Goodbye Traditional Router, Hello Mesh Router!

I live in a condo complex where all units have 3 floors plus an underground parking area. Since July 2014, I’ve used a traditional modem-router (NETGEAR C3000-100NAS) that broadcasts wifi to our entire home from a single access point on the 2nd floor. Wireless access has been very reliable on all 3 floors. However, the wireless signal has been weak to nonexistent from the underground garage, and that would sometimes make it difficult for me to look up navigation options while sitting in my car before I begin my drive. My workaround has been to look up driving routes while still on the 1st floor or to turn off wifi while in the garage to force my phone to switch to cellular data. No biggie.

In the last 2 months, we have increased our internet usage due to working and schooling from home as well as adopting video conferencing as a more common method of communication. I’ve noticed that our Apple TV and Xbox on the first floor have had intermittent connectivity problems which I initially chalked up to our internet service provider (Spectrum, formerly Time Warner Cable) facing a surge in demand due to shelter at home orders. However, I began to notice dead spots in certain areas of the 1st floor which made me wonder if my router was starting to malfunction.

It turns out that routers can slow down with age, so I decided to test my hypothesis by upgrading to a mesh router. While traditional routers broadcast wifi from a single access point, mesh routers can consist of several access points that communicate with one another to more efficiently route data to and from multiple devices. I bought a TP-Link Deco M9 Plus mesh router system. Although it comes with 3 units, I felt that I only needed 2 units and will use the 3rd unit as a backup. I attached the 1st unit via ethernet cable to my NETGEAR modem-router (which I’m essentially using only as a modem now) on the 2nd floor, and I installed the 2nd unit near the kitchen on the 1st floor.

Setup was a breeze using the TP-Link iOS app. I helped a friend install a mesh router and had all kinds of problems, but the TP-Link instructions were very clear, and configuration options were intuitive to understand and/or pre-populated with default options that work for most situations. Because the mesh router must be assigned its own network name and password, and because I didn’t want to re-connect all of our devices (we have more than 10 internet-enabled devices) to a new network configuration, I first renamed the network on my NETGEAR router and then assigned the original network name and password to my new TP-Link mesh router. All our our devices then automatically connected to the mesh network. Boom. I love it when things work. My dead spots are gone, and I can even get a moderate wifi signal (usually 2 out of 3 bars) from the underground garage.

Interestingly, I noticed that internet speeds seemed to be faster with the mesh network, so I decided to perform a head-to-head comparison between my traditional NETGEAR router and my new TP-Link mesh router. Using the iMac in my 2nd floor office which is located about 15 feet away from both routers (more or less equidistant), I fired up Safari 13.1 on macOS 10.14.6 and ran 6 sequential speed tests on Speedtest, alternating between my traditional and mesh router networks. I then calculated averages for ping time, download speeds, and upload speeds. Here are the results:

Seq	Router	Ping (ms)	Down (Mbps)	Up (Mbps)	Speedtest Result
1	Traditional	25	8.34	2.12	https://www.speedtest.net/result/9429818874
2	Mesh	17	52.82	1.65	https://www.speedtest.net/result/9429824134
3	Traditional	24	3.63	3.62	https://www.speedtest.net/result/9429830017
4	Mesh	19	41.99	1.97	https://www.speedtest.net/result/9429833684
5	Traditional	17	13.60	1.76	https://www.speedtest.net/result/9429837451
6	Mesh	20	51.53	1.36	https://www.speedtest.net/result/9429841785
Avg	Traditional	22.00	8.52	2.50	N/A (calculated average)
Avg	Mesh	18.67	48.78	1.66	N/A (calculated average)

Although the sample size is small, the mesh router appears to have download speeds that are faster by more than a factor of 5. Another way to look at the results is that I used to get 50-60 Mbps download speeds with my traditional modem-router, but it’s no longer running at peak performance. Curiously, the upload speeds appear to be slightly slower with the mesh network as compared with the traditional router, although it may be premature to conclude whether or not there is a statistically significant difference. Maybe I’ll run some more speed tests later to find out.

In summary, it appears that there has been degradation of performance in my traditional modem-router which adds a data point to the assertion that routers slow down with age. Additionally, if you have dead spots anywhere in your home, there is a good chance that a mesh network will solve your wifi woes. I’m certainly happy with mine.