Is this great wifi 6 mesh?
Is this great wifi 6 mesh?
I need a recommendation for WiFi 6 mesh nodes. I want coverage to reach far and high speed, something in the range of 150 euros or less. I heard that Mercusys H80X offers good reach and fast speeds but I'm not sure if it's real or just marketing hype. Do you have other options that are better than this one?
First I'd try other solutions before setting up a full mesh system. The best option is using ethernet cables to connect remote rooms with an AP, so everyone gets wifi. Next, you could use MoCa by running coaxial cables to those rooms and adding another AP. You might also consider the powerline network to link the remote areas. Mesh systems have major problems though. You lose bandwidth just for covering more space. You can improve this a bit by buying pricey mesh boxes with extra radio chips that talk directly to your main router, then add two more radios for each room on 2.4 and 5GHz bands. However, if you want wifi6 there isn't enough bandwidth left anyway. It's nearly impossible to get one solid 160MHz band plus another just for the backhaul or for the actual devices. Basically, with wifi6 you barely gain anything over wifi5 (802.11ac). You might look at wifi6e since it uses a different frequency that has lots of room. Even if you get into this range, you probably won't spend 150 euros per box to buy a high-quality mesh system for the price you'd normally pay.
So you suggest buying two routers with WiFi 6E and using them as access points? I had older routers with WiFi 5 that offered good coverage, but when I moved rooms around, my devices would pick up the signal from the far router instead of the one right next to me. How can I fix this? I want my devices to connect only to the closest access point. I tried setting up two Asus routers where one acts as an access point, but while walking with a tablet near one router, it kept grabbing the weak signal from the distant router and didn't lock onto the strong nearby one, resulting in slow speeds. How do I manage to make my device stick to the nearest strong router instead?
You don't need to know where the best signal is, but you should try to find it and turn off your router sometimes so the computer can reconnect to a stronger one. This won't work with mesh networks. Think about how cell phones work; they are controlled by the phone itself, not the network. A mesh system could at least try to move the device away from bad signals. But you have too much signal coming in. Your computer waits for the signal to get weak before it tries something new. When it has to disconnect and use a new radio chip, it stops working efficiently because it is designed to stay stable rather than keep searching constantly. You can fix this by turning down the power on your routers and access points so they have less overlap with each other. Usually, just stopping and starting the connection is easier for most people since they rarely move around their house often.