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Why Mesh Systems Won’t Solve Your WiFi Issues

There are many options available out there claiming to speed up your WiFi. Mesh systems, WiFi extenders or boosters, hardwired access points – it’s easy to get confused. But when you purchase a mesh system because it is easy to set up, are you really fixing your problem?

Imagine you are in your home enjoying a nice cup of coffee and you’ve just installed your new Google Nest or Amazon Eero mesh system. The WiFi on your smart phone seems speedy while you are scrolling through Facebook. Then your Amazon order is delivered and your Ring doorbell notifies you on your Apple Watch and also on your iPad. You decide to tell Alexa on your Echo to play some music to soothe you while you are creating a grocery shopping list. You tell your smart refrigerator to look inside the refrigerator and show you the contents. All the while your family is keeping occupied – your husband in his home office sending emails from his laptop, your kids in their rooms gaming while YouTube videos play in the background on their tablets. But the mesh system can handle it, right?

Unfortunately, wrong. Mesh systems actually make the WiFi issues worse because they add additional steps for your devices. The more mesh routers that you add, the worse the problem becomes. When you have multiple smart devices in your home, each device then has to sit in a queue waiting its turn to the closest router.  End result – your kid’s YouTube video request has to hop in a row down the line of routers to the final router before finally reaching the internet.

The kids holler from upstairs that their YouTube videos aren’t working. You call the cable company to tell them there is an internet issue and they advise that you upgrade to their 1GB service to have faster internet speeds. You agree, and the service gets changed for an extra $70 a month. But then the next day the same issue happens.

While the cable company was happy to sell you an upgraded service, that was never the issue. It’s those pesky mesh routers, creating additional barriers that your devices have to go through to get to the internet.