We all know getting a good, whole home wi-fi coverage is a constant, never-ending battle for many of us. I’ve tried several wi-fi extenders and repeaters, homeplug ethernet and even a combination of both and still my wi-fi coverage in other rooms inside my house range from poor to intermittently unstable. That was before the advent of mesh wi-fi. Now I have whole home wi-fi coverage with excellent speed and reliability.
How does mesh wi-fi work? I have no idea, but in theory, it employs a technology that gives you whole house coverage. You basically place a couple of nodes (mesh wi-fi units) at different locations, they connect and overlap each other to give you a really good wi-fi signal around your house.
Often with new technologies in the market, the original price for these mesh wi-fis are, prohibitively expensive. 2 years ago, a two-pack mesh wi-fi set could set you back north of 800 ringgit. Last month I got mine for a mere RM279.00. There’s a few things to consider before getting your first mesh wi-fi. First of all, get a mesh wifi unit that complements your Internet subscription speed. Let's say you’ve got a 30Mbps Internet plan, while there’s nothing wrong in getting a mesh wifi capable of 1,000Mbps speed but it will be very expensive and totally overkill for your sub’s plan. Similarly if you’ve got a gigabit (1,000Mbps) Internet plan at home, you should not get a mesh wi-fi unit that has only 100Mbps top speed because your mesh wi-fi speed will be limited to that speed.
From my extensive research before buying, I narrowed down my options to either a TP-Link Deco or a Tenda Nova mesh wi-fi model. Initially, I was tempted to get a TP-Link Deco E4 unit. A 2-pack set costs RM232.00. But here’s the catch - it only has a 100Mbps Ethernet port. So despite boasting a 867Mbps top 5GHz wi-fi speed, the 867Mbps is not the actual speed, instead, it is the wireless negotiation speed of the 5GHz radio. Your top speed will be limited by the 100Mbps Ethernet port which is connected to your main router. The next best thing is the TP-Link Deco M4 unit which offers a gigabit Ethernet port but is more expensive at RM357 for a 2-pack set.
Which brings us to Tenda Nova’s MW5C model which offers gigabit Ethernet port and 867Mbps top speed with 5GHz band for only RM279.00 which is perfect for my 300Mbps Internet plan. The Nova MW3 model is much cheaper but like the Deco E4, only offers 100Mbps Ethernet port. I was excited when my Nova MW5C unit arrived but to my dismay, it refused to connect to my modem despite me following their instruction on YouTube. I spent the first two hours in the evening trying to get the mesh wi-fi to work and another two hours at 5 in the morning but still could not get it to work. Fortunately for me, Tenda’s post-sales support is really good and their assigned technicians guided me with the correct settings in the Tenda Wi-Fi app and I got my mesh wi-fi set up in just 2 minutes.
Apparently for Maxis wifi and Tenda Nova MW5C, you leave the existing router alone. Plug one cable to Lan port 1 or 2 from the main router into the Wan port of the Nova MW5C. In the Tenda Wi-fi app, set Internet settings to DHCP and ISP to General. Save the setting and you’re done. The official Tenda tutorial on YouTube actually tells you to connect the MW5C unit straight to the modem instead and configure the ISP straight from the Tenda Wi-Fi app which was why it never worked for me. It might work for Unifi or other ISPs but for Maxis with a phone line as the technician said, follow my instruction above.
The result? Apart from seamlessly switching automatically from my downstairs wi-fi to upstairs wi-fi, the upstairs wi-fi is also now at least half the speed of my main router. Previously using a pair of homeplug ethernet devices and a repeater, the top speed I can get upstairs is only 20Mbps compared to around 120Mbps with the mesh wi-fi. It’s a massive upgrade.
The Tenda Wi-Fi app also offers a few useful features such as guest network, parental control and fast roaming. Guest network allows you to create a time-specific guest wi-fi network which will automatically expire after the allocated time frame. Parental control lets you add specific devices to a group and specify when those devices have access to the Internet. Pretty useful if you have a bunch of school-going kids who spend too much time on their gadgets. Fast roaming is a setting that allows one mesh unit to quickly hand over clients to another. For example, it will automatically switch from the main node downstairs to the satellite node upstairs whenever I move there.
At first I bought a 2-pair pack of Tenda Nova’s MW5C model and put it one in the living room connected to my Maxis router. The second unit I put upstairs in the family area. It worked well for a while and I got pretty good speed on both nodes. Over time though, especially after I turned on fast roaming, many of my connected devices were mysteriously assigned to the 2.4GHz band which is pretty slow and never goes above 100Mbps. Even worse, there are no settings in the Tenda Wi-Fi app to manually assign those devices to the 5GHz band so I’m stuck with the 2.4GHz speed which is less than ideal. After some research, I found out that the 5GHz band is limited to 5 devices per node and after the 5 slots are filled, the rest of the connected devices will be assigned the 2.4GHz band which explains it.
As a short time fix, I started to connect some of my devices to the main Maxis router downstairs which has no limits with its 5GHz band. I was hoping once there’s less devices connected to the node, I could get my phones or iPad connected to the 5GHz band whenever I move around the house. Sadly, I still got mixed results with that. Sometimes I get 5GHz, other times it automatically connects to 2.4Ghz. The only solution I can think of is to add another node to my mesh wi-fi which leads me to buy another Nova, the MW6. Like the MW5C, the MW6 offers the same gigabit Ethernet connection but with a wider wi-fi coverage. I would have bought another MW5C but they don’t sell a 1-pack unit of that model hence why the MW6. In hindsight, I should have gotten a 3-pack set of the MW5C instead of buying a 2-pack MW5C plus another 1-pack MW6 and save myself 40 ringgit. That’s what you should do if you live in a two-storey house. Get a 3-pack mesh wifi set, it could save you a lot of money and some headache later on.
Now with 3 nodes around the house - one in the living room (the MW6), one in the family area on the first floor and the other in the master bedroom, I get excellent wi-fi coverage and speed everywhere. With 3 nodes, I get 15 slots for the 5GHz band which is plenty for my phones and iPad. If you have money to spare I would even recommend you to get one for each room of your house. Your family members will thank you. Adding another node is pretty simple. You turn on the node and then scan the barcode below the device with the Tenda Wi-Fi app. In a few seconds, you will be connected to the mesh wi-fi.
Mesh wi-fi is indeed an amazing advancement in networking technology which offers a great, whole house wi-fi coverage at amazing speed and affordable price. Say goodbye to annoying wi-fi dead spots in your home and say hello to high speed Internet everywhere. If you can invest between 279 and 400 ringgit of your money for something truly useful, I would highly recommend the Tenda Nova mesh wi-fi series. Sure, get the TP-Link Deco series if you got more money to spare but I’m sure it will work just as well as the Nova series.
