Benefits of Wireless Mesh

Wireless Mesh works off the idea that separate nodes in the house repeat the same wireless network. This is different to repeaters, extenders and powerline devices which take the signal and repeat a separate, though linked, wireless network. Take the following very bad image for example:

This is my place, it's not to scale, but it's not that big either (Those are the eaves / carport). The blue (purple) represents the old wireless network from the router and the green is the wireless network from the old powerlilne kit. They're linked, but they're separate and if you travel between them, one network drops out and the other takes over. It's a pain.

I've just installed a Mesh network which is represented by the red (hence the purple), so now where ever you go in the house, the devices only see the one same wireless network and the Mesh devices work out the rest (the green and blue networks no longer exist).

The beauty of Mesh is that you can add additional nodes to extend the network coverage. I'm fortunate in that no matter what configuration I have, it's going to be over engineered.

Additionally, each of the nodes has 2 ethernet ports for either computers without wireless cards, or other networkable devices, like an eftpos machine, which is what one of the nodes is servicing currently.

Let's talk dollars.

A powerline kit will set you back anywhere from $90 to $250. It's useful, but has its limitations and ours has been a bit buggy since we got it, dropping out and needing to be re-sync'd once in a while (and we forked out for ours).

The wireless Mesh systems vary in price (currently) from $150-$1200, but the system that I just put in was only $230. I've installed several of these for already for various customers and even linked two different houses together without too many issues.

So, if you're wireless is giving you headaches, drop me a line and we can discuss what options you've got.