Looking for networking Wifi routers?
We were experiencing wifi problems in our home, found this article (below), sourced Google’s Wifi mesh system and solved all our networking issues.
Google Wifi mesh system
The Age Digital Edition: Ease of use is king
After years of waiting, my home has finally been connected to Australia’s half-baked NBN. Our street was connected with hybrid fibre-coaxial and I’m now enjoying internet speeds our American friends took for granted in the nineties.
As I had to change internet providers, it was a good time to test the latest home networking products available. For context, I’m currently living in a single story double brick dwelling, just oddly shaped enough that a standard router would struggle, so using a mesh networking solution was key.
I’ve tested them all over the years, and would only recommend three providers: Google’s Nest Wifi for the novice, Ubiquiti’s UniFi for the dedicated nerd with a passion for tweaking every detail, and Netgear’s Orbi as a middle ground.
As a nerd who doesn’t want to spend too much time troubleshooting, I’d been using Netgear’s Orbi Mesh access points for the past few years. Despite a bad update that made them less reliable for a couple of months, I’d been relatively happy. The system had just enough of the nerdier features, including multiple Ethernet ports. My general philosophy of home internet is any gadget that doesn’t move should be connected via Ethernet, to allow greater bandwidth to the countless wireless devices in our home.
My plan was to test all three providers’ latest hardware, but after using Google’s latest Nest hardware I’m happy to stop here and count myself as a novice. The Nest Wifi is just too easy to set up; after plugging the base station into an Ethernet port of the NBN supplied modem, and choosing a wireless name and password, it did the rest. I was honestly shocked at how easy the setup was, and how simple it was to prioritise speeds to my console over a few dozen smart devices. This is the kind of easy networking experience Apple once owned with its Airport base stations and Express satellites.
The satellite is also a Nest speaker, giving our home an extra Google Assistant in the bedroom, and blanketing the house in Wi-Fi .
At first I was disappointed by the limited Ethernet on the base station — after the connection to the modem there’s just one I’m using for my server — and there are no Ethernet ports on the satellite. Also absent is a useful bridge mode. (If you don’t know what that is, you probably don’t need it.)
But I understand these are nerdy and niche needs, and honestly I haven’t missed wired connections when the wireless speeds and reliability have been flawless .
Source: The Age Digital Edition: Ease of use is king
This article is from the November 28, 2019 issue of The Age Digital Edition. To subscribe, visit https://theage.digitaleditions.com.au/.
PETER WELLS