Nowadays, we are so used to being able to connect wirelessly from our phones / tablets / computers that it´s hard to believe that not so verylong ago Wi-Fi was a thing of science fiction. We’re so connected nowadays that we expect it to work in every part of our homes from our beds to pretty much anywhere we happen to be sitting in, around or outside our houses.
A lot of people use wireless extenders – little boxes that pick up the weak Wi-Fi in your home and amplify it, giving access further than your Wi-Fi router will reach on its own – and there is nothing wrong with wireless extenders, they are cheap and easy to setup, BUT they do have a drawback, especially if you live in a place that needs more than one of them. The problem with conventional Wi-Fi is that once connected your phone / tablet / etc. doesn’t want to let go (yes, really!) and it will doggedly remain connected to even a weak Wi-Fi signal even if it happens to be next to a wireless extender that has a much better and stronger signal. Even worse, your phone etc. will not start to look for an extender to connect to until it has moved sufficiently far enough away from your router that it has dropped the connection. The upshot of this is that you could experience poor connectivity throughout the house and dropouts even if you have wireless extenders strategically placed throughout your home.
So, what’s the answer I hear you say – well, its Mesh Wi-Fi. Mesh systems do the same thing as wireless extenders, but they “talk” to each other and track your signal strength as you move around the house. Once you move sufficiently close enough to one of the other mesh devices in your home, your phone / tablet / laptop will be handed off to the stronger mesh device, all seamlessly, all without dropping the signal. This will give you a strong, reliable, wireless signal throughout your house and if the number of mesh devices that you buy isn’t sufficient to cover the entire area that you want to cover, you just buy more and extend your mesh network – simple.
The way that most systems work is that you add your first mesh device directly to the back of your Internet router, then you place other mesh devices around the home (they will indicate where is best to place them based on the signal strength, but I have found that 3 is usually more than enough for most homes here. Once you’ve created your new mesh network you can turn off the Wi-Fi on your router (usually your ISP can do this for you) and connect your devices to your new mesh network and start to enjoy pain free Wi-Fi. Why not give it a go? If you feel that you’d rather have an expert come and help you then give us a ring, we have lots of experience installing mesh networks for people in and around the Costa Blanca.