6 myths you probably still believe about mesh networking

When it comes to networking, mesh networks are touted as one of the best upgrades you can make. For the record, in a general sense, it’s true. Mesh networks are hugely beneficial to larger homes to improve their Wi-Fi coverage, and can often be significantly more reliable than powerline adapters for a myriad of reasons.

With that said, there are a lot of myths and general inaccuracies that I often see touted all over the internet when it comes to them. They’re not a fix-all, but also, some of their downsides can be overplayed, too.

6

More nodes always means better performance

Sometimes less is more

This is one that I often see mentioned the most, but the truth is that more nodes can actually cause problems. More nodes can increase interference and congestion in your home network, but that’s not all. Even though a mesh network extends coverage throughout your home, your devices still typically only connect to one access point, as dictated by the mesh network. This means that if you have many nodes with some close together, your devices can actually switch between them while you remain stationary.

How this works is the mesh network will determine which node is closest to the device, and those nodes will identify in the exact same way to your devices so that it looks like one network. As you move around, the nodes will determine which is closest to you, but if there are too many nodes, the mesh network might switch your connection between them needlessly.

This won’t always cause problems, and if you’re watching Netflix, a YouTube video, or just generally browsing, you likely won’t even notice it. However, for latency-sensitive tasks like gaming or video calls, it can cause intermittent dropouts or increased latency that is noticeable, even if the cause isn’t clear.

5

Mesh networks are only for large homes

Personal experience says otherwise

Many TP-Link Archer routers have been updated with EasyMesh support

Another myth that I see talked about a lot is that mesh networks are only for large homes. This simply isn’t true, and the necessity for a mesh network depends more on your own coverage in your home than its actual size. I live in a fairly small apartment, though it has a long hallway that connects two bedrooms and my living room. The furthest bedroom receives a fairly weak signal from my router, so I use a mesh network with an additional node halfway down my hallway.

What this does is boost my connection to the network and means I can still get the full speed of my gigabit connection, even if my apartment is small enough that many would deem it inappropriate to even have a mesh network in the first place. I don’t need a lot of nodes as I only use two, but you should gauge the necessity for a mesh network based on the signal strength in various points of your home to the router rather than the size of the home itself.

4

Mesh networks are just fancier versions of range extenders

There’s a lot more to a mesh than just greater coverage

While there’s an element of truth to this claim, it isn’t quite the case. While mesh networks undoubtedly extend the range of your network, that isn’t all that they do. As previously mentioned, they also intelligently route connections to different nodes based on the distance from your device to each node. If you think of a mesh network as a net that covers your home, within the net you’ll be connected to the mesh network, but your actual connection will go to the node closest to you.

In contrast, a range extender essentially captures the signals broadcast from your router and rebroadcasts them, extending the strength of the signal. There’s nothing intelligent happening, and range extenders can actually degrade the quality of the connection based on their placement. At best, you’ll have performance akin to if you moved your router to where your range extender is.

With a range extender, you might also need to set different SSIDs for each of them so that you can pick and choose which you connect to. Otherwise, your devices may still try to connect to the original access point even if it has a weaker signal. That’s why mesh networks work well, as it will intelligently change which node you connect to, without needing to manually select it.

3

Mesh networks are always faster than traditional routers

It depends on what you need

Whether or not your mesh is faster than your router depends on your typical proximity to the router and also the technology used by the router. My router is a regular Wi-Fi 5 router where I can get maybe 500 Mbps over WI-Fi to it on 5GHz… in optimal conditions. In contrast, my mesh network uses Wi-Fi 6E, where I can get 800Mbps over Wi-Fi on my MacBook Pro.

With that said, there are plenty of powerful high-end routers out there that support Wi-Fi 6E and are capable of putting out a very strong signal. This means that your mesh network might only match what your router can do, or if your mesh network uses older technology than the router itself, might even perform worse overall.

This is all dictated by the technology being used and distance from the router. As a general rule, neither a mesh always being faster or a router always being faster is true. It depends on what you’re using. If you get gigabit speeds to your home and only have a Wi-Fi 5 router, a mesh network will almost certainly be faster.

2

All mesh nodes have to be the same brand

EasyMesh makes this seamless

Depending on the system that you’re using, this may not be the case. Devices with EasyMesh certification are all compatible with each other, and there are quite a lot of EasyMesh devices out there. While not all of them support Ethernet backhaul (this tends to only be the case on TP-Link devices for the most part), all EasyMesh devices will work wirelessly.

To be clear, you might miss out on some features as a result, but it means you can add more nodes to your network so that you can have extended coverage throughout your home. All of that is without relying on just one brand of networking equipment, too.

1

Setting up a mesh is complicated

It’s easier than ever these days

While it may have been the case years ago that configuring a mesh network was difficult to some, the process has been made incredibly easy in recent years across all major brands. When I configured my TP-Link Deco XE75, I was surprised at how simple the setup was even when compared to my Google Mesh Wi-Fi that I had setup several years prior. The app walked me through every step of the process, and made it difficult to screw up.

If you’re not a massively technical person, you don’t need to be worried about setting up a mesh. Major brands are completely foolproof, and even if you do make a mistake, most nodes will have a reset button so that you can just factory reset them and start from scratch. They’re pretty much plug and play, with minor configuration changes needed if you want to improve security or you want them to act as an extension of your existing network rather than a subnet.