What's Wireless "mesh"?
Eero, similar devices, how they work, and why I decided to jump into the deep end of this tech. What is a wireless mesh? In simpler terms, it consists of multiple wireless devices working together (instead of a network extender, which connects to another wireless base station, and acts as a "helper" to get packets to a farther away device) to understand where the internet is and how best to get your packets from your device to the internet. Most wireless extenders that I've tried, usually halve the internet bandwidth to account for getting packets to/from the base station. Mesh devices, such as eero, connect together in a more intelligent way to understand where the devices are and routes packets from devices in a much faster way. My understanding is that when the mesh is set up, where the mobile device is, it connects to the closest access point and that access point knows how best to route traffic to the internet (either another AP or the base station, whichever is closest). Wireless extenders only know how to route traffic to the base station which sounds like it would be fastest, but not in every situation since half of the bandwidth is still consumed by extender-to-base-station traffic internally. Eeros cut down on that since they remember the fastest route to the internet. In my experience, having a couple of these devices in my condo, I get near gigabit speeds to my ISP from my Macbook Pro over wireless 802.11ac. Before with one access point and an extender, I might get 20-30Mbps. For me at least, mesh creates a more stable and reliable wireless network/internet connection without having the need to "reboot the router" every week or month. Other companies like Google, Luna, and Netgear also make wireless mesh products.