There is a new WiFi mesh startup on the market, and the ability of its technology to apparently blanket the home in perfect WiFi has been receiving some rather flattering attention.
There is a lot of activity in the home network business, evidence that various equipment makers and technologies are fighting for market share in a market that is about to explode. One of the technologies that is coming to market is the mesh networking of traditional WiFi in which each node can connect with other nodes rather than each one having to connect back to the central network hub.
We have mentioned mesh networking as far back as 2003, and first in connection with AirTies in 2010, but most notably in an article about equipment maker AirTies selecting Quantenna’s chips to build a set top that used AirTies’ secret sauce for forming a mesh network, in 2013. But that device was aimed at pay TV services for deploying whole home DVRs. This time, mesh networking WiFi boxes are aimed at the consumer market.
There is a clear trend in which ISPs are choosing to solve WiFi problems with mesh networking. What Quantenna does is install large chips with the promise to ensure no more problems with WiFi, but still problems arise. Another way is to use multiple chips, such as in the Sky Q set top, which is built around Broadcom chips, as is the WiFi, while the powerline chips come from Qualcomm Atheros, combined with AirTies’ client steering technology.
The startup Eero has started shipping its $199 mesh networking capable one box that is a WiFi router, an access point and a WiFi-to-WiFi range extender, which we first reported on in November 2015. We said that it would become important. Now the Wall Street Journal and Fortune magazine have discovered its importance and the shortcoming of existing WiFi products: high-speed WiFi connections in every room and on every porch and patio and seamless connectivity as a user moves from room to room. They also have to be easy to setup and manage.
With the Eero box, users can install one or two or three or more as needed. Each of the Eero boxes work together to create a wireless mesh network that covers the home – plus runs diagnostics, automatically download security fixes plus sends weekly digests about network activity. It even reboots itself when needed. Eero recommends three for most WiFi-challenged homes and sells a three-pack for $499 – each covers about 1,000 square feet.
The individual, fashionably-designed, palm-size Eero has a powerful dual-core 1 GHz CPU, two state-of-the-art 802.11ac WiFi radios and 7 antennae.
Eero says, “Distance may be good for the heart, but it weakens WiFi signals. Same goes for walls, doors, appliances, neighbors’ networks, metal, water (water heaters and fish tanks alike), dogs, anything solid. When you and your router are at opposite ends of your house, there are too many obstacles in between. Your WiFi signal simply can’t make it that far.”
Set-up sounds easy. The first one plugs into an electrical outlet and the modem that connects to the home’s cable or DSL or LTE network. Additional units need to be plugged into only an electrical outlet. The WiFi network and Eero devices are managed with an app on a mobile device.
Eero says the devices solve WiFi problems that most homes have: buffering, especially of HD and 4K video streams, dead zones, adding on extenders and passwords. Eero says they do that because the devices are designed to work together as a system by distributing functions. The use of multiple nodes, it said, helps prevent every part of the system from becoming overloaded.
Passwords are easy because there are three user groups: owners, users and guests. Owners have full administrative rights. Users can invite guests. Guests can only connect to the network.
Eero dismisses extenders by saying they can only stretch a signal a single hop, not multiple hops in a row. Many create an entirely separate network (SSID) so users have to manually switch from one network to the other as they move from room to room. Additionally, it said, many range extenders cut bandwidth in half because they rely on a single wireless radio to both send and receive data. Each Eero has two radios — both of which communicate with your devices and sync with other Eero units, which means the connection is always fast. Because there are multiple Eero units on a single network name (SSID), users can walk around the home and mobile devices will automatically connect to the nearest Eero. The same is true for new stationary WiFi devices like smart TVs and IoT devices.
Fortune magazine called the Eero boxes “the only WiFi you’ll ever need.” Its Robert Hackett successfully tested a trio of them in a 3,300-foot house – that has a metal building roughly 70 feet from the home. He said that previously WiFi speeds on the opposite end of his home from the router “were roughly half of the 125 Mbps connection I’m paying for.” None of the previous routers he had tried had accomplished that.
Soon after spending a total of 15 minutes installing the three Eros, he said, his
home was nearly blanketed with 125 Mbps WiFi. All the setup is done with an iOS or Android mobile device. He said the Eeros takes about a day to fully optimize the network, which the company does by collecting information about each home and updating the software.
Wall Street Journal reporter Geoffrey Fowler starts by saying, “Hello from the
other side…of my house. It used to be a WiFi dead zone over here, a wasteland where my laptop and iPad couldn’t eke out a Web page. But now every corner is bathed in sweet, sweet wireless Internet. Bad home WiFi has met its match in a smart but pricey new system called Eero.”
It also took him only about 15 minutes to set them up the three test units that Eero had sent for free, and he too did all the setup with a smartphone.
Fowler had tested the $200 Apple AirPort Extreme and $280 D-Link AC3150 but still had dead zones. He said that with the Eeros, peaks reached 90 Mbps in one home and 120 Mbps in another, which was the maximum speed his broadband could reach. What had been the worst dead spot, he said, now gets “a median speed of 42 Mbps (though occasionally dipping as low as 10).”
Fowler’s conclusion, “I’m likely going to buy an Eeros for myself. WiFi isn’t something we should worry about; it’s just supposed to work.”
This first ran in Rider Research’s Online Reporter.