If you live in a larger home, or perhaps a house with unusual dimensions or building materials, perhaps you’ve discovered there’s no one good place to put one Wi-Fi router and get good coverage everywhere. You can try to solve the problem by putting in multiple access points, or adding wireless repeaters, but that can create problems because you may need to create and manage secondary networks that your devices connect to as you move around.
The way businesses solve this is by installing a mesh network, where wired or wireless access points are designed to work together to create an almost seamless “mesh” of Wi-Fi connectivity. Mesh technology is slowly gaining ground in systems designed for the home.
Ubiquiti Networks, which makes Wi-Fi products for businesses large and small, now has a home product line offering easy-to-use mesh technology. Top of the line is the Amplifi HD, which combines a powerful base station wireless router and two wireless mesh points.
Setup is fairly simple: you plug the router – a white cube – into power and connect a network cable to your existing modem (or router). The Amplifi router boots up, and you can configure it either manually or by using a wizard that walks you through various settings, using apps available for Android or Apple devices. You should, of course, make your own network ID and password, and make the password difficult. The router has a touch display screen that can show date and time, connectivity speeds, and IP addresses. It also makes little chime noises and the base lights up, but you can “adjust” that.
The two mesh points are even easier to setup, as you just plug each into an electrical outlet where it can pick-up even a modest signal from the router or another mesh point, and rebroadcast it. Little LEDs light up when the connection is made. But unlike a simple range extender, mesh points works together with the wired base station to hand-off devices. It’s something you’ve experienced while in a vehicle with your phone, hands-free please, where you can keep talking as one cell tower transfers your call seamlessly to the next one down the road.
While not as sophisticated as a business Wi-Fi system, the Amplifi HD can be configured to create separate networks for the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands, as well as a “guest” network that separate visitors’ devices from your home network’s computers and printers. 2.4 GHz is slower but travels greater distances than the faster 5 GHz.
If you already have a wireless router from your cable provider, as I do, the Amplifi base router can be easily set to “bridge” mode, so the system now becomes part of the existing network. In which case you should move the Amplifi router to a different location than your existing router, but where it can be connected by network cable. The router includes 4 network jacks, so you could put it in a room on another floor where there’s already a network connection for a computer or printer, and plug them into the router.
I should mention there is excellent support available 24/7 by chat. I used it on a weekend night to solve a minor problem with my demo unit.
The Amplifi HD is available direct for $349, currently in pre-order for late November 2016, although its somewhat lesser siblings are available now for $199 or $299, but are slower. The least expensive Amplifi covers only 10,000 square feet, while the LR model, like the HD covers 20,000 square feet.
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