What do wifi mesh systems do and do they actually work?
In: Technology
Yes.
Let’s take a classic analogy. You want to hear music. You have a speaker in one room that plays music. In other rooms the sound is a little muffled, outside you strain to hear it. In the garage you can hear anything.
You get a bright idea, you put a speaker in every room. Now the walls and doors and other interference don’t cause a problem.
That’s a mesh network. It just allows you to bypass impediments to the signal so you can get good throughout everywhere.
Just like listening to music.
instead of having a single access point, like your router, mesh systems use multiple access points connected to a central point to increase coverage and signal strength
and yes, they work pretty well. i used to have just a router downstairs, and my computer connected wirelessly, and constantly dropped signal, had packet loss, all that fun stuff
since setting up a mesh network, i havent had any of those problems, while keeping the same isp
An access point is connected to the network via wire. So your wireless device transmits to the access point.
A typical network will have numerous access points in various locations, all connected to the network via hard wire.
In a mesh network you typically have one access point connected to a network. Then you have numerous repeaters all around. So your signal is picked up by a repeater which transmits to the next to the next to the next until it reaches an access point.
An alternative method is a leaky wire. A hard wire with holes in the shielding. So you have one access point then the wire going through all the rooms. The wire basically acts as a funnel collecting signals and transporting them to the access point.
Both are nice for areas where you need coverage but dont have network cable access.
A mesh network is nice for high traffic, the signal can find the path of least resistance to arrive at the access point in the shortest time. But you still need to power all the repeaters which can be difficult in some situations where you dont have easy power access.
The leaky wire is useful if you dont have easy power in the area you need coverage. But since it funnels all the signals onto one line it’s not so great with high traffic areas. And if you try to use multiple lines to get around that they have a tendency to interfere with each other if too close.
Others explain what they are well – but the important thing is, in older ‘consumer’ grade equipment, once you connect to wifi, you stay attached to that point…If there was a wifi extender/repeater in range with better signal, it wouldn’t matter as you are still connected to the older, crappier signal.
In a mesh system, all points try to communicate with all other points to assess ‘Who has the best signal to this node’ – then they actively hand off the client to the best point. This is how cel phone towers work also – constantly switching to the best available signal.
ELI5: You want to send a message to your friend Bob at the other side of town, asking him if he wants to come over for a beer.
In a traditional network, you would pay someone to go to him and give him the message. This is what an ISP does, they have all the “long cables”.
In a mesh network, you instead open the window, and shout out to anyone that might hear: “Tell Bob at Small Street that Fred wants him to come over for a beer!”. Someone outside realize that they are roughly in the direction of Small Street, so they yell the same message. A lot of people hear, a few of them are in the right direction and repeat it. Eventually, someone is close enough for Bob to hear it.
This is pretty much the same with wifi mesh nets. They have a slightly more advanced method of bouncing the message in the right direction, but the basic idea is that all the clients are the infrastructure, there aren’t any ISPs to connect people together.
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