The advantages and disadvantages of using a Mesh network for your home WiFi

What is Mesh WiFi

Mesh WiFi networks are an intuitive way to provide better WiFi to a larger area of your home. Used as an alternative to the traditional single router system, a mesh WiFi network is a great option for larger homes and households that are prone to poor connectivity in some areas, known as not-spots. If this sounds like your home, you may be considering utilising a mesh WiFi network in your home; we’ve put together the pros and cons of these systems below so you have all the information you need to make the right choice for your household.

Advantages of mesh WiFi

With mesh, some advantages are obvious, others are not. For example, you will already know that mesh is capable of offering whole-home WiFi to any household, so every area of your home will become a hub for connectivity. However, you may not know that mesh will provide your home with seamless roaming so that you stay connected whilst you move from room to room.

Faster broadband is a huge plus point for mesh WiFi - it loses less speed whilst spreading your connection further, meaning your whole home can enjoy high-performance broadband and you can get the most out of your package.

Seamless roaming solves one of the biggest pitfalls that you may run into with a WiFi booster. Whilst a range extender will do an adequate job of projecting your WiFi signal a little further than your router can, you may find that it becomes more of a hindrance when you have to log in and out of devices to access the most effective signal for that area. Mesh WiFi operates as one interlocking network, so you automatically connect to the most effective node for the area that you’re located.

Scalability is another huge benefit with mesh WiFi, as each node acts as a router which communicates and works with other nodes to direct traffic; you can scale this to suit your home by adding and removing nodes as you see fit. It’s also incredibly easy to add range to an existing network using mesh - simply introduce an additional node and you’ll be able to cover a larger area than before!

Setting up Mesh is really straight forward, especially if you use a repeater device such as the AVM Fritz! 3000 Repeater as a node.  It's a true plug and play device and is available to all Zen EveryRoom broadband customers.

Disadvantages of mesh WiFi

However, this can come at a price both technically and financially. If you’re looking to introduce a mesh network to your home, you can expect an increase in price too, as this intelligent technology isn’t as cheap as using just a standard router.

On top of this increase in price, the initial setup can be time consuming and rather confusing at first, meaning there may well be a period of trial and error before you manage to get things up and running efficiently. If your home doesn’t necessarily need mesh WiFi, it can also feel like the network has made little difference to your home broadband setup, so you’ll want to make sure that you’re using the system that’s most beneficial to your home and your wallet.