talking about what mesh Wi-Fi brings to the table and if it's the right solution for you so to get started the first question is what is mesh Wi-Fi so a typical Wi-Fi router in your house would be a single unit that plugs into your modem or it might actually be built into your modem like I have here with a t that router then broadcasts a signal out for your devices to connect through wirelessly the unfortunate issue with this setup is that the signal strength and speed diminish with distance and obstacles in a home that would be your walls that come between your device and that router now with a mesh system you'll have two or more devices connected together all broadcasting out the same signal essentially blanketing your space with Wi-Fi goodness one device is going to act as your main router and plug directly into your modem and the other device or devices are called satellites which are going to place around your house extending your coverage and boosting the speed these satellites connect wirelessly to the main router or for a better performance some mesh systems come with a feature called a back hole letting you plug in an ethernet cable into the back of the satellite which is going to help boost its performance now for example as you walk through your house your phone is going to seamlessly connect to the satellite that it is closest to giving it its best performance a mesh system is really going to help expand that faster five gigahertz signal that has a shorter range than the 2.4 another benefit to a mesh wi-fi system is how easy it is to set up for the example here with tp-link a deco I'm going to download The Deco app and create an account I'm going to plug one of those devices into the modem which is going to set it as my main router I'm going to follow the prompts in the app which is going to ask me to create a network name and password and once that's done I'm going to plug in the other satellites which are automatically going to connect to that main router and that's it you're done now some of the app features that we're getting specifically with the TP link that we're using in this demo is we're going to get things like guest Wi-Fi we can see what devices are connected to the network which hubs they're connected to their signal strength we can give them custom names if we want to do that we also have additional features like artificial intelligence to help optimize Network traffic for better speed qos or quality of service for boosted device performance we've got stuff like IP reservations port forwarding different things like that okay so what are we looking for when we're buying a mesh wi-fi system well first of all you're going to want to look at Wi-Fi technology now it used to be that it would be called like 802.11n 802.11 ax or AC one of those they have fortunately renamed these to Wi-Fi five Wi-Fi six six e and now even just today this morning tp-link announced Wi-Fi 7. so it's brand new technology it's not even coming out until next year but just know that is on the horizon now nothing is even compatible with Wi-Fi 7 yet but it's there just so you know so the current Wi-Fi standard right now I would say is kind of going out of Wi-Fi 5 into Wi-Fi six if you're looking at a mesh system I would look for something that's at least Wi-Fi six if not Wi-Fi 6E now a lot of devices even right now don't support Wi-Fi 6E but it's good to have to Future proof your purchase the next thing I would look at is speed you want to know how fast your router or your mesh system is going to be able to transfer speed so definitely look at that there's going to be different speeds for different systems out there if we take a look at this one right here this is an ax 1800 that means it's going to have transfer speeds of up to 1.8 gigs in speed if you take a look at this guy right here this is an ax 6000 that means it is going to have up to six gigs of transfer speed so make sure you're keeping that in mind when you're making your purchase the next thing that I would look at is cover coverage you want to make sure you get enough coverage to cover all of the areas of your house you don't want any dead spots however if you do have some dead spots you can always add on an additional satellite to boost your signal so make sure you're getting enough coverage that's not only going to include your house but maybe your front yard and your backyard too another thing that I would consider when looking for a mesh wi-fi system is how many devices does it support if you are not deep in the smart home technology and you don't have a ton of devices connecting then it may not be that big of a deal for you but if we take a look at this one right here from tp-link this one is going to allow up to 200 devices to connect to this mesh system now lastly some features that I would look for when purchasing a message system is you want something that probably has m-u-m-i-m-o which stands for multiple and multiple out essentially meaning that it can communicate and work with a bunch of different devices at the same time another feature that I really like is a backhaul so if you do have the option of plugging your satellites into an ethernet port a backhaul is definitely going to be something you want to look into in fact I just did a video talking about how you can use maybe some old coax cable that you're using for your cable modem to convert that into ethernet cable to set up a backhoe so go ahead and check that one out up in the top corner and then lastly I would just make sure your system has a guest Network it's always nice to have your guests on a separate VLAN than what you are running all of your stuff on and that is just something that I would look at when picking up a system so should you get a mesh system well I'd say that if you don't have a lot of devices connecting to your network and maybe don't really have any dead spots then a mesh Network probably isn't right for you but if you're like me and you have a ton of devices spread all around your house all connecting to your network things like phones tablets streaming sticks smart devices even security cameras then a mesh system is probably worth investing into now I will have links Below in the description of some of the systems that I recommend well I hope that explains mesh why systems a little more for you now I am curious are you going to invest in a wi-fi system are you going to stick with what you got or do you already have a mesh system that you are happy with let me know in the comments below I always love hearing from you guys if you have made it this far in the video thank you guys for watching give it a thumbs up let me know that you like it if you guys want to see more networking videos check out the playlist over here as always don't forget to subscribe for more content like this and I'll see you in the next video [Music] thank you [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Steve DOES

Views: 90,964

Keywords: mesh wifi, best mesh wifi, best mesh wifi router

Id: rHTzIa7Wq1A

Length: 6min 37sec (397 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 15 2022