“Maybe you can get away with a single Wi-Fi basestation, if you have modest needs, but with the arrival of 4K media streaming, home network bandwidth demands are growing quickly,” Mike Wuerthele writes for AppleInsider. “There are some best practices and things to consider instead of just slapping another Wi-Fi router on a network, or extending the network another 20 feet with a cable and a switch.”
“In the last few years, mesh networking hardware has debuted. The most recent batch are designed to be plunked down in disparate areas of your house, with one connected to your cable modem or router provided by your ISP and the rest of the mesh routers connecting to that one,” Wuerthele writes. “Individual setup depends on the manufacturer, but they are generally app-configured from an iPhone or iPad, and negotiate connections between base stations automatically.”
“A single 4K HDR video can require about 8 megabytes per second to stream without buffering, and in our own testing we’ve seen peak traffic at 12 megabytes per second. Stack multiple streams up at once on the same LAN, and it can quickly bring an network to its knees,” Wuerthele writes. “It would be a shame if your network couldn’t handle it.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: With Apple out of the Wi-Fi game, the closest we’re going to get to Apple-esque good looks and ease-of-use are Eero products.
SEE ALSO:
Apple begins to sell out of AirPort base stations – May 17, 2018
Requiem for the AirPort base station: A testament to everything Apple was and isn’t anymore – April 27, 2018
Apple makes yet another short-sighted decision: Apple has discontinued a product that it should have made a cornerstone of its home automation and entertainment ecosystem – April 27, 2018
Watch Steve Jobs passionately defend his commitment to Apple in 1997 – April 27, 2018
Apple’s decision to discontinue AirPort products is the wrong decision at the wrong time – April 27, 2018
Apple pulls plug on AirPort Wi-Fi router business – April 26, 2018
Eero’s new mesh WiFi system packs more power in an Apple-esque design – June 29, 2017
AppleInsider reviews eero Wi-Fi: ‘A solid option for Apple’s outgoing AirPort’ – February 27, 2017
With Eero, you can kiss slow Wi-Fi goodbye forever – February 10, 2017
I have an eero network and my only complaints are these:
1- eero satellites do not have USB and Audio like the AirPort Express units do.
2-eero thinks we all want to squint at our cell phones to set up our home network and does not offer a web based (browser) or an app for the Macintosh.
It would also be nice to get the units in Black instead of the white plastic.
An Airport Express can connect via “client mode” to other WiFi networks, including mesh networks, that aren’t otherwise using Apple hardware. As a client device, the Airport Express can still receive print jobs and audio sent through the network, but the Airport Express is not itself a wireless access point. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204371
I recently switched to Eero (from Google Wi-Fi) and have been pleased so far. Eero is faster than Google and is able to recover from a power outage which Google couldn’t do. I’d have to manually reset all the Google Wi-Fi devices which was a major hassle and/or impossible if I wasn’t physically home.
I paid to try out the eero Plus service and seems like a good value and it’s cutting down on ads and providing better security (encrypt.me, Malwarebytes and 1Password licenses included)
I have a Ubiquiti Amplifi HD setup, and it’s terrific. Ubiquiti is an enterprise solution company, started by an ex-Apple engineer.